Outsiders on the insides

Hong Kong, in recent years, has witnessed the rise of a youth rave culture that was subsequently submerged and replaced by a drug use culture in local permanent night entertainment settings. The author's frontline experience as a social worker in the field of drug use was similar to those of her social work colleagues. They shared similar feelings about the fact that they basically spoke a language different from that of their clients, who had developed their own ways of understanding and articulating drug use. This study draws from the symbolic interaction perspective to analyze the interactions between social workers and party drug users, and explains how this interaction has lead both parties to define their situations and act on them. Moreover, the postmodern critique of social work intervention provides a useful reference point for reflecting on the incongruent dialogue between social workers and party drug users over the issue of using party drugs. Through this qualitative study of these two sets of actors, this research shows that both social workers and party drug users had to construct their respective identities and that both had to deal with their own crisis.