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Forced Abstinence Model Of Relapse To Study Pharmacological Treatments Of Substance Use Disorder, Carmela M. Reichel, Rick A. Bevins

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Understanding and preventing relapse to drug use is one of the most difficult challenges faced by clinicians and practitioners in the struggle to help people remain abstinent. In this paper, we review basic preclinical research on forced abstinence periods that identify the neural substrates involved and neural adaptations that occur after a drug-free period. Our attention focuses on forced abstinence after self-administration because of its promise for translational research in the development of candidate medications to reduce relapse. This model requires subjects (often rats) to initially acquire drug self-administration. However, rather than extinguishing behavior with daily drug-free sessions as in …