How laboratory studies of cigarette craving can inform the experimental alcohol craving literature

Abstract

Interest in alcohol and other drug craving has flourished over the past two decades, and evidence has accumulated showing that craving can be meaningfully linked to both drug use and relapse. Considerable human experimental alcohol craving research since 2000 has focused on craving as a clinical phenomenon. Self-reported craving to drink typically has served as a catch-all for the craving construct in these studies, whereas few studies have considered craving as a process (or hypothetical construct) that interacts with other phenomena to affect use. In contrast to alcohol, we believe that recently there has been more mechanistic work targeting cigarette craving-related processes. Here, we briefly present a narrative review of studies of acute alcohol craving in humans that have been conducted during the past two decades. We then specify important ways in which alcohol and tobacco differ (e.g., the role of withdrawal), and we note the unique challenges in inducing robust alcohol craving states in the laboratory. Finally, we offer recommendations for how the alcohol field might advance its conceptual understanding of craving by adopting ideas and methods drawn from the smoking research literature. Specifically, we suggest that researchers extend their studies to not only examine the link between alcohol craving and relapse but also to focus on why and, in some instances, how alcohol cravings matter clinically, and the circumstances under which craving especially matters. We propose research to investigate the shifts in alcohol-related cognitive and affective processing that occur during alcohol craving states. Furthermore, we highlight the value of research examining the level of insight that individuals with varying levels of alcohol involvement possess about their own craving-related processing shifts. We believe that laboratory studies can provide rich opportunities to examine conceptual questions about alcohol craving that are central to addiction.

Alcohol, place conditioning, and male rats: A systematic review of outcome prediction

“…A main obstacle in recovering from this disorder is the compulsive alcohol‐seeking behavior triggered by cues that contribute to relapse from abstinence (Sliedrecht et al, 2019). In this case, alcohol, the primary motivator, induces incentive‐motivational properties on stimuli associated with its intake and, when these stimuli are presented in its absence, they may elicit sign‐tracking and alcohol‐craving behaviors (Colaizzi et al, 2020; Creswell & Sayette, 2022; Davis, 2013). Over the past 50 years, researchers established different animal models to study the development of alcohol‐seeking and ‐craving behaviors triggered by cues, their repercussions over alcohol consumption, their genetic and neurobiological bases, and to test possible treatments (Anton, 1999; Black et al, 1973; Davis, 2013; Koob, 2000; Pati et al, 2019; Smith, 2020; Venniro et al, 2018).…”