The substance of youth - the place of drugs in young people's lives today

By Perri 6, Ben Jupp, Helen Perry and Kristen Lasky, November 1997

5. Risk, excitement and leisure activities

We investigated whether young people who use drugs seek risk and excitement to a greater extent than young non-users.[38] Exploring this hypothesis has important implications for the design of youth services and leisure activities, as well as for finding the best ways to communicate information about drugs to young people.

Seeking excitement
Drug use and leisure pursuits tend to be related. A recent survey of schoolchildren found that 67 per cent of 15- and 16-year-old boys who had been to a disco or party in the previous week had experimented with cannabis at some point in their lives. Among those who had not been to a party in the last six months, only 17 per cent had ever taken drugs.[39] The specific leisure activity chosen for excitement may therefore affect the extent to which drugs are used, but our research suggests that many non-drug users have similar interest in excitement as their drug-taking peers.

Many recreational users we interviewed rejected the idea that they were particularly excitement-seeking. For instance, in Wythenshawe, respondents who were over 18 years old commented that conscious excitement-seeking was something they would do when they were aged 13 or so, but not now. When recreational users did discuss a desire for excitement, the role of drugs seemed bound up with social occasions as a whole, not just the actual stimulant of the drug.

The attitudes of John (18, recreational user) are illustrative of recreational users who see drug use primarily as enhancing excitement in the context of a social activity rather than as excitement for its own sake.

John is an apprentice joiner from South Yorkshire. He has never taken up smoking cigarettes, but started drinking when he was 13, smoking cannabis when he was 14, and taking ecstasy when he was 17. John now takes three ecstasy tablets every weekend and spends Ł10 to Ł15 a week on cannabis. He said he has tried speed, but doesn't use it now:

I like my sleep too much and I like eating. [Speed] stuffs your appetite.

John tried heroin and cocaine each once, about three months ago, but said he "found them a bit too intense and felt too sleepy".

John's preferred drug is ecstasy, which he says he takes "because it adds to the music, and if you [just] drink you get drowsy". He says he takes ecstasy more for excitement or exhileration than oblivion or escape. For John's group of friends, part of the excitement was the whole process of going out - getting the coach to all-night raves in Scarborough, dancing the night away, and being with thousands of other people. Drugs are just one part of that. But John's biggest worry is for his health:

You don't know about 'E'. You do get a bit worried about what will happen when you're older.

When asked if his drug taking would change if he could pursue his ideal leisure activity, he said he would prefer to "go to the gym and sauna and play squash". However, he said:

Now [if I had money] I'd just go on to cocaine...But if I had the money I wouldn't have been on the street in the first place. More youth clubs and stuff are needed. The police just say "move, move, move".

The sport bug
Contrary to the stereotype that non-users are not particularly interested in excitement, our research found a similar interest amongst non-users in finding excitement in one's leisure time, particularly through sports.

Joanna (19, non-user) is a student from Leeds. When asked what she enjoys, she said:

My friends and sports - swimming, the gym, horse-riding, walking, cycling. I like any sport - running, running with friends. It's a way of spending time with other people, you can get a high from it and it makes you feel good - physically.

Mike (20, non-user) is a second-year geology student from Kingston. He said:

I enjoy sport - basketball, squash, tae kwon do and snow boarding. I like the rush from snow-boarding. SPort's fun. It beats sitting around at home. I get bored easily - I'm an impatient person and I don't like sitting around. Sport breaks up everyday life.

Mike said:

I tried speed and cannabis, and I didn't really like it. I never really wanted to try 'E'. There's a lot of dodgy stuff around - an acquaintance of mine ended up in hospital. They took too much - stupid. I can't be bothered. I like being in control, I don't fancy being totally out there.

Drug use to fill time
For young people from poorer areas with few leisure activities, particularly those who have left school and so lost access to any facilities provided there, drug taking may not be part of a combination of exciting leisure activities. Instead, drug taking can become extremely important in itself. And for those without work, qualifications or the prospect of obtaining either, drugs may fill a substantial occupational gap.

Jeff (22, problem user) illustrates this. He is unemployed and from Wythenshawe. He said that his average day is:

get up, withdraw [from last night's drugs], take the kids to school, do anything to raise some money, score, have another dig, scotre again.

When asked what he enjoys, Jeff said:

Heroin. It's just brilliant, warm. It makes you feel nice. It stops the pain.

Jeff said he was in care when he was 8 and began using solvents in a children's home:

just for oblivion. I started drinking at [aged] 11 or so. I thought it was top to get drunk. Since then I've never shed the taste.

But he doesn't drink now. Jeff started smoking cigarettes and cannabis when he was 11, and took magic mushrooms and LSD when he was 12 or 13. He said he stopped after:

three years of madness, and then really got into speed. I used to be addicted and used to inject. But when I started getting into heroin at 15 or 16 I stopped [using speed].

It was some time before Jeff started injecting heroin, but he now injects five times a day and has been taking crack four times a week for the past five years. He is also on 60ml methadone a day which he had just started using again a week before, following a three-month jail sentence. Jeff says he uses drugs "just for the physical sensation".

'Negative' risks of drug taking
Our research suggests that, despite expressing somewhat greater willingness to take some risks, both problem users and recreational users had personal concerns about drug taking, pre-eminent amongst which were health risks. Twenty-two of 34 recreational users ranked health risks first or second in a list of ten possible concerns. Problem and recreational users were also more worried about their health in general than were non-users: 7 of 30 non-users, 14 of 34 recreational users and 22 of 37 problem users said they worried about their health "a lot" or "to some extent", in response to a question asked during the individual interview before drug taking was discussed (non-users differed significantly from problem users using a 95 per cent confidence level).

For recreational users, the most-cited categories of serious concern were their "family's reaction", "the possibility of being arrested" and the "effects on [their] ability to work". Cost considerations were the next greatest concern. friends' reactions were not mentioned by any recreational user as one of their top two concerns, again indicating the widespread acceptance of drug taking amongst young people.

Conclusion
Many drug users are no more driven to seek excitement than their non-drug-using peers. Where drugs are used for excitement, it is often in combination with other activities as part of a social event. However, the research did find that in areas where labour, leisure and educational facilities were lacking (or under-used), young people are more likely to use drugs to fill time than as an integrated part of leisure activities.

A substantial proportion of non-users derived excitement from sport. However, to think of a direct trade-off between non-drug-taking leisure activities and drug taking may be misleading. Drug use has complemented an increasing range of leisure activities over the last twenty years - for instance, dancing - and may be associated with other leisure activities in the future.

More users than non-users worried "a great deal" about their health, usually with reference to their drug taking: like smoking, drug use continues despite health concerns. As work in other health promotion fields shows, changing behaviour often requires more than just creating an awareness of risks. Changing the cultural acceptability of taking such risks, and helping people to develop the psychological strategies necessary to reduce consumption may be vital supplements.[40]