Alcohol Use and Abuse: Heavy Drinking among Methadone Clients

Abstract

This paper discusses alcohol use among methadone maintenance clients and narcotics users not in treatment. The data are derived from the Tri-State Ethnographic Project, a study of four methadone maintenance clinics in three states. Data indicate that methadone clients consume more alcohol than comparable age groups in the general population, but not more alcohol than narcotics users not in treatment. For a portion of the treatment population, however, heavy drinking presents significant problems. Sixteen percent of the treatment sample were found to be abusive pattern drinkers; that is, persons who report not only drinking heavily but also spending a great deal of time hanging out on the street, getting high, and consuming many other additional drugs. These abusive pattern drinkers reflect a pattern of polydrug use which began in their early teens and report multiple unsuccessful treatment attempts.