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Recovery from alcoholism is a complex and long-term process with high relapse rates. Therefore, understanding why people relapse has been critically important to improving treatment outcomes. To that end, researchers are looking for clinical and biological markers that predict relapse after treatment and to use those risk factors to develop effective treatments to reduce relapse rates. One...

Alcohol is the most used and abused psychoactive drug worldwide. Alcohol use and misuse, including alcohol use disorder, can have devastating effects and account for 5.9 percent of deaths and 5.1 percent of the global burden of disease and injury, thereby also imposing a significant social and economic burden on society (World Health Organization 2015). Moreover, treatments for alcohol abuse have...

Despite decades of research on various methods for treating alcohol use disorder (AUD), AUD remains prevalent throughout the world, making it critical to develop a more comprehensive approach to address the issue. Heavy drinking is the third largest risk factor for global disease burden, leading to enormous social and economic decline (World Health Organization 2014). Each year, alcohol misuse is...

Alcohol use and misuse have been part of human society for centuries. Early physicians recognized since the 1800s that alcohol produced not only impairment of the senses but also higher predisposition for tuberculosis. William Osler, the father of scientific medicine, reported in 1905 that patients who misused alcohol had higher predisposition to pneumonia (Osler 2001).

Between 2006 and 2010 in the...

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can interfere with both embryonic and fetal development, producing a wide range of outcomes that fall under the rubric of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). FASD is the nondiagnostic umbrella term used to refer to the full range of effects that can occur following prenatal alcohol exposure. Such exposure can produce a variety of effects, including...

Understanding the mechanisms that underlie recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD) is critical to advancing AUD treatment science (Huebner and Tonigan 2007; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [NIAAA] 2009). Scientific progress over the last three decades has led to the development of a number of effective behavioral and pharmacological AUD interventions (Dutra et al. 2008)...

A person with alcoholism engages in risky or dangerous drinking despite experiencing serious negative physical and social consequences. Such persistence in pursuing damaging behaviors suggests that the short-term “appetitive” results of drinking (such as intoxication and losing one’s inhibitions) have greater control over the alcoholic’s behavior than do the negative consequences. From a...