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Data and Methods At the beginning of this study, posters were put in the local newspaper and various public forums in the community. Since this was a self-selective study respondents were free to call and offer to be interviewed. Many respondents were acquired through the snowball sampling technique. Specific criteria for respondents to be interviewed were that women had to be 20 years of age or older and in recovery for 18 months or more. Directors of addiction centres suggested that since 18 is the age whereby clients come to the centre, and since I wanted to interview women who had been abstinent for the period of 18 months, 20 years of age was the obvious choice to have as the starting age for participants. There were two advantages that I saw to interviewing women who had been abstinent for 18 months: (1) women were more apt to be stable in recovery after this period of time, and (2) because of this confidence, they were more apt to feel free to talk about past experiences as women formerly addicted to controlled substances. Women ranged in age from 20 to 75, with a median age of 40. Data were collected during unstructured, intensive, audiotaped interviews whereby women were asked to describe their addiction to and recovery from substances in detail. Interviews were not overly structured, as they were open and flexible to allow respondents to talk about topics ranging from early lives and addiction, along with recovery experiences. Respondents' drug(s) of choice4 ranged from alcohol (52%), alcohol and marijuana (28%), marijuana only (4%), cocaine (8%), Ecstasy (4%), and Darvocet (4%). Interviews were 1½ to 2 hours in length and were transcribed and analyzed using grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Miles and Huberman, 1994). This inductive method enabled me to explore women's views of their reality and, subsequently, to establish a theoretical understanding of the generated concepts that emerged from the initial coding, findings and patterns. Through the analysis, I explored the domains of home, work, intimacy, sexuality and leisure in these women's lives, thus revealing the ways in which respondents created multiple and often contradictory discourses as they actively produced meaning on both an individual and social level. Seeing identity formation as a lifelong, socially constructed process enabled me to interrogate the intersection of structure, culture and agency in these women's lives. Findings Applying the theory of social action (Mead, 1938) to this work, I argued that respondents evolved through three stages in their actions toward addiction and, then, into recovery: (1) the pre-addicted self, (2) the addicted self, and (3) the recovering self. The following discussion describes the findings from these three stages in respondents' lives. (1) The Pre-Addicted Self Stage: In this stage respondents selected controlled substances as the social objects to which they paid attention and began to experiment with other users. In this stage, women's lives had been shaped by substance abuse within particular social environments, with families, friends, peers, and/or boyfriends. Of the 25 women, 52% experienced either sexual or personal abuse from male relatives. One respondent highlights her experience: The abuse was long-term, for me long-term, lots of perpetrators. My youngest brother who was six years older than I, he was my long-term perpetrator. By the time I was six, he was bringing his friends home to abuse me.
Fifty-two percent also witnessed violence against their mothers from their fathers and/or mothers' partners. Four percent experienced violence from mothers, and 24% felt abandoned, disconnected or isolated due to adoption, death or rejection from parents. Eighty-four percent of respondents had family members who used drugs to varying degrees. Drifting into substance abuse was a common occurrence for some respondents, but others used drugs to help them deal with personal problems. The ages at which most respondents became addicted centred on the years 10-20 (76%), with 4% becoming addicted before the age of 10. Twelve percent became addicted between ages 21 and 30, while 12% were over 30. Drugs were helping many respondents to 'shut off their emotions' and to deal with pain in their lives. As one woman stated: I used it to help me deal with the pain I was experiencing. I didn’t just want to feel any pain. I think it was just from all the trauma and stuff like that I dealt with and I didn’t know how to deal with it. And I just didn’t want to feel anything.
Women's self-perceptions started to change as meanings toward themselves began to alter as they were now seeing themselves in a different light. They were not yet, "seasoned users" (Rosenbaum, 1981: 35), but, in this stage, their drug habits had begun. (2) The Addicted Self Stage: In this stage respondents began their addictions in earnest that continued for varying lengths of time from months to years. Controlled substances were helping respondents deal with how they felt about themselves, as illustrated through one woman's comment: "I drank to fit in, not to fit in with them (other users), but to fit in with me." In the Addicted Self Stage drugs provided women with other, emergent identities. In this stage, their use/abuse of drugs was having an influence over their lives, their self-concepts and actions. Respondents were rejecting others to whom they were previously socially connected, while other reference groups were becoming salient, thus helping women to integrate themselves into addictive lifestyles. They were also developing new relationships and self-concepts that either excluded or depreciated their old values. I argued that, in this stage, respondents were experiencing individual and social identities that were, finally, helping them to feel 'okay' with |
