'An attractive force': the meaning of drugs to users from an island in Cape Verde.

This qualitative study aimed to understand the meaning of drug consumption from the view of users who receive care in an outpatient clinic of a Mental Health Service on an island of the Cape Verde archipelago. The methodological framework was based on the Data-founded Theory, in the light of Symbolic Interactionism. Participants were nine drug users from the mentioned outpatient clinic. Recorded interviews and observation were the strategies for data collection. The comparative data analysis resulted in the central phenomenon 'An attractive force', which expresses the great difficult users have to stop the abusive consumption of psychoactive substances, knowing that all problems faced in the personal, familiar and social areas come from drug habituation. Thus, this study permitted the identification of vulnerable points for possible action by the health team, aiming for the prevention of drug abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]