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When the data were further analysed by gender, no significant gender differences were found in either drug group for peak daily quantity used, duration of use, duration of problem use, dependence score, psychological health score or social satisfaction score. With the exception of the dependence score, women obtained lower scores on each of these measures but none of the differences reached statistical significance. A significant difference (p<.02) was found in the alcohol group for number of days per week using where women were drinking on average on 5.8 days of the past week and men were drinking on average on 4.3 days. Further investigation of this drinking pattern revealed that the majority of women (73.7%) were drinking on seven days of the week, while the proportion of men who reported daily drinking was 42.4%. In the heroin sub-sample, women were even more likely to report using heroin on seven days of the week, with 93% of women in this group claiming daily use; of the men in the heroin sub-sample, 81.3% reported daily use. In this sample, there was not a significant difference between the mean number of days per week using for men and women. Patterns of drinking and drug use are presented in Table 8.3.
Table 8.3
Patterns of drug taking and drinking for men and women by substance group: Sample 6 (n = 230).
heroin alcohol
male female abstinent (%) 8.1 3.4 Using 1-3 days (%) 4 3.4
using 4-6 days (%) 6.5 - using daily (%) 81.3 93.1
mean days per week 6.1 6.6 using
mean quantity used on .68 .7 heaviest day
*p<.05
male female 23.7 10.5 13.6 5.3 20.4 10.6 42.4 73.7 4.3 5.8*
186.6 135.3
Women reported drinking lower quantities of alcohol as measured by quantity drunk on the heaviest day but the difference between men and women was not significant. There was no difference between the mean number of grams of heroin used on the heaviest day by men and that used by women.
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