Ideological Supports to becoming and Remaining a Heroin Addict

Abstract

Examining the life-style of action-seeking youth in the slums provides major clues to causal explanations for the spread of drug use in the slums. The concept of the stand-up cat [youth who has high status according to slum neighborhood ideology of daring and toughness] helps to explain how a large minority of slum youth experiment with heroin both before and after the physical and social consequences of addiction are realized. Once the initial effects of heroin are defined as pleasurable, the movement into a drug-consuming subculture depends on the degree of commitment of the drug user''s former reference group to the stand-up cat ideology.