Tiffany S T, Carter B L
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
J Psychopharmacol. 1998;12(1):23-30. doi: 10.1177/026988119801200104.
Compulsive drug use, which is typically portrayed as a defining quality of addictive behavior, has been described as a pattern of drug consumption that is stimulus bound, stereotyped, difficult to regulate and identified by a loss of control over intake. It is widely assumed that compulsive drug use is caused by drug craving. This assumption is supported by numerous findings of a general correspondence between measures of craving and drug-use behavior. A more focussed analysis of the available data, however, reveals that craving and drug use are not coupled to the degree required by the hypothesis that craving is the source of all drug use in the addict. As an alternative to this craving-based view, compulsive drug use could be characterized as a form of automatized behavior. Automatic performance is assumed to develop over the course of repeated practice of motor and cognitive skills. Automatized behavior, like compulsive drug use, tends to be stimulus bound, stereotyped, effortless, difficult to control and regulated largely outside of awareness. The formulation of drug compulsion as a manifestation of automaticity rather than craving allows addiction researchers to apply methods and measures derived from cognitive sciences to investigate the fundamental organization of compulsive drug-use behavior.
强迫性药物使用通常被视为成瘾行为的一个决定性特征，它被描述为一种药物消费模式，这种模式受刺激驱动、刻板、难以调节，且表现为对药物摄入失去控制。人们普遍认为，强迫性药物使用是由对药物的渴望引起的。这一假设得到了大量研究结果的支持，这些结果表明渴望程度与药物使用行为之间普遍存在对应关系。然而，对现有数据进行更深入的分析后发现，渴望与药物使用之间的关联程度并不符合“渴望是成瘾者所有药物使用行为根源”这一假设的要求。作为这种基于渴望观点的替代，强迫性药物使用可以被描述为一种自动化行为形式。自动执行被认为是在运动和认知技能的反复练习过程中形成的。与强迫性药物使用一样，自动化行为往往受刺激驱动、刻板、无需费力、难以控制，并且在很大程度上是在意识之外进行调节的。将药物强迫行为表述为自动化而非渴望的表现形式，使成瘾研究人员能够应用认知科学中的方法和测量手段来研究强迫性药物使用行为的基本机制。
