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Social relationships and abstinence from cocaine in an American treatment sample
Author(s) -
HAVASSY BARBARA E.,
WASSERMAN DAVID A.,
HALL SHARON M.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0965-2140
DOI - 10.1046/j.1360-0443.1995.90569911.x
Subject(s) - abstinence , psychology , social support , psychological intervention , race (biology) , social network (sociolinguistics) , cocaine dependence , cocaine use , clinical psychology , medicine , psychiatry , addiction , developmental psychology , social psychology , political science , botany , social media , law , biology
In an extension of earlier work relating social‐relationship variables to post‐treatment abstinence from abused drugs, 104 cocaine users were studied for 6 months after completing drug treatment. Social‐relationship variables included social integration, perceived support and social‐network cocaine use. The effects of social relationships on cocaine abstinence tended to be conditional on race. Greater social integration predicted abstinence for Caucasian Ss (n = 54), but not African‐Americans (n = 50). Similar results occurred for perceived support. Social network drug‐use data also showed race differences: the absence of current cocaine users and the presence of former users predicted abstinence only for Caucasians. Interpretation of these findings is complicated by the relationship we observed between race and route of cocaine administration, with African‐American Ss far more likely than Caucasians to be crack smokers or injection users as compared to intranasal users. The effects of race could not be disentangled from the effects of route. Future studies of social relationships and cocaine abstinence should focus on identifying social factors that are protective for African‐Americans and for smokers/injectors. Such studies are critical precursors to designing successful social‐support interventions.