Introduction: Retirement is one of the difficult events. Athletes should adapt
to the difficult experiences and heighten a sense of worth. Drug abuse as a
negative coping behavior is a painful reaction to retirement. The aim is to
identify the factors influencing the tendency of retired elite wrestlers to
drug abuse. With a biomedical approach, this phenomenon was
investigated.
Materials and Methods: Using the method of contextual theory and semistructured in-depth qualitative interview technique, factors influencing the
tendency of retired elite wrestlers to drug abuse were studied. The data
analysis method was coding, done in three stages of open, selective and
axial coding. The data are in a paradigm model.
Results: Factors such as sexual needs, strenuous exercise and injury were taken
as causal conditions; physical pain was taken as a mediating condition; and
retirement age and first experience of drug abuse were taken as an
intervening condition and physiological need and doping as contextual
conditions. These factors created a paradigm model. Athletes’ strategies for
drug abuse are: leisure purposes, wider variety of drugs, continuity of drug
use and finally compulsive drug use.
Conclusion: The consequences of drug abuse were initially pleasant and
positive, but with continued drug use, it had harmful consequences
physically, psychologically and socially.