A reconsideration of the relevance of recent animal studies for development of treatment procedures for alcoholics.

Amit and Sutherland's conclusions concerning the use of conditioned taste aversions for alcoholism treatment are critically evaluated. Their conclusion that painful electric shock is contraindicated as a basis for alcohol taste aversions is consistent with the animal and human literature which depicts nausea as a more biologically appropriate US for taste aversion formation. However, Amit and Sutherland also conclude that alcoholics will not develop illness-induced alcohol aversions because animal studies show that aversion acquisition is disrupted by preconditioning familiarity with the conditioned stimulus (CS) - flavor - or unconditioned stimulus (US) - illness. This conclusion is untenable because Amit and Sutherland only considered animal conditioning methods that differed markedly from aversion therapy practices. Other animal studies modeled after aversion therapy procedures clearly show CS and US preexposure effects to be transitory phenomena. Moreover, experimental and clinical data show humans to be quite susceptible to taste aversion formation, and that many alcoholics do form strong alcohol aversions under appropriate conditioning parameters. Additional implications of the animal literature for effective aversion therapy are explored, and the paper concludes with a discussion of covert sensitization, a promising verbal aversion therapy which has resulted in the development of strong alcohol aversions in many volunteer subjects at the Augusta Veterans Administration Medical Center.