Assessment of tattoos and personality characteristics within a narcotic population

Narcotic addiction in the United States has remained a real challenge for the past half century for a number of reasons. Freedman (1966) stated that for the individual addiction is a chronic disease closely associated with alienation, rootlessness, institutionalization, and criminality. Perhaps its chief difference from other chronic diseases is the extent to which it meets certain social, psychological, and eventually physical needs of the patient, and is therefore, preferred by him to a life free from addiction. Once addiction is established, his life pattern is shaped by the fact of addiction. One is then dealing with a serious social deviation having numerous obstacles that prevent the addict from resuming a productive and useful life.