The goal of my research is to develop behavioral and pharmacological methods for reducing and preventing drug abuse. In recent work with graduate students and postdocs, we examined the influence of individual differences such as impulsivity, sweet preference, sex/hormonal factors, and genetic factors that maintain drug addiction. A current interest is to understand treatment failure in human drug addicts, as success of treatments is no higher than self-quit methods. Our hypothesis is that treatments fail because craving incubates over long periods after treatment ends. We use self-initiated, self-maintained, long-term treatments, such as physical exercise, to block incubation of craving for weeks to months. We also study another aspect of incubated craving, multiply-triggered-relapse (MTR). After several weeks of forced abstinence we found that in addition to the previously-used drug, multiple cues in the environment (e.g., other drugs of abuse, common drugs such as caffeine and nicotine, and environmental cues) trigger relapse. Incubation of craving and MTR are the targets we are currently studying for treatment development. We are testing self-initiated, long-lasting and self-maintained treatments, such as voluntary exercise and social reward that, alone and/or together, are self-motivated and self-maintained long-term self-treatments for reducing incubation of craving and MTR. We are working with clinical addiction investigators and exercise physiologists to translate these treatment strategies to humans.
