EFFECT OF POSITIVE HIV DIAGNOSIS ON DRUG USE--QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT

Boston University Medical Campus, Boston MA

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Abstract

The proposed project will involve a group of 40 HIV-Infected individuals with either active cocaine or heroin abuse or a history of cocaine or heroin abuse at the time of HIV testing and subsequent to HIV testing. These 40 individuals will be selected from a larger cohort of 240 subjects who are participating in the Alcohol Use and HIV Outcomes Interviews. These subjects will participate in one to two open ended, audio taped interviews. Narrative analysis will be used to understand the experience of having a positive HIV test for individuals who are actively using substances or are in recovery from substance abuse. This will be done in order to test two main hypotheses. 1) The longer an individual is in recovery, the less likely it is that the individual will relapse upon learning of an HIV positive diagnosis. 2) The more consolidated an individual is in recovery, the less likely it is that the individual will relapse upon learning of an HIV positive diagnosis. In the subsets of patients who do relapse, the more consolidated an individual is in recovery, the shorter the duration of the relapse episode.