PORTRAITS OF RECOVERY | Gaurav Datta

A service user (foreground) talks to a social worker (background) during a counseling session in a drug de-addiction center in Kashmir.

Staff at one of the drug de-addiction centers in Kashmir, responsible for providing physical activity sessions and in general maintenance of the center.

Two psychologists and a service user (center) pose for a portrait at one of the drug de-addiction centers in Kashmir.

A service user stands for a portrait at one of the drug deaddiction centers in Kashmir.

Inside one of the drug deaddiction centers in Kashmir. The painting on the wall was made by one of the mental health professionals.

“‘Recovery’ from substance use is a complex phenomenon, holding different meanings for health professionals, society and the service users themselves. My experience as a caregiver for someone who was unable to transition from substance use to recovery, led me to try to understand what ‘practicing recovery’ actually entails. In Kashmir—a conflict zone between India and Pakistan, recovery is an even more complicated process with increasing rates of substance use and trauma in the region. These ethnographic portraits placed in different drug de-addiction centers in Kashmir, and made with the collaboration of service users and clinical staff, attempt to highlight the tensions and negotiations in the construction, enactment, and embodiment of recovery narratives from different perspectives as well as the spaces in which recovery occurs.”

Gaurav Datta is a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience, substance use, and HIV at the University of North Dakota. Along with a biomedical approach, he is interested in the lived experience of HIV/AIDS and substance use recovery. For this, he uses methods in narrative medicine, psychological anthropology, and visual ethnography, and conducts fieldwork in the Indian states of Gujarat and Kashmir where he works on people with HIV/AIDS and substance use disorder respectively. Some of his work has been published in visual anthropology journals and exhibited in spaces across North Dakota.

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