Special features of drug users' self-attitude and axiological sphere

The results of empirical study of psychological preconditions to drug use are represented. The problem of drug use is the subject of interdisciplinary research. Various factors action mechanisms affecting the formation of drug use are discussed in the framework of biological, social, psychological and ethical approaches. Lack of a single opinion on the causes of drug use and the factors that are a barrier to such behavior, especially within the psychological approach, determines the need for this study. Analysis of the literature showed that drug use is explained by the influence of many psychological factors and cannot be reduced to the single one. Nevertheless, it is possible to highlight the most important components: motivational and value sphere, self-attitude and personality traits. The study of these psychological features of drug users is an important theoretical and practical problem, since the expansion of representations of this phenomenon enables to conduct efficient prevention. The subject of the study is psychological features of drug users: motivation, values, and features of self-attitude and moral sphere. The object of the study is 302 people aged 15 to 35 years, divided into control and 2 empirical (depending on the frequency of drug use) groups. Methods are questionnaires, psychodiagnostics methods, qualitative and quantitative methods. The results of the empirical study found that drug users experience existential frustration. Searching for the sense of life is less urgent for them, and life is also less meaningful for them. Often life is conceived as a kind of problem, the attitude to life is negative or frivolous and facile. It is found that there are differences in psychological features of regular and occasional drug users and persons who have never used drugs. The following features are related with regular drug use: existential frustration; moral decision only on the basis of feelings (not correlated with conscience) rather than reasoning; low self-conscious; predominance of desires aimed only at personal interests. The following variables are related with rare or single drug use: non-significant attitudes to themselves and to their friends, doubt their existence, and at the same time significant emotional relationship to the mother and predominance of selfish desires. The psychological features preventing the propensity to drug use are highlighted: moral and value attitudes; significance of existential values (love, life, self-actualization and search for the sense of life); awareness of risk behavior as dangerous for the person and for others; self-respect. Thus, features of axiological sphere of the individual make the main contribution to the propensity to drug use. Existential component is the most significant one, since the need for searching and implementing the meaning of life is recognized by many authors as innate and inherent in every person, and risky behavior impedes the realization of this need.

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