Addict Women’s Lived Experience in Tehran: Development of an Explanatory Model

Addiction among women has extra negative damages because of its essential role in family and parenting. The present study aimed to explore the factors effective in women and girls’ tendency to drug use and to develop a theoretical model in this sphere. Grounded theory, along with a qualitative research method was used in this study. The addicted women presenting to Chitgar Women's Addiction Withdrawal Camp in Tehran from 2014 to 2016 constituted the statistical population of this study and 30 women were selected via theoretical sampling. Three major themes, including damaging family (containing five categories of inappropriate parenting, drug use in family, family conflict, disconnection with family, and establishment of destructive relations), vulnerable individual conditions (containing four categories of vulnerable individual characteristics, high mental pressure, self-cure, and establishment of destructive relations), and unsuccessful marriage (containing five categories of unsuccessful marriage, high mental pressure, helplessness feeling, self-cure, and establishment of destructive relations) were recognized as effective factors in tendency to drug abuse. Also, two main types, namely resisting women (consisting of categories of resistance against drug abuse and long-term withdrawals along with slip) and submissive woman (consisting of categories of submission to drug abuse and numerous short-term withdrawals along with consecutive slips) were extracted. Finally, a theoretical model was proposed. According to the findings of this study, it is possible to identify the women and girls vulnerable to drug abuse and set preventive planning for them