“El Lado Oscuro”: “The Dark Side” of Social Capital in Mexican American Heroin Using Men

Abstract

This article describes social capital in a cohort of 227 Mexican American men who are long-term injection heroin users. Social capital scores for current and former users were similar, suggesting equal absolute values of capital, but associated with illicit activities in current users and with cessation efforts in former users. Stable drug-using relationships provided high negative capital, whereas conventional relationships provided positive capital. Thus, social capital functions dichotomously in positive and negative contextualized roles. This study provides an alternative understanding of the dynamic interactions between individuals, environment, and drug abuse and can inform prevention and treatment interventions for an important demographic group.

KEYWORDS:

• illicit drugs
• social capital
• heroin
• Mexican American
• health
• substance use

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded University of Houston Drug Abuse Research Development Program (5R24DA019798-05; P. Bordnick, PI/L. Torres, Co-Investigator and Project Director, Health Consequences of Long-Term Heroin Use in Aging Mexican-American Men Project).

Notes

¹ Barrios are inner city Hispanic neighborhoods typically of lower socioeconomic status, with high levels of poverty and social strife.

²CHIVA is slang for heroin in Mexican-American Spanish.

GED = general educational development; MMTP = methadone maintenance treatment programs; SD = standard deviation.

MMPT = methadone maintenance treatment programs; SD = standard deviation; † = trending towards significance.

^a Current; ^b Former; ^c MMTP; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.