Project Publicaitons
Adolescent Relationships and Drug Use
Miller, Alberts, Hecht, Trost, and Krizek's (1999) book Adolescent relationships and drug use describes the communicative and relational features of adolescent drug use. It is written for people who care about adolescents and are concerned about their drug use problems; people like researchers, practitioners, parents, teachers, and others. In writing this book we hope to provide information about drugs, adolescents and their social world-a world filled with peer pressure, emerging and fragile self-identities, need for approval and acceptance, cliques, identification with peers and peer norms and attempts to balance a relationship with parents. Although other scholars have focused on the properties of drugs, peer norms, risk and protective factors, and other aspects of adolescent drug use, the work represented in the book extends this work to include how alcohol and other drug offers and refusals are communicated in the context of adolescent social relationships.
The volume summarizes several studies funded by a series of grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Resisting drugs is treated as a relational and communicative competency as we explore how adolescents maintain and negotiate relationships while successfully refusing drug offers. A particular focus of the book is on adolescent drug-related decisions and strategies to refuse offers of drugs while maintaining a self-identity and friendships.
A model of relational competence and narrative theory is used to guide this research, describing adolescent stories of how they are offered and refuse offers of drugs, how they balance peer pressures, self-image, relational concerns, and the desire to say no in order to find successful refusal strategies. The book also summarizes research findings and explains their implications for relational and communication theory, and for developing drug prevention interventions. The major contributions include the following:
- Placement of the drug offer-resistance episode in a living, relational context.
- The first comprehensive communication and relational approach to drug resistance.
- The first detailed analysis of drug resistance which considers the relationship between offerer and resister, different types of drugs, the language used by adolescents, family and peer group relationships, personality, and situations.
- Arguments provided for a relational and communication competence model of drug resistance.
- Recommendation of a unique relational and communication approach to drug prevention customizing video and live performance to present resistance models created from adolescents' own words.
Why This Book is Important
This book is important because it applies the theories and principles of communication competence to a significant social concern, drug abuse. The application of such theories and principles emphasizes that theories operate in adolescents' daily relational worlds and are not mere research abstractions. Adolescents face relational dilemmas of acceptance by peers, and they need to be relationally and communicatively competent to manage peer relationships in the context of drug issues. While these relational concerns are not exclusive to adolescence, they typify this developmental period and are magnified during this developmental stage of life. By placing the management of drug issues in a relational and developmental framework, the book:- Informs relationship, communication, and psychology researchers by extending their theories.
- Assists drug and health researchers by presenting them with a new way of looking at the topic.
- Enlightens drug practitioners by demonstrating a new approach to prevention, and inform parents by helping them understand their teens.
Models of communication and relational competence have been developed on a limited range of relational and communication experiences. Rarely have relationship researchers studied the competencies necessary to deal with important ife situations such as drug offers. Rejecting offers of drugs can brand one an outsider, particularly among adolescents for whom peer pressure is a very real concern. By applying a competence model to these situations, the book extends our understanding of communication and relational skills.
Research has recognized that drug use is tied to peer pressure and that teaching resistance skills are one of the keys to effective drug prevention. This book is the first to make the connection of peer pressure to the relationships between peers and hence to the large literature on relationships that can help illuminate the processes of peer pressure once that link is made.
Adolescent relationships and drug use describes the social and relational processes of drug resistance and then links intervention techniques to the adolescents' relational world. The authors advocate prevention and intervention from the adolescent perspective as expressed in the adolescents' personal stories of drug resistance. Excerpts from these stories bring the drug resistance process to life and reveal the resistance strategies that teens say they use when refusing drugs while maintaining relationships.
Chapter Outlines
Chapter One: Drug Use in the United States: A Communication Perspective
Chapter Two: Adolescent Relationships and Drug Use: Family and Peer Influences
Chapter Three: The Social Processes of Drug Resistance in a Relational Context
Chapter Four: Metaphor, Culture, and Action: The Symbolic Construction of Adolescent Drug Use
Chapter Five: A Narrative and Relational Approach to Drug Prevention in the Drug Resistance Strategies Project
Chapter Six: Conclusions