Remission from Substance Dependence in U.S. Whites, African Americans, and Latinos

Abstract

The authors investigated remission from any type of substance dependence in Latinos, African Americans, and Whites using the 2001–2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a national sample of community adults. Analyses focused on the 4,520 participants who indicated prior-to-last-year dependence on either alcohol or drugs. Outcome was categorized as current substance dependence or abuse, current use, or abstinence. Whites reported greater likelihood of substance dependence, and African Americans and Latinos were just as likely to remit as Whites once social support and age are controlled. The outcome variable “time to remission” produced a similar pattern of results.

KEYWORDS:

• ethnicity
• race
• recovery
• remission

Research for this project was supported, in part, by an Interdisciplinary Research Grant at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa and by the Iowa Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Evaluation. Both of these agencies are units of the University of Iowa. The authors report no competing interests.

Notes

Logistic Regression F(2, 64) = 48.32, p < .0001.

^aWald t = 5.24, df = 64, p < .0001, compared to Whites.

^bWald t = 9.61, df = 64, p < .0001, compared to Whites.

**p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001, compared to the Abstinent group.

^aF tests are from logistic regression for binary variables and one-way ANOVA for means.

The df are 2, 60 for all tests except for remission age, remission time, and clean time where the df are 1, 58.

NA = not applicable.

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 in individual contrasts with Whites.

^adf for F-tests are 2, 64.

Pearson Association: F = 9.186, df = 3.68, 220.58, p < .0001.