Addiction, on the rocks

Addiction, on the rocks


Does the sound of a bottle top popping or the curve of a wine glass make you a little thirsty? Researchers have found that rituals associated with drinking could be as addictive as the alcohol itself.

Humans have learned to associate environmental cues with the reason for being in the environment in the first place. A birthday party may put you in the mood to eat cake, which could be hard for people on a diet.

So it goes with alcoholics, researchers say. Going to a bar or a liquor store, or even using the same glassware used to serve beer or wine, may not be a good idea for recovering alcoholics.

To test this effect, researchers from Concordia University in Montreal gave rats access to an unsweetened solution of water and ethanol, the intoxicating ingredient in alcohol. The solution’s ethanol content was 15 percent, or about the equivalent of wine. Each time the researchers gave rats access to the solution, they also gave the rats a separate cue.

At first, when the cue was presented, the rats congregated at the area where the ethanol was dispensed — much like workers at happy hour. But then the rats started gathering where the cue was given rather than where the ethanol was about to be served.

The researchers say we can use rat models to predict similar behaviors in humans. They pointed to previous work that shows the most dangerous time during an addict’s recovery is being around current addicts, or in an environment in which they used to drink or use drugs.

Studying how to minimize rats’ excited responses to those environmental cues could help physicians develop better recovery strategies for human addicts.

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