ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a description of the natural history of drugspeak, based on examination of 548 minimally cued conversations with drug users at various points in their drug use careers. In short J. O. Prochaska and C. C. DiClementi assume that any consistency in verbal reports from drug users arises because they are in the same internal state. The development of a framework for classifying conversations with drug users followed loosely from the kinds of procedures for dealing with qualitative data suggested by M. B. Miles and M. A. Huberman, giving particular attention to the types of methods. On the basis of minimally cued natural conversations with opportunity samples of drug users, a conceptual framework emerged. The drugspeak model is merely intended to be empirically useful insofar as it links conversations, which are classified according to type rather than content, with particular activities which characterise different stages of progress through a drug-using career.
