The Promise: On the Morality of the Marginal and the Illicit

Moral engagement in the setting of drug addiction is often at odds with prevailing moral discourse and is treated in punitive terms. In this article, I explore how one moral gesture—a promise between a heroin‐using mother and daughter—embodies the difficulty and ambiguity of moral experience in the context of addiction and offers insight into how it is profoundly shaped by social processes. By offering a close description of the promise over time, I show how morality is lived through sentiments and practices of care and commitment, which are vulnerable to isolation, punishment, and wounding. The story of the promise thus offers a way to reflect upon morality as the blurring of these different intensities.