What Is Driving Women to Drug Use And How You Can Help

For women with substance use problems, various stimuli become cues that trigger craving and addiction relapse through association with behavior leading to a reward (a drug high) or to relief of a negative state resulting from abstinence. When women with addiction disorders undergo treatment and return to an environment in which they are subjected to the same triggers initially associated with their addictive behavior, they experience difficulty in maintaining abstinence. The purpose of this study was to collect data on individual trigger experiences to develop treatment support for women at risk of relapse when confronted by such triggers. Eighteen women (age, 18-50) with a history of drug or alcohol addiction and living in a shelter in the Inland Empire region responded to a questionnaire containing both quantitative (Likert rating scale) and qualitative (open-ended questions) items regarding trigger experiences. Quantitative data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were categorized according to content. Participants perceived relapse triggers to be related to family and financial problems, the desire to feel good, and relationship issues. Peer pressure was the most frequently cited reason for first using drugs or alcohol. Triggers for relapse and perceived risk factors also related most frequently to social and relationship issues and financial problems. The researcher theorized drug use behavior of women is not due to behavior of using , personality problems or social problems but drug use among women occurred in a relationship context peer or group unit and that context is what driving the behavior because it constitute and consistent with the natural make-up and disposition of women. Women were created to respond to the solitary, lonely and lonesome problems of the sexes as helper, complementing and working alongside side a person. Women drug use behavior is driving not because of the drug but the relationship. Women use because they are in a relationship or unit of relationship peer or group or person or friends that use and influence the drug use behavior. Generally speaking, the same is true of girls who got pregnant before their college years or during their college years. They got pregnant not because they wanted to have sex or pregnant but they are in a complementing working relationship that made them pregnant. The general psychological trend for understanding human behavior done in the past states a person behavior is driving by physical needs or instinct. This study shows other wise. Women do not do things just because it satisfies their physical needs but because they are in a relationship or unit of relationship peer or group or friends that do such things or required it. Women are driving by relationship than by physical needs, physical drive or personality problems as generally accepted. The author shows the main contributing factor for drug use among first time women drug users is peer and for ongoing users is group. Both unit peer and group are consistent with the make-up of women created to respond to the void cause by loneliness, lonesomeness, solitary life style of their opposite sex. What they were created for or to respond to generally influenced their behavior. But conjectures are not enough to help explain women drug use behavior. We must find out about their struggles from samples that can help explain the problem. The last chapter is designed for treatment planning. This study provides general insights regarding triggers, symptoms, craving patterns, and factors providing positive and negative reinforcement of behavior leading to relapse. Future treatment should focus on helping individual clients to identify influences on their behavior in order to build specific relapse prevention skills. The use of qualitative instrument to identify addicts’ socio-environmental relationship will help focus treatment on specific social triggers primarily the trigger for drug use behavior. It will bring down cost and prevent repeated relapse due to undiagnosed social-environmental triggers leading to drug use behavior and repeated relapse. It will help therapist and clinician decide quickly where to start treatment targeting drug use and behavior, symptom reduction or addressing the pre-treatment socio-environmental triggers and the drug behavior and relapse.