The role of psychobiological states in chemical dependency: who becomes addicted?

Abstract

This paper argues that recent developments in the understanding of psychobiological states may help to explain individual differences in susceptibility to addiction. It points out that the construct of arousal is deficient for this purpose and that a more fruitful approach views humans as bundles of state-dependent selves, strongly affected by self-efficacy and response expectancies. Coping skills, enhancement behaviors, and other state-regulating techniques are seen as crucial to liability to chemical dependency and the social learning underlying their genesis is explored. Under this view drug experiences are held to be analogous to hypnotic inductions and psychological approaches to therapy could usefully focus on helping addicts develop a metaperspective on the succession of psychobiological states.