STUDENTS ON HEROIN

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Abstract
This is a study of the psychodynamics of heroin abuse among students. Some took heroin as part of a pattern of mixed drug abuse; others were frankly addicted. Twenty students were studied in detail using psychoanalytic interviewing techniques emphasizing free associations, dreams, and fantasies. They were seen as often as necessary to obtain an adequate psychodynamic picture. Short term therapy was administered when possible. Psychological tests (WAIS, Rorschach, TAT, Sentence Completion, Figure Drawing, Word Association) were performed and used as an independent check on the clinical findings. The students were white and black males from affluent, middle-class, and ghetto backgrounds; they represented all major religious denominations, and ranged in age from high school seniors to graduate students. Three cases which illustrate the psychodynamics of heroin abuse are presented in detail. The passivity and surface blandness of these students were cloaks for destructive and self-destructive impulses. These students had all suffered unusual pain in their early relationships with their mothers which made it virtually impossible for them to form close relationships with young women. Heroin use was bound up in their attempt to deal with anxiety engendered by intimacy. It helped them keep their distance emotionally. Heroin enabled them to overcome potency anxieties by insuring that their pleasure was from the drug and not from the sexual experience. It conferred on these students the illusion of an invulnerability which they sought to protect them against the abrasions of relationships which they saw as inherently painful.

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