Drug abuse patterns, personality characteristics, and relationships with sex, race, and sensation seeking.

Abstract

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral SciencesMedical University of South CarolinaInterrelationships among sex, race, drug use patterns, and personality variableswere examined in a sample of 84 chronic users of illicit drugs. Subjects wereadministered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the SensationSeeking Scale, and the Shipley Institute of Living Scale and were interviewedusing the Background Information Questionnaire. Comparisons were made be-tween sex and ethnic subgroups on personality and drug use variables usinganalysis of covariance and chi-square procedures for subjects classified intohigh-, medium-, and low-sensation-seeking groups. Blacks were characterized bylower levels of sensation seeking, less psychopathology, use of fewer drug cat-egories, and later drug use than whites. Use and personality patterns amongwomen differed little from those of men. Levels of sensation seeking were re-lated to specific personality constellations, number of drug categories used, andmotive for first alcohol use.Research on the psychological character-istics of drug abusers h'as developed fromattempts to describe and differentiate addictsfrom representatives of other clinically de-viant categories. More recently, investigatorshave compared drug abuse subgroups (de-fined by race and sex) on personality dimen-sions or drug use patterns. Female and whitedrug abusers have been shown to demonstrategreater psychopathology than males and non-whites (DeLeon, 1974; Olson, 1964), andethnicity was found to be related to choiceof drug type and variety used, particularlyamong men (K'aestner, Rosen, & Appel,1977). Suffet and Brotman (1976) reported