Peer Injecting: Implications for Injecting Order & Blood-Borne Viruses among Men & Women Who Inject Heroin

A large body of research has highlighted practices and rituals that characterise injecting drug use and behavioural and environmental risks that can contribute to the transmission of blood-borne viruses. Compared with other injecting practices, considerably less is known about peer injecting, i.e. receiving or giving injections, particularly the social context in which it occurs. 

In this article, we explore peer injecting and injecting order at initiation into injecting drug user (IDU) and during subsequent injection episodes. Using data from semi-structured interviews, we highlight the experiences of 41 males and females who had received injections from other IDUs. Respondents were recruited through various strategies, largely chain referral. 

The results suggest gendered similarities as well as differences in terms of peer injecting, the order of injection and micro-risk contexts for blood-borne viruses...

The majority of male and female respondents were injected by males at initiation, and females were more likely than males to be injected by a partner. Nine male and female respondents were first injected by females, and respondents’ reports suggested
that female peer injectors had considerable experience with injecting and were well connected to drug networks. Both males and females recalled their lack of injecting knowledge at initiation:

She [partner] had called round to my house and she got me quite a wee bit of it [heroin]
and she done the business. She prepared it and everything and then she injected me with it.
So that was basically my first time and then she had given me the rest of it of what she had
got for me but I wasn’t aware of getting needles or anything and all the rest of it [other
injecting equipment, the injecting process], so I didn’t really know what to do with the rest

of the stuff then. (Male, late 20s)...

Three respondents were first injected by male or female family members whose injecting
histories tended to normalise injecting for these respondents. A female recalled being injected first by her mother who reportedly tried to “help” when her daughter experienced trauma:

Well I was 16 years of age and I got pregnant at 15 and then I lost the baby at 16 and my
Mum was an addict so the best way for my Ma to try and help me was to give me an

injection of heroin. (Female, mid-20s)...

Via: http://goo.gl/yWBYcH Full PDF at: http://goo.gl/Hr3DHF

By: Karen McElrath^*a & Julie Harris^a

• ^a School of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland

More at:  https://twitter.com/hiv_insight