The ideological underpinnings of the United States' “War on Drugs” has helped produce a tremendous increase in the U.S. prison population. Over the past two decades more and more drug addicts have continued to be incarcerated. This book uses a career or life history approach to provide a better understanding of how individuals see themselves, the effect this perception has on their behavior, and how it changes over time. This book is based on the life stories of 20 men attempting to overcome their drug addiction and incarceration. The author looks at the surrounding society’s construction of the images of the drug user and the impact this has on drug users’ views of themselves. The group of men examined arrived at a significant juncture and decided to change. The book examines their turning point and the process of redefinition and reintegration. The content includes: (1) a brief overview of how self-concepts and actions of people addicted to drugs have been affected by the social construction of addiction as first deviant, then criminal; (2) an intradiction of the men and the differences found in their ways into their lifestyles of addiction; (3) a representation of the ways they adapted to the changing social world of the prison and how their self-concepts evolved reflecting various degrees of prisonization; (4) an outline of some of their long-term patterns of behavior and the development of negative self-evaluation, influenced by their lives; (5) a discussion on how the men became involved in drug treatment; and (6) final thoughts and an update on how the men were doing 3-years after the initial interviews. Appendix, bibliography