In Their Own Words: Addicts' Reasons for Initiating and Withdrawing from Heroin

Abstract

Samples were drawn from each of three narcotic addict-client populations: adult male addicts (N=105), adult female addicts (N = 36), and juvenile male addicts (N = 77). Each person was given a structured interview containing questions regarding his initial use of heroin, his efforts at withdrawal, his initial criminal act, and selected items of demographic information. The findings indicated that addicts, particularly juvenile addicts, are encouraged to begin using heroin by friends in their communities, but the impetus to stop using heroin must come largely from within the self with little support available in the community. Moreover, the treatment program must expect to contend with the addict's own ambivalence about giving up drugs. On the one hand, he feels a very genuine dissatisfaction with the addict-criminal life style and, on the other hand, he feels a continuing psychological hunger for the drug. It was also found that illegal activity by these male street-visible addicts—and indeed arrests of these same male addicts—typically precedes their first use of heroin. Among females, this is far less likely to be the case. Consequently, in organizing treatment programs, effort must be made to provide the male addict with an alternative to the life style he has established as a criminal as well as providing him a means for giving up his use of heroin. In so doing, however, it will be necessary to create the support for abstinence from illicit drugs that will not be present in the community in which the addict must function. Means for providing this support are discussed.