New Book Unveils Some of the Mysteries Behind Female Drug Abuse

Heroin, a drug that often conjures such images as burned-out jazz singers and back-alley hustlers, also has a female face. In her new book, “Surviving Heroin, Interviews with Women in Methadone Clinics,” (University Press Florida), Marixsa Alicea, a professor in the School for New Learning at DePaul University, exposes issues faced by women addicted to heroin, analyzes the complex and often competing discourses at work in methadone clinics, and shatters some of the commonly held myths about female drug use.

According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, people who used heroin at least once in their lifetime increased from 1.5 million in 1990 to 2.4 million in 1996. Estimates of current users jumped to 216,000 from 68,000 between 1993 and 1996. Experts say that while the number of women included in these ranks is growing, drug treatment resources for them remain inadequate. A 1990 study for the Washington, D.C. based Sentencing Project reports that while women constituted 33 percent of the addicted population, only 20.6 percent of treatment resources were used for women.

While heroin use has a long history in the United States, the images portrayed in the media of women users is often stereotypical and trite. “Media focus on women’s drug use has given us an enduring stereotype of a female drug abuser as a passive, exploited, degraded victim who becomes sexually promiscuous, ready to sell her body for the price of her next dose, or of a Hollywood actress, nightclub singer or rock star who uses heroin to help cope with the pressures of fame,” said Alicea, who co-authored the book with Jennifer Friedman, an associate professor of sociology at the University of South Florida. “This book aims to dismantle monolithic and stereotypical images of women heroin addicts.”

“Surviving Heroin” draws on interviews with 37 female heroin users including White, Latino, and African-American women in their late thirties, forties and fifties from varied backgrounds. The book also dedicates one chapter to the life history of a female drug user.

Findings of the study include:

· Most of the women interviewed for the book characterized their initial heroin use as an act of defiance and resistance to gender, race and class expectations.

· The view women heroin addicts have of themselves is more varied, heterogeneous and complex than the stereotypical depictions of them found in popular culture. What they say about themselves clashes with the publicized images of women heroin users.

· The image of women heroin users constructed by the media tends to harm the women’s credibility and re-establish traditional definitions of deviance.

· By watching media depictions of female drug addicts, many women learn to individualize their drug problems from the media and clinic discourse and come to believe that their deficient personalities and character flaws predispose them to addiction.

· Women who do seek help for their drug addiction usually find that existing programs are either unavailable or fail to meet the particular needs of women.

The book suggests new ways to understand how women on heroin and methadone struggle to regain a sense of legitimacy and control in their lives. It also examines the ways that many treatment facilities perpetuate some of the myths.

“The many tragic events in these women’s lives and their subsequent drug use must be understood within the larger context of intersecting forms of race, class and gender oppression and the systems of inequity and harm that they create,” said Alicea.

“If we claim to be a society that respects human rights and believes in social justice, we must create drug treatment programs that are effective. As a society, we need to work to dismantle the multiple forms of oppression that women, such as the ones we interviewed, have had to endure.”

Note to editors: Copies of “Surviving Heroin” can be obtained by faxing a request to Andrea Dzavik at University Press Florida, 352/392-1351, Marixsa Alicea can be reached at 312/362-8772.