Alcohol and Drug Information Centre (ADIC - Ukraine)

In 2000 the Alcohol and Drug Information Center - ADIC-Ukraine carried out the project called Psychological And Subcultural Instruments For Drug Prevention Work With Teenagers. The project was supported by grant of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).
Teenagers have specific needs and frustrations, which are not urgent in any other age. This is the need to belong to a group and to achieve identity through joining many different groups. The period of adolescence is overwhelmed with frustrations and problems and this frequently seems to have global scale. So teenagers maybe vulnerable to the information about the means to overcome their problems, and drugs are often proposed to be such a means. The other peculiarity of adolescence is tendency to experimentation, which also creates a condition for drugs to play an important role in lives of teenagers.
Socio-psychological peculiarity of adolescence is that teenagers tend to form groups where they get their identity. Those groups try to be as different from the others as possible. On this way some of those groups get signs of subcultures with their specific attributes. For some of these subcultures drugs can become an attribute that is accepted by the group members not really because of its own properties but because of its properties as an attribute. So the situation is that teenagers can encounter drugs without the aim to find them. 
The consequences of the problem are that drugs as an important element of teenagers life are protected from outside influences, and prevention efforts not taking into account reasons of psychological and cultural nature usually fail.
The project's objectives were:
· to create instruments to deal with the situation where drugs are seen as a means to solve psychological problems and to meet natural needs of teenagers - training materials which could be used in work with teenagers to show them other ways to satisfy their needs and to solve their problems instead of drugs
· to achieve understanding of those mechanisms which make a subculture attractive for its participants and for new people joining it in order to use this knowledge for productive interaction with the existing subcultures and for creation of new drug-free subcultures which could be attractive for teenagers
These two objectives can be seen as objectives of two separate projects. They really could be. But when we try to find ways to solve individual problems of teenagers we have to take into account what are the norms and ideals of those groups they belong to, in other words to see them as subculture representatives. When we want to investigate mechanisms of subculture functioning or even to experiment with subculture creation we need some external reason to bring a group of people together. In fact we plan to use the group activity aimed at the first objective in order to achieve the second objective and the opposite. That's why these two objectives appear together in one project.

Our approach to prevention is based on attracting attention to behavioral strategies, problems of adaptation to typical life situations, where problem of illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco consumption is involved one way or another. The project contains both research, and designing part of work aimed at creation of a method.
The research included subcultural aspects of intoxicants use/non-use. The project team used two basic definitions of subcultures, and two parts of research derived from that.
1. Subculture as a structural component of a general culture. The subcultural norm in this case does not contradict common cultural norm, and even confirms it in specific situations. On the basis of sociological criteria it is possible to distinguish subcultures of youth, teenagers, workers of certain spheres and so on. The project team studied the beliefs about alcohol, tobacco, drugs in teenagers subcultures. The research was focused on the contradiction between the officially approved statement and real behavioral strategy. Method of retelling real life situations was used, in which the teenagers deal with problems of drug use/non-use.
2. The subculture as a specific marginalized social group, which usually opposes the common cultural values and norms. Such group is united by common predilections, ideals, interests (musical, cultural, political), but is also clearly marked by external attributes. The project team was interested in pro- and anti-drug attitudes of such groups. This part of research was aimed to reveal key attributes and binding social - psychological mechanisms, which can be used for successful creation of a drug free subculture.
The research was based on the method of focus group discussions. The open-ended questions were put as a funnel, starting from wider ones and proceeding to more detailed questions. Participants of the groups could openly express their opinions concerning youth problems, including substance abuse problems and their importance for the participants. 
An average teenager meets substances of abuse and makes his own decision on their use/non-use in certain, rather typical situations. The participants of the focus groups had opportunity to realize what really influences this decisions and what people around them do about legal and illegal drugs.