Theories of Drug Use

(See: Drugs in American Society, 5th, 6th, and 7th editions, Erich Goode, McGraw-Hill, 1999/2005/2008. Chapter 3)

Theories attempt to explain a general class of phenomena: Why people use drugs.

Most Theories focus on particular features of the phenomenon of drug use:

• Illicit drugs
• Alcoholism
• Addiction
• The drug experience (How vs. Why)
• Individual
• Society
• Career

  The Medical/Pathological perspective is a common organizing theme:

• Use of drug ==> abnormality
• Drug use is not normal, outside of medical setting
• Use of psychoactive drugs for pleasure==> indicates something "wrong"
• Use is "caused" by some pathology, and "causes" further problems
• User is sick==> needs treatment (question is what kind?)

This perspective seeks to answer the why of drug use based on the idea that drug use is non-normative (wrong, bad, immoral, pathological). Other perspectives and theories seek mainly to understanding social (and psychological) processes.

Biological => Psychological => Sociological => Emergence

Biological Theories

These theories tend to focus on non-normative use and/or addiction. They postulate some sort of innate physical mechanism that "causes" an individual to use drugs, or the continue to use and/or abuse them after they have experimented.

Genetic Theories

• Genetic makeup impacts the processing of a substance and/or the dose required to produce an ASC
• Can vary from individual to individual, group to group
• Factor influencing pattern of use
• A "Trigger" (in combination with psychological and environmental variables)

Children of alcoholics: children have patterns of alcohol consumption similar to natural parents. 30-40% of COA==> become alcoholics versus about 10% of general population.

Predisposition versus "Cause" (alcohol has less effect==> drink more==> more problems)

Metabolic Imbalance

• Specifically applied to narcotic addiction
• Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander: Certain addicts have disease, similar to in action to diabetes
• Once take narcotic, body develops a "craving," like diabetics crave insulin
• No cure: Maintenance (Methadone Maintenance)
• Hypothesis versus reality?
• Some addicts behave "as if" this were the case, methadone has helped a certain percentage.

Bio-Pysch-Social: Andrew Weil

"The Natural Mind" (1972, 1986)

• Drug use is universal
• Innate drive: variety of paths for achieving ASC
• Humans are born with the drive
• We experiment early in life
• Receive rewards and punishment for trying various ways
• Develop preferred methods and tend to persist in attempts
• Shaped by psycho-social processes (desires, availabilities, norms, etc.)
• Set and setting shape experience (can be positive and valuable)

Psychological Theories: Tend to focus on compulsive, continual use.

Reinforcement

• Behavioralism (no "black box")
• Personality is (basically) not important

Positive: Feels good, do it. Seek to continue.

• Dependency issue: Immediate Sensuous Appeal (Cocaine) vs. Necessity for Learned Response
• Continuum: No use--Moderate--Regular--Abusive/Addict (Physiological) (Long and "Sufficient" Reinforcement)

"Euphoria-Seekers": Motivated by intense pleasure

• Compulsive
• Expensive
• Disruptive: Willing to make extreme sacrifices
• Illegality

Negative: Avoid pain

• Focus on Physical Addiction-- Opiates
• Lindesmith' definition
• Use drug to feel normal

"Maintainers"

• Stable
• Often "Controlled Use"
• Unwilling to sacrifice Job, Family, etc. in pursuit of drug, so "maintain" at consistent level. Sacrifice makes little sense if directed solely at maintenance.
• Interesting: Addicts, even physically addicted, make Rational Choice
• Controlled Heroin Use (full study)(local copy)
• A study from Glasgow Caledonian University, 2005: local copy

  Back to Addiction lecture notes

Inadequate Personality Theory

• Use drugs as a means of coping
• Emotional/physic defect
• Escapism
• Sunderwirth and Milkman

"Euphoria: adaptive for immature individual who lacks responsibility, independence, and is unable to postpone gratification."

Desire to use drugs==> Weak person==> Likely to continue==>

• Abuse
• Drugs as a crutch
• Defense Mechanism
• Each drug represents a different adaptive mechanism: Satiation, Arousal, Fantasy

Low Self-Esteem==> Social Rejection==> Deviance (coping mechanism)

Non-normative Behavior: deadens the pain of self and other rejection

BUT--

Some drug use is normative, and drug use, even illicit, produces strong, intimate "bonds" for many users.

Problem-Behavior Proneness

• Not reinforcement per se, but "risk-taking"
• Deviant behavior: not negative or pathological, BUT different and typically condemned
• Not badness or weakness, just the type of person likely to get into trouble
• Sort of statistical: The more people, and the more complex and formalized the society, the greater the likelihood that there will be more of this type.
• Continuum: Conformity--------------------------Total Non-Conformity
• Creativity and Innovation lie near the Non-Conforming end: Necessary
• I versus Me: Group individual integration
• Without some "experimentation": Real problem for society

Strong relationship: The more "problem-prone," the more likely an individual is to use drugs. Traits:

• Rebellious
• Independent
• Open to new experience
• Tolerant
• Accepting of deviance in others
• Pleasure-seeking/Hedonistic
• Peer-oriented

Transition-Prone

Willing to accept and engage in behavior that denotes the move from one status/stage of life to another: Adolescent==> Adult (Drugs, Sex, etc.)

• Highly predictive
• Strong relationship with Social Control Theory and Subcultural/Socialization Theories
• Matter of Degree

Sociological Theories

These theories:

• Emphasize understanding of the individual located within specific social structures: The group impacts individual behavior
• Are overlapping and mutually supportive

Types of Social Theories

Anomie-Structural Strain

• Normative-Structural
• Robert Merton
• Cloward and Ohlin: Differential Opportunity-- "Double Failure"
(problematic assumptions)

Goals/Means Disjuncture--Individual Adaptation

Adaptive Typology:

Problems, yet useful in analyzing structure of illicit drug market

Social Learning

Edwin Sutherland (1939): Differential Association

• Behavior is Behavior
• Behavior is Learned
• Behavior is learned in face-to-face interaction with others.
• Learning depends on:

1. priority
2. intensity
3. duration

• Learning involves:

1. techniques
2. motives
3. attitudes
4. definitions

As one learns a preponderance of definitions favorable to deviance, one will engage in deviance.

Modifications to Differential Association

• Nathan Glaser: Differential Identification. Not all learning is face-to-face
• Ronald Akers: Differential Reinforcement. Learning involves the application of rewards and punishments. We tend to associate with groups or individuals who reward our behavior.

Jump to General Considerations

Control Theory

Why most don't deviate?=> Hirschi's Social Control Theory (Social Bonding)

Internal Control: Belief: socialization, internalization.

• Link here to Problem-Prone Behavior

External Controls:

• Involvement: time factor
• Commitment: stake in society, something to lose
• Attachment: role models, someone you don't want to let down.

Hirschi today: Self Control Theory-- work ethic, deferred gratification==> success ==> reduces probability of deviance

Assumption: No subcultural reality.

Back to Problem-Behavior Proneness

Social Learning and Control

Gresham Sykes and David Matza: Drift

• Deviance and conformity are not two separate worlds.
• Individuals are neither purely deviant or purely conformist.
• We drift in and out of deviance, each successive drift may not take us very far, but we are drifting deeper into deviant worlds.
• Throughout the process we encounter "forks in the road, decision points, and varieties of deviant groups/subcultures.

Conformity=> Drift=>Transition (normalization)=> Professionalization=> Deviance (transformed identity, subcultural association, and normative structure)

Necessary element which allows us to drift back and forth, engage in deviance, and yet maintain a consistent (positive) self-image:

Techniques of Neutralization

• Denial of Responsibility (accident, "There just happened to be drugs at the party")
• Denial of Injury (nobody was really hurt, "It's just pot.")
• Denial of Victim (they deserved it, perhaps relevant to understanding participation in drug dealing)
• Condemn the Condemners (you accuse me? "What about all the booze you drink?")
• Appeal to Higher Loyalties (gang, God, etc., "Mind expansion!")

Subcultural Theories

These theories are related to Social Learning, and to Sykes and Matza's "Drift" Hypothesis, yet stress the importance of the Subculture: Group Socialization, Identity Change, and Development of New Value and Normative Systems.

• Definitional-Process
• Social Learning: Learn to violate the norms, need only one "significant other" who 'teaches' you that norm violation is 'OK."
• Subcultural: Learn to obey a different set of norms and define oneself in their terms

Howard Becker: "Becoming a Marijuana Smoker" (1953)

• How vs. Why?
• Learning=> Socialization=> Subculture=> Identity
• Focus on the social processes through which one "becomes" a deviant (and that's OK).
• Stages: Novice, Occassional, Regular

Motive for continued behavior evolves through participation in the behavior in the company of others.

Learn to:

• Use the drug
• Perceive its effect
• Enjoy the effect
• Access a supply
• Maintain Secrecy
• Neutralize Stigma==> Through identification with the Subculture

Hirsch, Conforti, and Graney: Restudy of Becker's Work

• Sequential model, especially stages 1, 2, and 3: not accurate.
• Pattern and progression not unilineal or predetermined.
• But, idea of learning to derive pleasure (developing a motive) in course of learning to use is a good approach to understanding group dynamics.

Selective Interaction/Socialization

Socialized in advance

Selective Recruitment

Relevance of:

• Problem-Prone Behavior
• Unconventionality

Goode: Marijuana use is attractive to novices because they enjoy the company of those who use; Compatibility, A shared "Weltanschauung"

Bruce Johnson:

People are PROGRESSIVELY socialized into more UNCONVENTIONAL groups.

• Alienated from parents and parental subculture
• Drawn to peers
• Peers and TRANSITION==> more likely to use drugs
• Drugs, Sex, and Auto Deviance==> status and prestige: Symbolize independence from parents

Indicates significant value and norm shift

• Experience other groups==> Drug using subculture becomes more compatable
• More associations with more people/friends using marijuana; more likely to use it, too.
• More use and friends==> deeper involvement

Marijuana, per se, doesn't cause this shift, it's becoming emeshed in a new subculture. Marijuana use is an index of involvement in the subculture.

Denise Kandel: Selective Interaction and Socialization

Agents of Socialization

Parents:

• Long term impact, basic values
• Parental drug use-- some impact, opens up potential (not necessary)

Peers:

• Situational impact, Lifestyle
• Peer drug use: Very important factor
• Teens associate based on similarities of life styles
• Share drug using patterns (most likely to share drug use)

Selective peer group interaction and socialization: Most Powerful Impact on Drug Use.

• Imitation and Social Influence: Initiate and Maintain Patterns
• Cohesive Groups Form: Reinforce Shared Values and Behaviors
• Closer the BOND-- Greater the Impact of Shared Values and Norms

Friends are NOT chosen at Random

• Socialized in Advance
• Choose and are Chosen based on this process
• Participation in Group==> Drugs (or away from)
• Recipriocity-- Dialectics.

Dynamic Model-- Sequences/Career

• Not single drug use, but patterns of multiple drug use
• "Culturally Defined" Stages
• "Use of a lower drug in a sequence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for progression to a higher stage..."

Four (4) Stages (Rarely Skipped)

1. Beer or Wine
2. Cigarettes or Hard Liquor
3. Marijuana
4. Other Illegal Drugs

Time-Ordering
Early Stages:

• Socially Approved Drugs
• Accidental Situations
• Broad peer/subcultural attitudes and drug using behaviors
• "DRIFTERS"(seduceable)

Later Stages:

• Mid-Adolescence
• Marijuana Use
• Development of Specific Positive Attitudes Toward the Drug
• Peer Influence Strong, Parental Influence Declines

Later Adolescence:

• Stress: Ambiguity of Adolescence
• Alienation From Parents
• Specific "Role Model," General Peer influence Declines
• The Stronger each of the above, the more likely the move to more serious Drugs.

Moves from being a "Drifter" to being a "SEEKER"

Back to Sociological Theories

Conflict Theory

(Goode, 1999 pages111-116; Elliot Currie: Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities, and tthe American Future, 1993; Harry Levine: Just Say Poverty: What Causes Crack and Heroin Abuse, 1991)

Focus:

• Macro
• Structural
• Complusive and destruction use patterns

Class, Income, Power, and Neighborhoods: Drug Dealing

• Urban decline since 1970s: Jobs evaporating.
• Increasing gap in income and wealth : Underclass.
• Neighborhood disorganization- lack of politial and social capital.

Race, Arrest, and Incarceration and the drug war on minorities.

Alienation: Drug use.

Assumptions:

A. Two kinds of drug use

1. Recreational--Cultural Conflict

2. Abuse--Individual destruction linked to structural inequalty and collapse

B. Movement from recreational use to abuse more likely within impoverished populations (SES and drug use versus SES and drug use problems)

General Considerations/Summary

• Biological theories give us insight into specific mechanisms relevant for understanding a certain (rather small) segment of the population
• Psychological theories help us understand willingness and potential for using drugs. BUT, are the characteristics associated with users Personality Characteristics or are they Subcultural in Nature?
• Drug use is learned and reinforced within a group setting
• Selective socialization/recruitment explains entrance into the group
• Involvement in the group provides role models and rationales for continued and escalating use
• Different influences are critical at different life stages and impact the use of different drugs
• There appears, then, to be a coherent pattern which explains drug use, yet it is not simplistic or unilineal; but complex, segmented and reflexive.

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/180/theordrg.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
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Last Updated: Thursday, August 28, 2008 1:31 PM