,

TYPES OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION IN DRUG-USING AND RECOVERY CAREERS*

TAMMY L. ANDERSON
Central Michigan University

SOCIOLOGICAL FOCUS
Vol. 26 No. 2 May 1993

The literature about types of identity transformation is relatively scant compared to that documenting the processes leading to identity change. Using an interactionist perspective, this study of currently sober drug addicts explores what types of transformations are experienced during "drugusing" and "recovery" careers. Intensive interviews were conducted during the Summer and Fall of 1990 with a purposive sample of drug addicts (n=30) active in 12-Step programs of Narcotics Anonymous (NA.) and Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Findings reveal a new type of identity transformation (i.e., temporary conversion) resulting from drug euphoria and also uncover other extant types of transformation (i.e., alteration and conversion) that were unexpected with this pool of respondents active in the NA and A.A. Identity Transformation Organizations. Implications for interactionist and drug addiction research are discussed.

IN TRO DUCT ION

nteractionists have traditionally maintained that identity transformation is an important

outcome of exiting deviant careers (Becker 1963; Hughes 1971; Glaser and Strauss 1971; Goffman 1961). Researchers exploring identity transformation have advanced our understanding of deviant career structure (i.e., contingencies) and movement processes, offering various models of career movement and identity change with such socially defined deviant groups as drug addicts (Ray 1968; Biernacki 1986; Becker 1963; Pearson 1987), alcoholics (Denzin 1987; Brown 1991), criminals (Shover 1983; Miesenhelder 1982) or prison inmates (Schmid and Jones 1991), the mentally impaired (Goffman 1961), and the obese (Dehger and Hughes 1991). Fewer efforts (Travisano 1970; Bankston, Forsyth and Floyd 1981; Glanz and Harrison 1978) have, however, addressed the types of transformation that individuals (including drug addicts) are likely to experience. For instance, recent work with drug users or addicts (Waldorf 1983; Waldorf, Hawkins and Wacker 1983; Waldorf, Reinarman and Murphy 1991) has

'Please direct all correspondence to the author at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859. The author thanks the 30 individuals who participated in this study and Bernard Meltzer, Norman Denzin, Larry Reynolds, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments during the preparation of this manuscript. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 89th Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Pittsburgh, PA in 1992.

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documented the contingencies leading to the transformation of social identities following the movement out of opiate addiction, but it has not discussed the types of identity transformation that follow. Biernacki's (1986) work with heroin addicts is an exception. His investigation of the "spontaneous" recovery of heroin addicts revealed three types of identity change that followed the movement out of a "using career": emergence (creating a new identity), reverting (reassuming an unspoiled identity), and revising (augmenting an unspoiled identity). These more clearly resemble the "slight" identity transformations that Travisano (1970) called "alternations" or what Bankston et al. (1981) called "alterations" 1 rather than the dramatic identity changes that they called "conversions" (see below). In fact, research has failed to document any identity "conversions" of drug addicts (Waldorf et al. 1983), although it has done so with alcoholics (Denzin 1987; Greil and Rudy 1984). Furthermore, like many other studies of identity change with socially defined deviants, these efforts did not explore any types of identity transformation experienced within a respective career, only those following career shifts. The objectives of this investigation are to explore the types of identity transformations that addicts experience during "using careers" (deviance) and following the passage into "recovery careers" (non-deviance). This investigation seeks to inform us about the time, degree, likelihood and constitution of identity changes (Bankston et al. 1981; Glanz and Harrison 1978; Greil and Rudy 1984) that addicts experience while located in and resituated to different social contexts. It also attempts to inform us about the possible etiological role that identity change (Anderson 1994) plays in drug addiction and the identity work and behavioral change that addicts may have to engage in to recover from destructive "using careers," offering insight into combatting substance abuse. VARIETIES OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION Early work by Goffman (1961; 1963), Glaser and Strauss (1971), and Hughes (1971) viewed identity transformation as an outcome of career movement and/or status passages. This work spawned the tremendous literature on career contingencies or the processes leading to identity change. Today, many interactionists concur that identity change follows career shifts or status passages. Career shifts often result in identity transformations because they commonly feature moving from one social context to another (Travisano 1970), including moving from a "normal" social context to a "deviant" social context (Lofland and Stark 1965). The opposite, however, does not always follow. Specifically, movement between social contexts does not always require career shifts. For instance researchers (Becker 1963; Lindesmith 1947; Ray 1968; Biernacki 1986; Pearson 1987; Waldorf et al. 1991; Anderson 1991) have commonly studied the careers of drug addicts (pre-drug use, drug use and recovery) and have, following work by Goffman (1961) and Hughes (1971), discussed the identity transformations that result from the movement from one career to another. However, an individual can be situated and re-situated to several different social contexts without experiencing a career shift. For example, the drug addict can, within a "using career," be located in a non-deviant social context (on the job) that has one identity script (as evidenced in its universe of discourse, set of members and expectations for behavior) and later be re-situated to a different social context (getting high with friends) that has a totally different identity

TYPES OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION IN DRUG-USING AND RECOVERY CAREERS

script. Or, these social contexts can overlap, e.g., the upstanding employee who obtains drugs and gets high while on the job. Therefore, since identities are situated action that locate an individual within a given social context (Stone 1962) and change throughout the life course as individuals move from one social context to another (Travisano 1970), it likely follows that re-location to a new social context could result in identity transformations without career shifts. More recent investigations of the various types of identity transformation have uncovered support for this premise. Today, interactionists have uncovered several types of identity change. One type consists of slight changes (Bankston et al. 1981; Glanz and Harrison 1978), which can occur within a respective career and do not require career movement or status passages. For instance, Travisano (1970) distinguished between "alternations" and "conversions." "Alternations" are transitions between logically contradictory meaning systems within the same discourse, that could occur with or without career movement. "Conversions," as another type, are more dramatic and usually follow noticeable career shifts. They include new meaning systems and discourses, a change in allegiance to authorities and a negation of former identities. Based on Travisano's work (1970), Glanz and Harrison (1978) and Bankston et al. (1981) added to or refined existing types of transformation. For instance, Glanz and Harrison (1978) added "indirect" and "direct" identity consolidation, where a third identity, either unintentionally or intentionally, is assumed by an individual which is compatible with two pre-existing identities and features a synthesis of elements from their respective universes of discourse. Glanz and Harrison (1978) also concurred that slight transformations could occur within a respective career. Later, Bankston et al. (1981) refined Travisano's "conversion," claiming that dimensions of time and degree distinguished it from other transformation types. They state "radical conversion involves both a relatively sudden change which is concomitantly extensive in degree" (Bankston et al. p. 282) They further point out that "radical conversions" account for maintained change and are not institutionally structured. "Radical conversion," they argued, could not occur within a respective career. Career movement or status passage was necessary. Bankston et al. (1981) argue that "alterations" are commonly experienced during social movements, while "radical conversions" often follow from cult membership (Lofland and Stark 1965; Snow and Machalek 1984; Snow and Phillips 1980) or addiction or alcoholism (Bankston et al. 1981). In fact, Rudy and Greil (1980; 1981) and Greil and Rudy (1984) have argued that alcoholics active in A.A. often experience "radical conversions" because A.A. and other self-help groups qualify as Identity Transformation Organizations (i.e., ITOs); as contexts that promote identity conversion through the re-construction of personal biographies. We might, therefore, expect these recovering addict respondents from 12-Step programs to report "radical conversions" following the movement out of an active "using career" to a "recovery career" and also expect them to report that this type of dramatic identity change is a necessary part of successfully terminating their careers with drugs and alcohol. Second, although the literature suggests that addict respondents could report gradual or incremental identity change of the "alteration" type within a respective career, we do not expect the respondents to report

any

type of identity change during their former "using

careers," since their membership in an ITO encour-

ages the negation of previous identities during drug use (Greil and Rudy 1984) and not a differential re-construction of them. In other words, no previous work indicates that individuals situated in an identity conversion context or an ITO will differentially reconstruct previous identities during the same interview situation. Subsequently, we do not expect respondents to report "radical conversions" or "alterations" within a respective career, i.e., without career movement or status passages. Therefore, any reported types of identity transformation during drug "using careers" would advance the literature.
METHODS

In-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted with respondents using an interview schedule consisting of three parts: a drug history section, substantive questions related to identity (asked about before and during drug use and during recovery) and basic demographics. Many have recommended this method for obtaining identityrelated information with deviants because it gives respondents the opportunity to provide authentic and comprehensive accounts and to invoke their respective vocabularies of motives (Goffman 1959; 1961; 1963; Becker 1963; Glaser and Strauss 1971; Denzin 1974; Klapp 1969; Lofland 1978; and Weigert 1983). Thirty respondents were interviewed on one occasion, during the Summer and Fall of 1990, for approximately two hours each. All respondents were active in the ITOs called Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.) (Greil and Rudy 1984) in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Miles and Huberman's (1984) 12 tactics of generating theory from data, a derivative of the classic grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), were used to generate the findings and subsequent theoretical statements. The first five of these tactics (counting, noting patterns and themes, seeing plausibility, clustering and marking metaphors) are ways to integrate into theoretical concepts the diverse pieces of information that have emerged from the responses. Like other inductive techniques, such as analytic induction (see Glaser and Strauss 1967), this strategy requires modification of an emerging concept with each new case. Resultant concepts are said to be "grounded" in all responses and not merely reflective of a few responses chosen to represent the entire pool. Therefore, each of the concepts described below emerged from the analysis of all 30 interviews. The next four tactics (subsuming particulars into the general, factoring, noting relations between variables and finding intervening variables) focus on uncovering and verifying the relationships between the newly generated concepts. Finally, the last two tactics (building a logical chain of evidence and making conceptual or theoretical coherence) piece together the concepts and the relationships among them into an overall theoretical framework (Miles and Huberman 1984). The selection of respondents was purposive and based on characteristics (sex, age, and length of sobriety) that previous research deemed theoretically important (Miles and Huberman 1984; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990; Lindesmith 1947; 1968; Gans 1962; Becker 1963; Ray 1968; Turner 1978; Sutker, Patsiokas and Allain 1981; Marsh and Shevell 1983; Snow and Anderson 1987; Metzger 1988). This method also ensured the wide range of experience and diversity in social networks that Gans (1962) has argued is important for psychological and social

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experiences of the individual and which would more fully capture the vocabularies of motives of using and recovering addicts. The final pool of respondents consisted of varied social networks in terms of sex, age and length of sobriety or an equal number of males and females (15); nearly equal numbers of respondents with less than a year (9), between one and five years (11) and more than five years of sobriety (10); and age ranges of 21-29 (8), 30-39 (9), 40-49 (8), and over 50 years (5).2 The initial contact was a 28-year-old female with four months of sobriety at the time of the interview and who was a friend of the author. This respondent was a college-educated professional living in Northwest Washington, DC. As Gans (1962) would have predicted, she provided names of other recovering drug addicts who were similar to her and who made up her network in recovery; i.e., they were female, in their late 20's, with less than a year of sobriety, residing in Northwest Washington, DC and were predominantly professionals. The result is a pool of respondents considered middle to upper class by traditional indicators of socio-economic status (income, education, and occupation). Although the pool of respondents represents diversity in social networks and promises a more comprehensive vocabulary of motives about identities in "using" and "recovery careers," it is also grounded in an ideology (12-Step programs) that will influence subsequent findings. Denzin (1987) and Brown (1991) remind us that 12-Step programs are mechanisms of socialization or identity transformation organizations (Greil and Rudy 1984) that feature retrospective interpretations of past selves. The findings reported below are, therefore, grounded in a particular ideology that is realized in individual cases. This ideology, according to-Kierkegaard (1941a; 1941b), is premised on the belief that pursuing a hedonistic life will lead to self-destruction and that ethical or religious change, which involves the redefinition of the self, must occur in order to maintain life. Therefore, these respondents will be engaged in a process of redefining themselves according to the ITO ideology (see Greil and Rudy 1984). Findings reported here must be interpreted in this light.
TABLE 1 BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS Variable GENDER Male Female AGE 21-29 30-39 40-49 50+ SOBRIETY LENGTH Up to 1 year 1 to 5 years More than 5 years RACE White Black Mixed 23 5 2 77 17 7 8 9 8 5 27 30 27 17 Number Percent(N--30)

15 15

50 50

9 11 10

30 37 33

TABLE 1 (continued) BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS

Variable ETHNICITY Irish Afro-American German Scottish/English Greek Polish Unknown EMPLOYMENT STATUS Employed Unemployed Professional Non-Professional ANNUAL INCOME < $20,000 $20,000 - 29,000 $30,000 - 39,000 $40,000+ Average Annual Income EDUCATIONAL STATUS (Highest Degree) HS Diploma/GED Undergraduate Degree Graduate Degree Other None Average # Years Completed =

Number

Percent (N=30)

8 6 7 4 2 1 1 1

27 20 13 7 3 3 3

30 0 15 15

100 0 50 50

8 10 6 6 $31,666

27 33 20 20

18 8 1 1 2 13.7

60 27 3 3 7

MARITAL STATUS Single Married Previous Marriages? Yes No CURRENT RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION None Yes Protestant Catholic

23 7

77 23

11 19

37 63

21 9 3 4

70 30 10 13

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TYPES OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION WITHIN DRUG-USING CAREERS The qualitative analysis uncovered two unexpected types of identity transformations during respondents' drug "using careers;" temporary conversions and alterations. These findings not only introduce a new transformation concept (temporary conversion) to the identity change literature, they more importantly indicate that individuals located in ITOs (e.g., N.A. and A.A.) can, on one occasion, distinguish different types of identity change (alteration and temporary conversion) when re-constructing personal biography in a previous social context. As such, these findings also contribute to our understanding of both the etiology of drug addiction and the structures of addict careers by identifying how drug euphorias and lifestyles affected these types of transformation.
TEMPORARY CONVERSIONS

When describing themselves during their "using careers" and the role that drugs played in their lives at that time, respondents reported a type of transformation, i.e., "temporary conversion," that is currently not found in the interactionist or drug addiction literature. Respondents' description of this transformation type resembled Bankston et al.'s (1981) concept of "radical conversion" in terms of time and degree (changes were both sudden and extensive), but instead of accounting for maintained change, these transformations were temporary, i.e., they lasted as long as the respondents' drug euphoria or using episode. In other words, drug euphorias caused "temporary identity conversions." These "temporary conversions" featured, as Travisano (1970) claimed, negations of existing identities and reconstructions of new identities with drugs to replace existing undesirable identities. Respondents reported being satisfied with the identities they achieved during euphoria (while "high") and dissatisfied with identities outside of euphoria. A conversation between the interviewer and a 26year-old female with seven years of sobriety illustrates this type of transformation.
R: There was a time when I was really high and then there was a time of terrible guilt or waking up the next day, especially Saturday morning, and feeling a great deal of remorse. I wasn't that same person when I woke up. I was a lonely orphan again. It was a dual life. Dual life?

R: I felt like a different type of woman at night, and in the morning I felt lower than low. I: What

kind of woman did you feel like at night? R: Invincible, very sexy, had my act together, pretty, very pretty, and I thought that I had my choice of men. Very full of self, very selfish kind of person. And in the morning....

R: Totally bored. And I couldn't face myself. I could not look at myself in the mirror. Did you want

to be someone else? R: Yeah, I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be the girl that I wa s t he n i ght b e fo re . I wanted to keep that going as long as I could.

SOCIOLOGIC AL FOCUS

A 36-year-old male with two and a half years of sobriety provided another example:
I wa s ba si ca ll y a goo d pe rs on, b ut I w as l i ke th is D r. J e kyl l an d Mr. Hy de kind of a thi n g. I wa s a good person, but I could flip on you and become this cold, don't give a hoot about you, except if you got some drugs, to a very caring person who couldn't hurt a fly, to I'll blow your fuckin' head off. That's what drugs did to me, for me.

A 31-year-old female with three and a half years of sobriety added:

I could look at my friends straight in the face and tell them all of these wonderful things and my family that I could co me ho me and visit and I had t his wonderful fast lifestyle goin g up in NY and that 's t he o nl y si de tha t th ey he ar d ab ou t of course. And nobody knew how insecure, how frightened and screwed up I really was. I mean I was like living these two lives. I mean like drug addict, street person by night and wee kend and famous art director durin g the day. I felt like I was li vin g a dou ble life. Part of me was proud of what I was doing out on the street. Part of me wanted the people at work and the people who knew the other side of me to kno w h ow da n ger ou s I wa s a nd h o w sl ic k I was. And how I knew that I could go out at thr ee o'clo c k in the mornin g and wal k the most dan ger ou s s tr ee ts an d n ot get hu rt.

Earlier, Becker (1963) found that drug euphorias and drug lifestyles were necessary contingencies that accompanied the movement into a deviant career (using to addictive career) and the subsequent identity transformations of marijuana users. However, he did not discuss the possibility that such transformations could occur within a respective career, following the re-location into a different social context (e.g., one featuring drug euphoria). These respondents reported that drug euphorias accounted for a quick, temporary and satisfying identity change within their "using careers." This finding indicates that career movement is not a necessary contingency for the "temporary identity conversions" of using addicts and that drug euphorias relocate individuals to a different social context (a socially constructed altered state that usually contains others similarly situated) characterized by a new meaning system and discourse, a change in allegiance to authorities and a negation of former identities. The inevitable dysphoria that followed euphoria for these respondents, then, relocated them back to their "regular" social context, which was characterized by an undesirable identity. Drug euphorias, then, deliver much more than personal pleasure from an altered state. They help the addict create a new version of the self that is much more desirable than the old.
ALTERNATIONS

The second transformation type to emerge during respondents' "using careers" resembles Travisano's (1970) "alternations" in identities. Respondents also reported gradual changes in identities during their respective "drug-using careers" which, therefore, substantiates the claims of Bankston et al. (1981), Travisano (1970) and Glanz and Harrison's (1978) that slight identity changes are possible without career movement or status passage. These transformations were not characterized by a new meaning system or discourse that contradicted those reported by respondents during the beginning of their "using careers." Most respondents reported gradual changes in identities that featured progressive decline. They reported changing in an increasingly negative fashion during their using careers. Again, respondents primarily attributed these gradual changes to their drug use, i.e., that continual drug use resulted in an

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identity "alternation" by the end of their "using career." The following quotes illustrate this type of change. A sixty-three-year old male with 16 years of sobriety stated:
R: I had wished that I could be ordinary. I used to say that after years and years of use. I'm sitting in the park, see, and I'm beat. You know what I mean? I'm down. I done died twice by this time and a lot of other stuff. Know what I mean? And wearing second world war clothes and I used to see people get on the bus with their lunch bags and wish I could do that. Just go to work, pay rent and pay bills and be ordinary. I knew that I was a slave. I was caught into something that I didn't know what it was and I didn't know how to get out of it.

The following exchange with a 25-year-old female with six years of sobriety also illustrates the alternation pattern.
R: I was pitiful. I felt sorry for myself at that stage in my life. The times I think are in college ... I was free to use drugs any time any day I wanted to. I thought that I was a whole lot of things that I just really wasn't. I got stoned on a regular basis. First, I just drank and smoked pot and got in trouble in school and the fondest memories I have are just of smoking drugs. I: Any other fond memories after that point? R: No. I was gross. I just got progressively worse. My freshman year in college ... I mean I was just a waste. I started out with all this pain, right, and I was constantly putting myself in situations where I'd get more of the same.

A 55-year-old female with sixteen years of sobriety added:

In the beginning, I thought that it all was just fantastic and that these cool people allowed me to be part of it. It was like being taken to the best restaurants and going to night spots. It was the life as I wanted it. But me, the person who really didn't have a whole hell of a lot of character, who did not have a whole lot of ambition, who didn't feel a whole lot about herself if you want to call it self-esteem, saw the bottom fall out real quick. And I went down hill ... I was getting to the point where, shit, I just want to go to sleep and stay asleep. I don't know whether I thought about dying or not. I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.

This finding is significant for several reasons. First, this "alternation" pattern is, again, a contribution to the drug addiction literature that has failed to document any type of identity change within a respective career (using or recovery) for addicts. More importantly, however, it uncovers a possible relationship between types of transformation, participation in ITOs and retrospective re-constructions of reality. As indicated earlier, it is well known that ITOs commonly promote "identity conversions" (Greil and Rudy 1984; Snow and Machalek 1984) and that membership or participation in an ITO features a retrospective re-construction of personal biography (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Denzin 1987; Greil and Rudy 1984), i.e., a re-definition of a past identity that was located in a different social context, to bring it in line with the present social context in which the individual is located. Given this background, we would expect these 12 Step (an ITO) respondents to report no identity transformations during their "using careers" and instead report "identity conversions" only following the movement out of the "using career" and into the ITO. However, these respondents not only reported

identity change during a respective career, they reported two very different types of transformations, including moderate (alternations) and dramatic (conversions) kinds, without career shift and or membership or participation in an ITO. These two patterns of
transformation, therefore, may alert us to address further differential re-constructions of past biography at one or more points in time. It also raises interest in the relation-

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SOCIOLOGICAL FOCUS

ship among types of identity transformation, or in investigating what Bankston et al. (1981) called the identity change continuum, where one type of change ("radical conversion") may accelerate the process of another type of change ("alteration"). TYPES OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION IN RECOVERY CAREERS
CONVERSIONS

As anticipated, respondents reported a second identity conversion during the movement out of deviance, i.e., from "drug-using" to "recovery careers," and into their respective ITO (12-Step program). These identity transformations are defined as "conversions" because they featured a negation of past identities (those during "using careers"). Most respondents gave negative descriptions of themselves while using drugs or even claimed that their identities during "using careers" were complete fabrications, i.e., not who they really were, which is further evidence of Travisano's (1970) notions of "conversions." A 63-year-old male with 17 years of sobriety described his drug-using identity as "not himself." He states:
When you're out there [using drugs], there's certain lines you got to remember. There's a script you've got to read. You got to act a certain way and walk a certain way and do a certain thing. You know, like instead of a guy saying "Hey `" and doing what, you got to turn your whole self around so you can be cool. I'd rather be myself.

A 26-year-old female with four months of sobriety added:

I've been to points where I've lost homes. I've been to points where I've done 15 months in jail. I've done a lot of different things where I thought this [using drugs] was over. I thought that this is how it's going to be, but it never really was. Because I had no other idea that there was another way for me. I mean that's the person I was. I created this person that focused on drugs, in that lifestyle and criminal activity. But once I figured out there was another person in me and that there was good in me, and that I only did these things because I didn't allow the good to come out, then the fun stopped. I figured out that I was not really that person that I tried to create with drugs and alcohol.

These "conversions" were further evidenced by the use of the ITOs' discourse to reconstruct the past and bring it in line with the present. For example, a 41-year-old male with nine years of sobriety, stated:
Well, I think that all of my life I have been a sensitive and talented person. The program has allowed me to be human and to have self-acceptance. I have greater self-acceptance and compassion for other people. I used to rely on violence. I used to be incapable of crying and now I can cry. I used to be incapable of intimacy and now I can be intimate. Another profound change, which occurred after my fragmented personality had coalesced, is my feeling that I belong to something, and before I never felt part of anything other than some nebulous other world that was full of outcasts and criminals. When I came to the program, I felt for the first time in my life a sense of real community. That this was a place that I unquestionably belonged to where I could be accepted exactly how I was, not be brought forward for what I had done, and to be loved. And that was the key for me. Now I think I'm an average-type person.

Unlike the previous type of conversion reported above, these "conversions" featured maintained change or the respondents' attempt at maintained change (Bankston et al. 1981). This pattern was anticipated since interactionists (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Denzin 1992) have claimed that individuals negatively re-construct their previ-

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ous identities after being re-situated to a new social context with a vastly different ideology (discourse), meaning system and set of actors. DISCUSSION Based on extant interactionist and drug addiction literature, respondents were expected to report either no identity transformations within a respective career or, at most, "alternations." They were also expected to report "conversions" of identities when moving from "drug-using careers" to "recovery careers," especially when their new career (recovery) featured a change in informing aspects, allegiance to authorities, and a new discourse, which is characteristic of ITOs like N.A. and A.A. (Peyrot 1985; Katz 1981; Denzin 1987). The two types of identity transformations reported during the "using career," "alternations" and "temporary" conversions, run counter to interactionist and drug addiction literature claims, while the reported identity "conversions" resulting from the movement out of active drug addiction substantiate the same literatures. These findings may indicate the importance of further investigating the role of changing social contexts and even social structure, rather than career shifts, in defining and transforming identities and in altering the identity change continuum (Bankston et al. 1981), especially with socially defined deviants such as drug addicts. Analyzing social contexts would require a more structural approach than that commonly found in the interactionist or drug addiction literature (Reynolds 1993; Anderson 1993; 1994). Such an approach would likely increase our understanding of identity construction and transformation as well as the processes of conformity or deviance (Anderson 1994). The dramatic form of identity change ("temporary conversion") during "using careers" indicates that drug euphorias helped situate these addict respondents to different social contexts where more desirable identities were located, while disphoria resituated them in a previous context that contained an undesirable identity. The etiological value of this finding lies not in drugs (i.e., their availability) per se, but rather in the social construction of identities. Although some may argue that the removal of drugs would prevent such transformations to deviant identities or would accelerate the process of re-identification as "normal," (i.e., a supply-side solution, Inciardi 1992), these addict respondents indicated that they would not have sought such transformations in the first place if they had been satisfied with their existing identities, i.e., those outside euphoria in a "using career" or those prior to any drug use (see Anderson 1994) for that matter. Efforts directed at promoting opportunity for self-expression and fostering the positive identity construction of marginalized individuals very early on, then, might have lessened the need (demand reduction) to search for and create a more favorable identity through drugs for this pool of addict respondents. These efforts might again take a structural approach, since Anderson (1994) previously found that these undesirable identities were the product of both micro and macro factors. Therefore, future research should explore how structural dimensions (temporal, social, and cultural) affect fect the presentation of identities over the lifecourse. This research would produce some understanding of what those in applied settings can do to alleviate various social problems such as drug abuse and alcoholism.

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SOCIOLOGICAL FOCUS

Furthermore, these findings point to the fruitful nature of qualitative research methods in exploring identity-related matters with social problems such as drug addiction. This method boasts strong internal validity and a level of detail and insight that many quantitative undertakings are unable to secure. However, the approach does not come without limitations, i.e., weaker external validity and problems associated with retrospective account data. Therefore, future investigations on these topics might include longitudinal designs and the gathering of first hand accounts instead of retrospective ones. This type of investigation would provide more information regarding the interactionist identity literature.

NOTES 1. There is little conceptual difference between Travisano's (1970) alternation and Bankston et al.'s (1981) alteration. However, their spelling difference indicates that they are unique concepts.

2. The pool of respondents fell short of individuals over 50 years of age.

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