The First Injection Event: Heroin, Methamphetamine, Cocaine, and Ketamine Initiates”

Many researchers study prevalence and risk factors but what are the reasons for people to use drugs and which drugs are used first? In a study by Lankenau, Wagner, Jackson Bloom, Sanders, Hathazi and Shin, conducted between 2004 and 2005, young injection users were interviewed about their first injected drug. The researchers attempted to find the relationship between certain characteristics, the risk behaviors at initiation, and future drug-using trajectories. The drugs that were found to be the most common were ketamine, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin.

The study had 222 subjects whose age ranged from 16 to 29. The participants were chosen from public places in New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Each participant had injected ketamine at least once in the two previous years. Factors that were closely related to the drug type were the age of the first drug use, the level of education, the place where the first drug injection use took place, the pattern of self-injection, the number of drugs ever injected, the current living situation and the individuals hepatitis C virus (HVC) status (Lankenau et al., 2010).

Besides a quantitative analysis of factors that are related to certain drug use, Lankenau et al. also use a qualitative approach to explain the rationales the participants had for using drugs. The main reasons for the drug use were “curiosity, peer influence, efficiency of injection as a mode of administration, self-medication, and lowered inhibitions” (Lankenau et al., 2010). Additionally, the researchers asked the participants about their experience with the drug. Experiences with heroin and methamphetamine use were considered as “blissful”, “heavenly” and “euphoric” whereas ketamine and cocaine experiences wer...

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