Citation

Thomas SE, Bacon AK, Randall PK, Brady KT, See RE. Psychopharmacology 2011; 218(1): 19-28.

Affiliation

Charleston Alcohol Research Center, Institute of Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, 67 President Street, Charleston, SC, 29425, USA, thomass@musc.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00213-010-2163-6

PMID

21274703

PMCID

PMC3115478

Abstract

RATIONALE: Although studies suggest that stress is an important reason for relapse in alcoholics, few controlled studies have been conducted to examine this assumption. Evidence of stress-potentiated drinking would substantiate this clinical observation and would contribute to the development of a model that would be valuable to alcohol treatment research. OBJECTIVES: The hypothesis was tested that an acute psychosocial stressor, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), increases alcohol consumption in non-treatment-seeking alcoholics. METHODS: Seventy-nine alcohol-dependent participants (40 women) were randomly assigned to receive the TSST or a no-stress condition. Immediately afterward, all participants received an initial dose of their preferred alcoholic beverage to achieve a target blood alcohol concentration of 0.03 g/dl (to prime subsequent drinking in the laboratory). Participants then participated in a mock taste test of two glasses of beer. Primary dependent measures were whether s/he drank all of the beer available (yes/no) and total amount of beer consumed (milliliters). RESULTS: Stressed participants were twice as likely as non-stressed participants to drink all of the beer available, a significant effect. Although the stressed group drank more milliliters than the non-stressed group, this effect failed to reach significance, likely due to ceiling effects. There were no significant stress group × gender effects on either outcome. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports that stress-potentiated drinking is valid and can be modeled in a clinical laboratory setting.

Language: en