PUTTING DRUG-USE IN CONTEXT - LIFE-LINES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN WHO SMOKE CRACK

The purpose of this exploratory study was to describe a group of Afric an American women who smoke crack. Using aggregate data from 208 inter views with women crack smokers, we randomly selected 25 women's interv iew data to create the 25 life-lines. These life-lines were developed in a similar manner to the time-line analysis described by Fullilove a nd her colleagues (1992); we focused on events that are either extraor dinarily disturbing (e.g., rape, incest, death of a child, etc.), even ts that are usual but often stressful (e.g., birth of a child, death o f a parent, etc.), and on periods of drug use. We chose this method of analysis so as to highlight the context in which many women come to u se crack cocaine. The life-lines provided a retrospective (but time-or dered) perspective and in several ways provided preliminary support fo r a stress-diathesis perspective. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.