Addiction and social death: Palestinian women’s narratives of trauma, violence, and resistance in marriages to addicted husbands

Addiction within marriage constitutes not only an individual disorder but a sociocultural rupture that destabilizes Palestinian women's lives, producing what can be described as a form of social death. This qualitative study investigates how addiction intersects with betrayal, domestic violence, financial exploitation, despair, family collapse, and ambivalence, drawing on testimonies shared in two large Palestinian women's Facebook groups. Thirty detailed narratives were thematically analyzed to illuminate the psychological injuries, social silencing, and coping strategies that women mobilize in the face of addiction's harms. Findings reveal that apologies and religious appeals to forgiveness often function as renewed psychological violence, economic abuse compounds humiliation and dependence, and children inherit trauma through exposure to both neglect and violence. Women remain trapped between cultural imperatives of endurance and the urgent need to protect themselves and their children. These narratives confirm international evidence on addiction and violence while highlighting the unique intensification of harm under patriarchal norms, stigma, and systemic abandonment in Palestine.