This paper reports on Cuban women living in Miami (Florida) and their adaptation to life in exile. It includes an examination of health care practices, particularly the practice of self-diagnosis and self-prescription of minor tranquilizers as coping behaviors for dealing with acculturation and culture shock. Data were gathered from questionnaires and interviews conducted among 100 women during a 2-year period in 1979-1980. The literature on stress, mental illness, and the widespread incidence of minor tranquilizer use among Cubans in Miami indicates that acculturation and political exile continue to exert strain on the family. Emigration and its accompanying sense of loss, isolation, and uprootedness are deeply felt by many first-generation Cubans. Barriers of language, job transference, and the realization of long struggles ahead increase psychological tension, thereby precipitating a greater incidence of stress reactions, neurotic symptomology, and depression compared with non-immigrant groups. This study indicates that prescription drug use among Cuban women in Miami is an adaptive strategy for dealing with stress in exile. Increased self-diagnosis of nervousness and self-prescription practices form part of the array of sociocultural adaptations that Cuban exiles use to deal with problems of adjustment. The paper includes 16 references. (AF)