Love and Addiction - Appendix - Addiction and Love

Written by Stanton Peele

The mechanistic character of conditioning theories is associated with their origins in the observation of laboratory animals. Human consciousness entails a greater complexity of response to drugs, and withdrawal, than animals are capable of. Only animals respond to drugs in a predictable way, and only animals (especially encaged animals) respond uniformly to the onset of withdrawal by renewing their dosage of a drug. For a conditioning theory to explain the behavior of human addicts, as well as nonaddicted drug users, it must take into account the various social and personal reinforcements— ego-gratification, social approval, security, self-consistency, sensory stimulation, etc.—that motivate human beings in their drug-taking as in other activities.

Recognizing the limitations of animal-based hypotheses, Alfred Lindesmith has proposed a variation of conditioning theory which adds to it an important cognitive dimension. In Addiction and Opiates, Lindesmith argues that addiction occurs only when the addict understands that physiological habituation to morphine or heroin has taken place, and that only another dose of the drug will protect him from withdrawal. Despite Lindesmith's insistence that addiction is a conscious, human phenomenon, his theory is just as narrowly based on physical dependence and withdrawal as all-purpose reinforcers as are other conditioning models. It posits only one kind of cognition (i.e., the awareness of an association between withdrawal and taking an opiate) as influencing the psychological process of conditioning, rather than allowing for the range of cognitions of which human beings are capable. Lindesmith notes marginally that hospital patients who know that they have received morphine, and who are knowingly withdrawn from the drug, still do not usually become addicted. This is because they think of themselves as patients, not addicts. Lindesmith fails to draw what seems a reasonable inference from this observation: that self-image is always a factor to be considered in the addiction process.

G. Physiological and Psychological Mechanisms of Addiction

The publication in Science of a study by Louise Lowney and her colleagues on the binding of opiate molecules in the brains of mice, which is part of an ongoing line of research in that area, has convinced many people that a breakthrough has been achieved in understanding addiction physiologically. But for every study of this sort that reaches the public eye, there is also one like Psychology Today's report on Richard Drawbaugh and Harbans Lal's work with morphine-addicted rats who had been conditioned to accept the ringing of a bell (together with a placebo injection) in place of morphine. Lal and Drawbaugh found that the morphine antagonist naloxone, which is presumed to counteract the effects of morphine chemically, inhibited the effects of the conditioned stimulus (the bell) as well as those of morphine itself. Clearly, the antagonist was working at something besides a chemical level.

Chemical reactions in the brain can, of course, be observed whenever a psychoactive drug is introduced. The existence of such reactions, and the fact that all psychological processes ultimately take the form of neural and chemical processes, should not be used to beg the questions raised by the impressive array of research, observations, and subjective reports that testify to the variability of human reactions to drugs.

next:

References

Baldwin, Marjorie V. "Caffeine on Trial." Life and Health (October 1973): 10-13.

Brecher, Edward M. Licit and Illicit Drugs. Mount Vernon, N.Y.: Consumers Union, 1972.

Cohen, Maimon M.; Marinello, Michelle J.; and Back, Nathan. "Chromosomal Damage in Human Leukocytes Induced by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide." Science 155 (1967): 1417-1419.

Cohen, Sidney. "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Side Effects and Complications." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 130 (1960): 30-40.

Davis, Virginia E., and Walsh, Michael J. "Alcohol, Amines, and Alkaloids: A Possible Biochemical Basis for Alcohol Addiction." Science 167 (1970): 1005-1007.

Dishotsky, Norman I.; Loughman, William D.; Mogar, Robert E.; and Lipscomb, Wendell R. "LSD and Genetic Damage." Science 172 (1971): 431-440.

Drawbaugh, Richard, and Lal, Harbans. "Reversal by Narcotic Antagonist of a Narcotic Action Elicited by a Conditioned Stimulus." Nature 247 (1974): 65-67.

Jarvik, Lissy F.; Kato, Takashi; Saunders, Barbara; and Moralishvili, Emelia. "LSD and Human Chromosomes." In Psychopharmacology: A Review of Progress 1957-1967 edited by Daniel H. Efron, pp. 1247-1252. Washington, D.C.: Public Health Service Document No. 1836; HEW, 1968.

Lasagna, Louis; Mosteller, Frederick; von Felsinger, John M.; and Beecher, Henry K. "A Study of the Placebo Response." American Journal of Medicine 16 (1954): 770-779.

Lindesmith, Alfred R. Addiction and Opiates. Chicago: Aldine, 1968.

Lowney, Louise I.; Schulz, Karin; Lowery, Patricia J.; and Goldstein, Avram. "Partial Purification of an Opiate Receptor from Mouse Brain." Science 183 (1974): 749-753.

Schachter, Stanley, and Singer, Jerome E. "Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State." Psychological Review 69 (1962): 379-399.

Wikler, Abraham. "Some Implications of Conditioning Theory for Problems of Drug Abuse." In Drug Abuse: Data and Debate, edited by Paul L. Blachly, pp. 104-113. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1970.

Wilson, Cedric W. M., and Huby, Pamela, M. "An Assessment of the Responses to Drugs Acting on the Central Nervous System." Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 2 (1961): 174-186.

next: Mother Asks For Help For Her Daughter
~ addictions library articles
~ all addictions articles