Sammanfattning
Drug addiction is a serious health problem. The aim of
this study was to gain an understanding of the core of
love when caring for patients suffering from addiction.
The study had a hermeneutical approach. Four nurses
working at a detoxification unit were interviewed. Data
were interpreted using a hermeneutical text interpretation
based on Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The results
revealed the core of love in four dimensions: love as an
inner driving force, searching for the human being
behind the addiction, faith in the inner power of human
beings and love as a movement of giving and receiving.
The hermeneutical interpretation revealed the core of
love as sacrifice, showing that sacrifice is an ethical
dimension and that sacrifice involves searching for the
patient’s ontological suffering. Sacrifice is connected to
faith, and faith in love is decisive for a life without drugs.
Sacrifice involves being mutual gifts to one another, a
self-reinforcing motion of sacrifice that energizes the
nurses to go on with their work. Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons.