13 January 2017
Clearly, there are other determinants of addiction, but I believe a self-medication motive is one of the more compelling reasons for overuse of and dependency on drugs. Clinical findings based on psychoanalytic formulations have been consistent with and complemented by diagnostic and treatment studies that support this perspective, which, I believe, will enable researchers and clinicians to further understand and treat addictive behavior
For example, Steele and Josephs’ (1990) alcohol-myopia theory posits that alcohol ‘‘restricts attention to the salient, immediate aspects of experience’’ and ‘‘reduces processing capacity so that a greater proportion of this capacity has to bedevoted to the demands of immediate, ongoing activity’’ (p. 929). Consider a man who has a bad workday and returns home to drink. Alcohol may relieve his worry if he is distracted by television, but he may ‘‘cry in his beer’’ if no such distraction is available (Steele & Josephs, 1990). Although alcohol-myopia theory continues to stimulate much research, core elements of the theory remain unresolved. For instance, as noted by Steele and Josephs (1990, footnote 3), it remains unclear which cues will be most salient to a person who is drinking (see also Sayette, 1993). In typical studies, salient distractor cues are explicitly manipulated. For example, intoxicated participants may be asked to prepare a stressful speech, and during this preparation, some of these participants may be given a series of pleasant images to evaluate. Intoxicated participants given no explicit distraction feel at least as anxious as sober participants, presumably because they focus on the upcoming speech, whereas intoxicated participants who are distracted by the images feel less anxious than sober participants (Josephs & Steele, 1990).