The Effect Of Stress Stimuli On The Craving And Relapse Of Drugs For Ice Abusers

In order to explore the difference between drug addicts who relapsed and did not relapse, and the effect of stress to drug craving and relapse, the study compared demographic, drug abuse states and mental states between these two groups of drug addicts by scale study, and gave the subjects stress stimulus by cognitive mental arithmetic task on the computer, combined VAS and attentional bias tasks which include Addiction Stroop Task and Exogenous Cue Task to evaluate the subjects' drug craving.The results showed that (1) When compared to drug addicts who did not relapse,subjects who relapsed had longer drug use history, higher frequency of drug use and the more average amount of each taking. (2) Subjects whtr relapsed had higher subjective pressure and exhibited more negative emotion. (3) There was no difference on VAS of all subjects after stress stimulus. (4) In the Addiction Stroop Task, subjects who did not relapse had shorter reaction time than who relapsed; Subjects had shorter reaction time to neutral materials than cues. The reaction time was shorter when there was a stress stimulus. All subjects had longer reaction time to the cues than neutral materials after stress stimulus and subjects who relapsed had longer reaction time to cues whenever there was a stress stimulus or not. Subjects who relapsed had longer reaction time than subjects who did not relapse after a stress stimulus. (5) In the Exogenous Cue Task, Subjects had shorter reaction to the effective cues than the ineffective cues and the reaction time is shorter to the cues than neutral materials.There was no difference of the reaction time between the two group of subjects and no difference of reaction time whenever there was a stimulus or not.The conclusions are subjects who relapsed had longer drug use history, higher frequency of drug use and the more average amount of each taking. And they had higher subjective pressure and exhibited more negative emotion. When subjects faced with a stress stimulus, there was no difference on their subjective report of drug craving, but they had significant attentional bias to drug cues detected by Addiction Stroop Task. Furthermore, compared to the subjects who did not relapse, subjects who relapsed had longer reaction time to cues than the neutral materials after a stress stimulus. Therefor, people who relapsed were more susceptible to the stress and they would exhibit more drug craving when they need to face with stress conditions.