“It Might Be a Scummy-Arsed Drug but it's a Sick Buzz”: Chroming and Pleasure

Abstract

Arguing that the role of pleasure in young people's decisions to use inhalants has been underexplored, this paper provides a typology for the kinds of pleasurable experience young people report from chroming (an Australian term for inhalant use involving aerosol paints). The paper draws on in-depth interviews with young people with experience of chroming and with expert workers in Melbourne, Australia. Seven categories of pleasurable experience related to chroming are identified through thematic analysis of these interviews: feeling, escaping and relocating, imagining, doing, socializing, communicating, and consuming. In the context of use by marginalized young people, chroming has powerful and often deeply pleasurable effects. Understanding more about the kinds of enjoyment that young people seek and experience through chroming—and by implication what workers are asking them to give up when they try to make them stop using these drugs—is important in designing policy interventions.