New Perspectives on the Measurement, Manipulation and Meaning of Drug Craving

✍ Scribed by STEPHEN T. TIFFANY

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 177 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1077(199706)12:2+<s103::aid-hup907>3.0.co;2-8

✦ Synopsis

Craving is a central concern for most addicts and ®gures prominently in many conceptualizations of addictive behaviour. Despite the putative importance of craving, there has been little systematic, programmatic research on the form and function of drug desire in addictive disorders. The absence of such research can be attributed, in part, to fundamental obstacles to the measurement, manipulation and conceptualization of craving processes. Examples of recent research and theorizing intended to address these obstacles are presented. This work includes the generation of multi-item questionnaires for the reliable assessment of drug craving, the development of methodologically sound procedures for laboratory-based manipulations of craving, and the articulation and evaluation of a cognitive-processing model of drug use and drug craving. This model assumes, unlike most contemporary conceptualizations of drug craving, that the processes that control drug administrations can operate independently of craving. Craving is hypothesized to represent the operation of cognitively demanding nonautomatic processes devoted to either supporting or blocking the execution of highly automatized drug-use behaviours. Research using probe reaction-time measures during craving induction supports the hypothesis that craving is cognitively demanding.