First Involvement With Drugs

Life-Path Interview 10

Purpose: Understand how drugs first entered a person's life, what was happening around them at the time, and what influences shaped what happened afterward.

Approximate ages are fine. The participant may skip any question.

Participant code: ____________________ Date: ____________________

Interviewer: ____________________

□ The participant agrees to have these responses recorded and stored privately for Union support planning. Questions may be skipped. The participant can ask the administrator to review or correct the record, or discuss withdrawal.

1. Before Drugs Entered the Picture

About how old were you when drugs, alcohol, or medications first became something you were aware of?

What was happening in your life around then - home, family, school, friends, work, health, housing, money, or other major events?

Were drugs, alcohol, or prescription medications already around you? Where?

2. First Personal Involvement

What was the first drug, alcohol, or medication you remember personally taking or using?

How old were you, approximately?

How did you get it - prescribed to you, given by a caregiver, someone else's prescription, friend, purchase, found, or another way?

Did you understand what it was at the time?

What did you think it was supposed to do?

Why did you take it?

3. The Experience

What do you remember about the first experience?

What did you like about it, if anything?

What did you dislike about it?

Did anything surprise you?

Did you feel you had made the decision yourself?

4. What Happened Next?

Was that experience one time, occasional, quickly regular, followed by a long stop, or did it lead to something else?

What was the next important change in your involvement with drugs?

5. Looking Back

When you look back now, what do you think was really happening at that point in your life?

Was there something you needed that you were not getting?

What might have helped at that time?

Was there a moment where your relationship with drugs changed from something you did into something that affected how you lived?

6. Participant's Own Interpretation

Finish: "Drugs first became part of my life because..."

Finish: "If someone had understood ________ at the time, things might have gone differently."

Interviewer Notes

Approximate age of first exposure: ____________________________________________

Approximate age of first personal use: ____________________________________________

First context: ____________________________________________

Major turning points: ____________________________________________

Protective influences: ____________________________________________

Missing supports: ____________________________________________

Do not record names of suppliers, other users, or specific offences unless there is a clear and necessary reason to do so.