Women who use cocaine too much: smoking crack vs. snorting cocaine

Monique (an African-American 19-year-old) and Becky (a white 21-year-old) were interviewed as part of a NIDA-funded study of women and cocaine. Although they were not necessarily typical, they do illustrate some of the differences among women who use cocaine. Despite the fact that they were close in age and both used cocaine, their scenarios and outcomes were very different, as one was a white middle-class woman and the other was an underclass woman of Color. The argument presented in this article is that it is not simply substance use that frames the experiences of women who use cocaine too much, but the social class mediated by gender and race. Through these life histories, the lives of these women are examined prior to cocaine use. Then the differential processes of initiation into and continuation of cocaine are described and analyzed, followed by a discussion of their lives after cocaine use.