Substance abuse background

Because addiction is so often cloaked in secrecy enforced by threat or shame, it is often excluded from accounts of family past. Like suicide, it is frequently omitted from the history that parents have been told in order to preserve that family s, or that family member s, reputation. For this reason, many parents do not know what they need to know. Therefore, exploring with adult siblings and older relatives the possibility of substance abuse or addiction in one s family background can sometimes be enlightening. 

Many victims of dependence have apparently normal backgrounds. Some simply make the mistake of trying a substance in some social situation which supports the pleasurable affects, and the substance s pharmacology merely takes over, after a variable period of misuse and abuse. Other victims may have personalities which lead them to escape life s normal pressures, therefore their need for mood enhancement or alteration of consciousness can be an additional pressure on the need to continue the substance. This may be particularly true as tolerance develops and dose increase is necessary to attain the initial effect. 

Examination of the effects of different types of product was made difficult because, as shown in Table 19, approximately half of the cases had used more than one substance. Thus, although Table 18 shows that 80 of the interviewed cases had used typewriter correction fluids, and that 32 had used glue and 29 had used butane gas, the numbers who had used only these products, and who were matched with a control of the same ethnic background, were 35, 8 and 3, respectively. The numbers who had used products other than typewriter correction fluids were far too small to warrant statistical analysis of the findings and no significant differences were found between those who had abused only typewriter fluids and their controls. 

---