According to the most recent NIDA household survey, the use of cocaine appears to remain at alarmingly high levels. Although it is used by both men and women, and research has been done in this area, to date there is very little information about the etiology of women's cocaine use. Considering the serious health and social implications not only to women themselves but to their children and significant others, a better understanding of this phenomenon is necessary. We intend to conduct a three-year study of women and cocaine use, using a qualitative, ethnographic-type approach (with a quantitative component). The theoretical backdrop of the study will be a combination of Rosenbaum's notion of funneling options: Stephens' role-theoretic explanation of drug use; and Biernacki's postulation of multiple identities in the proliferation and cessation of drug use. Employing a natural history or """"""""career"""""""" model and the depth interview and fieldwork as the primary data gathering tools, the project staff will interview 100 cocaine-using women and do field-work and observation in the San Francisco Bay Area. We will collect the following kinds of data from our respondents: background information and sociodemographics; methods of entree into cocaine use; traditional vs. non-traditional sex roles and cocaine use; rationales for continuing use; health problems and consequences of cocaine use; psychological and sexual aspects of cocaine use; pregnancy, motherhood, child-rearing and cocaine use; criminal activity; pressures to continue using cocaine; cocaine and the use of other drugs (including alcohol); and cessation of cocaine use. Regarding the cocaine career, we want to know which factors propel women into cocaine use; why they remain in the drug/cocaine using world; how they manage while using cocaine; how their use affects their significant others, especially their children; what kinds of problems they encounter using cocaine; and why and how they cease cocaine use. In sum, we want to ascertain what variables move women from use to abuse; what supports use and abuse; and, importantly, what supports abstinence. By gleaning a better understanding of women's use of cocaine, we will be in favorable position to 1) design a larger, more representative survey, and 2) make recommendations which could result in a tailoring of treatment and other interventions, making them more effective so that they can stem the current tide of women's abuse of cocaine and its concomitant problems.
| Kearney, M H; Murphy, S; Rosenbaum, M (1994) Mothering on crack cocaine: a grounded theory analysis. Soc Sci Med 38:351-61 |
