Not all drugs are created equal: impaired future thinking in opiate, but not alcohol, users

Abstract

Episodic future thinking refers to the ability to travel forward in time to pre-experience an event. Although future thinking has been intimately linked with self and identity, to our knowledge, no prior research has compared episodic future thinking in populations with different substance use disorders. This study investigates whether there are differences in episodic future thinking between these alcohol and opiate users. The study recruited participants who were on the opiate substitution program (n = 31) and individuals who had been diagnosed with alcohol dependence (n = 21) from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Drug and Health Services. Healthy controls (n = 23) were recruited via Royal Prince Alfred Hospital databases and the general community. Past and future thinking was measured using four cue words. After each cue word, participants rated their phenomenological experience (e.g. emotion, reliving experience). Results indicated that alcohol-dependent individuals performed significantly higher in episodic future thinking compared to opiate users. These findings indicate that not all substance use disorder groups share similar episodic thinking capabilities. Our results suggest that the self-projection component of rehabilitation programs may have to be tailored to the different episodic construction abilities found in substance use disorder groups.

A Neurobehavioral Approach to Addiction: Implications for the Opioid Epidemic and the Psychology of Addiction

“…Neural evidence demonstrates that future thinking activates frontal cortices (Benoit & Schacter, 2015; Okuda et al, 2003) associated with the executive-decision system, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Moreover, impaired episodic future thinking is associated with poor executive function (de Vito et al, 2012), opioid use (Moustafa et al, 2018), and high rates of delay discounting (Bromberg, Wiehler, & Peters, 2015).…”

The Role of User Behaviour in Improving Cyber Security Management

“…A. Moustafa et al, 2018a;Moustafa et al, 2018b). In other words, individuals who think more about the future may abide by security rules to make sure their computer system is safe in the future.…”

Imagining the Future to Reshape the Past: A Path to Combine Cue Extinction and Memory Reconsolidation With Episodic Foresight for Addiction Treatment

“…Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual process of the proposed framework and the implications of each stage of this approach in real-life settings. CIREF benefits from EFT enhancement as a translatable approach in clinical settings (68) that is also necessitated by pieces of evidence showing that individuals with addictive behaviors have difficulties imagining future events and implementing intentions based on them (69)(70)(71)(72). Moreover, the suggested framework could fill in the gaps of CET and memory reconsolidation interventions by taking a step further from classical conditioning and updating past drug-related memories by implementing goal-based strategies.…”