The Retirement Phase of Heroin Using Careers

This is a report of a study examining how a sample of 29 former heroin addicts of diverse types and backgrounds terminated their addictions and established abstinences of two years or more. Through the content analyses of life-history interview data, the study found that the crucial turning point in heroin using careers was often associated with a profoundly moving cognitive/emotional existential experience (naked lunch) which invariably occured during crisis episodes of the heroin using career. This experience was often reported by the respondents as having triggered subtle to dramatic behavioral and personality changes which were conducive to terminating the use of heroin. The study also revealed that the process of making and maintaining long-term abstinence can be conceptualized as consisting of two complementary and essentially concurrent social adjustment sub-processes which are termed the extrication and accommodation processes. The data revealed that most of the respondents, early in their efforts to abstain, had to devote considerable but steadily decreasing energies in the social adjustment work of extricating themselves from ties and dependencies in the heroin world. Conversely, it was found that later in the abstention process, the social adjustment work increasingly was devoted to making an accommodation to living among squares. Furthermore, it was found that the quality of lifestyle adopted by respondents was dependent on the degree and stage of development of extrication and accommodation. Interestingly in this context, the study found that the cessation of heroin use did not necessarily imply complete breaks with the heroin world, the cessation of criminality, or the cessation of other forms of drug use.