Social resource characteristics and adolescent substance abuse relapse

Abstract

Social environment features have been implicated in the addiction relapse process. The present study examined social resource network characteristics of adolescent substance abusers to determine whether the alcohol/drug use, perceived similarity and/or perceived support of individuals in the social resource network was associated with drug use outcome. Perceived similarity to one's social network emerged as an important moderator of whether the social network provides support to remain abstinent or elevates risk for relapse. Increased perceived support predicted continued post‐treatment abstinence when recovering teens perceived their social resource network as similar to themselves. Conversely, post‐treatment relapse was most likely when recovering teens perceived themselves as similar to a social resource network comprised of using and/or abusing individuals.