‘The general concept is a safer use approach’: how image and performance enhancing drug coaches negotiate safety through community care

Abstract

Background

Drug coaches are a novel extension of traditional personal trainers who play a significant role providing support and shaping drug-related behaviours for people who use image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs). They constitute a critical domain for everyday risk management, where substance use, and its associated harms are influenced by social exchange. This study investigated how IPED coaches negotiate safety within the community through the provision of their services and the partnerships they form with clients.

Method

Ten IPED coaches, selected through purposive sampling, engaged in semi-structured interviews (32–57 minutes in length) exploring the way in which they operate in their field of practice. Iterative inductive analysis was applied to the transcripts, enhanced by discussions among researchers and an independent coder.

Results

The findings are organised under three categories, revealing the nuanced strategies and identities of IPED coaches, emphasising harm reduction and optimising ‘gains’ in IPED use. These coaches play a significant role in harm reduction, wielding their ‘chemical capital’ and lived experience to integrate nuanced harm reduction strategies into their partnerships with clients.

Conclusion

Embodying a model of peer-driven knowledge exchange and emphasising open and inclusive discourse IPED coaches offer a vehicle toward integrated harm reduction strategies.

Keywords:

• Harm reduction
• image and performance enhancing drugs
• injecting
• negotiated safety
• steroids

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.