Substance-Related Cravings and Relapses: Clinical Implications

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nady el-Guebaly ◽  
David Hodgins

Objective: To review the implications of current research on clinical practice. Method: An examination of the literature over the last 10 years and the data from our own study group. Results: A synopsis of current psychobiological and psychological conceptual underpinnings of the nature and process of cravings and relapses among substance-dependent individuals is presented. The biopsychosocial dimensions of the clinical assessment of craving components, relapse patterns, and predictors, including relevant instruments, are explored. The panoply of management strategies for cravings and relapses encompasses cue exposure treatment techniques, relapse prevention approaches, anticraving and psychotropic medication, family involvement, and twelve-step programs. Conclusion: A clinician's familiarity with these strategies should contribute significantly to the transformation of the sense of failure engendered by a patient's relapse into a constructive challenge and opportunity.

Human Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Palm

AbstractThis article interrogates twelve step practice within Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) from the perspective of Foucault’s later work on governance, truth-telling and subjectivity. Recent critical studies of addiction tend to view self-help cultures like that of AA and related twelve step programs as integral parts of contemporary power/knowledge complexes, and thus as agents of the modern “will to knowledge” that Foucault often engages with. In line with the widespread Foucauldian critique of governmentality, addiction self-help culture is thus conceived as one that primarily reproduces abstract, neoliberal norms on health and subjectivity. The argument put forward in this article aims to upset this framework attending to a number of features of twelve step practice that, arguably, bear striking resemblances to Foucault’s later discussions of ethics, care of self and truth-telling. In this, it is suggested that a close study of AA practices, might interrupt assumptions about contemporary addiction discourse and its relationship to issues of truth and power often reproduced in Foucauldian critiques.


2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra A. Brown ◽  
Suzette V. Glasner-Edwards ◽  
Susan R. Tate ◽  
John R. McQuaid ◽  
John Chalekian ◽  
...  

1993 ◽  
Vol 163 (S21) ◽  
pp. 8-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Gaebel ◽  
U. Frick ◽  
W. Köpcke ◽  
M. Linden ◽  
P. Müller ◽  
...  

All recently completed controlled two-year studies on intermittent, early neuroleptic intervention treatment have failed to compare favourably with studies on maintenance treatment concerning relapse prevention. The reason for this failure is still unclear. Therefore the implicit, but as yet unproven, hypothesis that a relapse can be predicted from prodromal symptoms was tested from the perspective of our German multicentre study. Results demonstrate that this is not the case. Possible reasons for and clinical implications of this negative finding are discussed.


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