ArticleAddictive behaviors2018
Young adults' opioid use trajectories: From nonmedical prescription opioid use to heroin, drug injection, drug treatment and overdose.
Article in Addictive behaviors, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 103 citations in OpenAlex.
- "You've involved us knowing that we don't think about the law like you": a qualitative study on Supersavers' perspective of overdose engagement in Skåne county, South Sweden.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- The association between state cannabis legalization and non-fatal opioid poisonings among adults with employer-sponsored insurance in the United States.Preventive medicine reports · 2026Article
- Patterns of Felt Stigma Among Rural-Dwelling People Who Use Drugs: A Latent Class Analysis.Substance use & misuse · 2026Article
- The multidimensional social ecological needs and service utilization patterns of youth using non-medical prescription opioids: an observational study of routinely collected data in a provincial integrated youth services initiative.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2025Observational
- Measuring network dynamics of opioid overdose deaths in the United States.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Decrease in injection and rise in smoking and snorting of heroin and synthetic opioids, 2000-2021.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2024Article
- HCV prevalence and phylogenetic characteristics in a cross-sectional, community study of young people who inject drugs in New York City: Opportunity for and threats to HCV elimination.Health science reports · 2024Article
- Differential etiologic associations of heroin use and prescription opioid misuse with psychopathology.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2024Article
- The association between exercise and prescription opioid misuse: A scoping review.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Predicting first use of heroin from prescription opioid use subtypes: Insights from the Monitoring the Future longitudinal panel.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2024Article
- Article
- Causation and Common Liability in the Progression of the U.S. Opioid Crisis.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2024Article
- "You get stuck in it": Young people's accounts of attempting to quit non-medical tramadol use.Nordisk alkohol- & narkotikatidskrift : NAT · 2023Article
- Early life adversity: Epigenetic regulation underlying drug addiction susceptibility.Molecular and cellular neurosciences · 2023Review
- Substance use severity as a predictor for receiving medication for opioid use disorder among adolescents: An analysis of the 2019 TEDS.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2023Article
- "The system always undermined what I was trying to do as an individual": identifying opportunities to improve the delivery of opioid use services for youth from the perspective of service providers in four communities across British Columbia, Canada.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2023Article
- Prescription drug dependence with and without concurrent illicit drug use: a multicenter cross-sectional survey among an addiction treatment seeking population.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Syndemic factors associated with non-fatal overdose among young opioid users in New York City.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Nonmedical Prescription Drug Use Among Female Adolescents: The Relative Influence of Maternal Factors, Social Norms, and Perceptions of Risk and Availability.Drugs (Abingdon, England) · 2023Article
- Role of Peer Coaches in Digital Interventions for MOUD Initiation and Maintenance.Community mental health journal · 2023Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
introductionRecent research has begun to explore the transition from nonmedical use of prescription opioids (POs) to heroin and injection drug use, adding to earlier literature identifying factors that influence the transition from intranasal to injection use of heroin. However, little research has explored how these transitions are embedded within young people's broader opioid use trajectories - individual pathways that may also include experiences of nonfatal overdose and drug treatment.
methodsData are from a study of 539 18-29 year-old New York City residents, recruited via Respondent-Driven Sampling, who reported past-month nonmedical use of POs and/or heroin use. Participants completed structured, computer-assisted interviews that included assessment of their ages at a series of "benchmark" events and experiences, including first use of a drug or route of administration, the onset of "regular" use of a drug (i.e., 1 or more times a week for at least 1 month), first overdose and first drug treatment.
resultsResults suggest a predictable, ordered pathway by which opioid use tends to progress in this cohort of young adults. Participants initiated nonmedical PO use at age 16.8, on average, and most transitioned to heroin use (83%) and heroin injection (64%), generally within 4 years of first PO misuse. Drug treatment was not typically accessed until after participants had progressed to heroin use. First overdose occurred <1 year after first heroin use, on average.
conclusionsFindings may help inform the optimal timing for delivery of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention efforts targeting young opioid users.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.