IPA, exploring drug abuse to cope with stress during youth and the effects of that in later life.

Abstract

Adolescents face many different issues and problems during their adolescents and young adulthood such as academic and social demands with stress becoming more prevalent amongst adolescents and can lead to Issues such as; depression, fatigue, lack of appetite and anxiety. Adolescents therefore develop different coping strategies, these strategies can be maladaptive, as some adolescents turn to substance abuse in order to deal with stress. This can lead to problems such as HIV, delinquency and unwanted pregnancies. This paper proposed research to explore issues that result from substance abuse during adolescence, that occur later on in life. The study conducted semi-structured interviews on four participants. These interviews were analysed using the qualitative method of Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The results found that four superordinate themes were identified; stress, substance abuse, family and relationships and recovery. These themes were prevalent in all in the lives of the participants and were either the cause of or the repercussions of substance abuse during adolescents. Overall, this study has found similar findings that stressors at an early age can cause adolescents to turn to substance abuse to cope with the stress.