The Drug Career

Abstract

Earlier researchers have described the process of addiction as a development in three stages: the experimental, the adaptational and the compulsive. The author describes the process of de-addiction in three stages: the ambivalent, the treatment and the emancipatory. The concept of the drug career as a process is considered valuable in the treatment context, in the study of the natural course of drug dependence and in the comparison of outcome results. In this paper the six stages of the addictive and the de-addictive processes as are defined and described from a clinically oriented point of view. Two patient materials, the first collected at an in-patient clinic for drug addicts, the second at a staff-free self-help community for drug addicts are presented and compared. The self-help community seems to represent a selection of a larger proportion of addicts in the treatment stage. Finally a clinical scale to predict severity of addiction is outlined.