Putting drug use in context. Life-lines of African American women who smoke crack.
The purpose of this exploratory study was to describe a group of African American women who smoke crack. Using aggregate data from 208 interviews with women crack smokers, we randomly selected 25 women's interview data to create the 25 life-lines. These life-lines were developed in a similar manner to the time-line analysis described by Fullilove and her colleagues (1992); we focused on events that are either extraordinarily disturbing (e.g., rape, incest, death of a child, etc.), events that are usual but often stressful (e.g., birth of a child, death of a parent, etc.), and on periods of drug use. We chose this method of analysis so as to highlight the context in which many women come to use crack cocaine. The life-lines provided a retrospective (but time-ordered) perspective and in several ways provided preliminary support for a stress-diathesis perspective.
Boyd
C J
CJ
Nursing/Women's Studies/Substance Abuse Research Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109, USA. caroboyd@umich.edu
Hill
E
E
Holmes
C
C
Purnell
R
R
D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology; D016578:Crack Cocaine; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007179:Incest / Q000523:psychology; D008875:Middle Aged; D011902:Rape / Q000523:psychology; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States
D016578:Crack Cocaine