Culture as Medicine: Exploring future interventions for substance abuse treatment and prevention in South Africa

The research poses the questions - How has indigenous medicine responded to the substance abuse crisis in SA? What might future interventions look like? This is a response to high rates of substance abuse in South Africa and the devastating impact it has on an overburdened public health system and community wellness and cohesion. It will contribute a personal, auto-ethnographic, reflection on addiction and recovery, that seeks to deepen local understandings and narratives to include notions of historical trauma, dispossession and 'insecure attachment' to ancestors, nature and land. Working with indigenous and allopathic health practitioners, researchers and persons in recovery as co-researchers, it will use indigenous research methods to explore ancient and innovative solutions to substance abuse treatment and prevention. Creative methods such as storytelling, dreamwork and indabas (talking circles) will be used and public engagement methods will also be decided collectively by the research team during indabas.