ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a life-course perspective as an overarching framework for understanding how certain forms of drug use can interact with masculinity, heterosexuality and age in the creation and re-creation of men's identities. It explores a close analysis of life history narratives, conducted with men within the frame of the Stockholm Life-Course Project. The chapter outlines the life-course perspective and masculinity perspective and shows how these two can fruitfully be informed by one another. It explores the processes of beginning, persisting and desisting from drug use through the intersection of masculinity, sexuality and age. Life-course criminology has in many ways been a gender-blind practice. The chapter shows how some forms of drug use, primarily amphetamine and cocaine, can have the function of enhancing a masculinity project by making the user more sexually capable, which is an important dimension of masculinity.
