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Women on Heroin
Rosenbaum, Marsha. Women on Heroin: (2nd Edition). Rutgers University Press. November 1981, 196 pages.
 Most studies of heroin addiction have focused on the male addict, and those on women have stressed the connection with prostitution or medical issues - particularly the tragic effects of drugs on unborn fetuses and newborn babies. Marsha Rosenbaum, however, has traced the entire "career" of the woman addict. She asks basic questions: How and why does a woman become addicted to heroin? Is she a liberated woman, breaking through sexual barriers and functioning alongside men in the heroin world? Or is she doubly oppressed as an addict and a woman?
In her "street study" of one hundred women of varying races and ages, Rosenbaum lets the women speak for themselves to produce an affecting picture of what it is like to be a woman locked into the heroin culture.
Rosenbaum finds a pattern of inversion. Heroin use at first expands a woman's options. Her social life becomes exciting. But when initiation is over, the heroin world becomes tough, cold, and chaotic. The need to sustain her habit narrows the woman's options - shoplifting, forgery, and prostitution are among the only "jobs" open to her.
While the male addict can adapt to the risk of hustling for money to buy heroin, the woman with children cannot "take care of business." She is conscious of her responsibility to her children, although powerless to break the habit that forces her to neglect and mistreat them too often.
This study shows that the experience of addiction is vastly different for men and women. It shows, therefore, that treatment for addiction must be different, that programs have frequently failed because they have not taken into account a woman's - particularly a mother's - special needs.
"This hightly readable work is a well-written presentation of a research study of 100 noninstitutionalized women heroin users...Highly recommended"
-- Choice
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