Drug-related Deaths and the ‘Special Deaths’ of Late Modernity

Abstract

The literature on dying and bereavement has long recognized that the features of some deaths make them especially difficult to grieve.The defining features of such deaths and bereavement are that there is often a high level of trauma, they may be socially stigmatizing or existentially problematic, and the grief is frequently ‘disenfranchized’. These deaths are special because they occur outside of attempts to create ontological security that have been suggested as a central feature of late modernity. In this article we argue that drug-related deaths represent one example of special deaths. Our argument is illustrated through three case studies taken from a small scale empirical study conducted by one of the authors. From this, a beginning typology for the ‘special deaths’ of late modernity is suggested. It is argued that better understanding of these deaths is a necessary feature of the theoretical revision of death in late modernity.