Given the putatively central role of craving in the development kinase inhibitor Vorinostat and maintenance of nicotine dependence, further applications and refinements of this approach are warranted. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL Supplementary Figure 1 can be found online at http://www.ntr.oxfordjournals.org. FUNDING This work was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health (K23 AA016936 [JM]). DECLARATION OF INTERESTS The authors have no conflicts of interest with these findings. Supplementary Material Supplementary Data: Click here to view. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are grateful for the thoughtful comments from Dr. Joshua Miller and Dr. Sarah Fischer, and the data collection contributions from a number of Research Assistants: Stephanie Adrean, Jared Bollinger, Carl Edge, Megan Parrish, Melanie Nembhard, Alex Rothbaum, Alex Speer, and Obioma Ekeledo.
Craving is often portrayed as a central or defining characteristic of addiction (Anton, 1999; Kassel & Shiffman, 1992; Robinson & Berridge, 1993), but the precise role of craving in the addictive process is controversial. One of the most contentious issues related to craving is the extent to which desire to use a drug predicts subsequent drug use. This question has often been examined in the treatment literature, where predictors of outcome are sought to help identify obstacles to initial cessation success and long-term maintenance of drug abstinence. Although the relationship between craving and cessation outcome is often presented as established knowledge, this association has yet to be evaluated systematically.
Efforts to understand the association between craving and cessation outcome are motivated, in part, by the belief that the utility of the craving construct rests in its ability to predict drug use behavior (Mezinskis, Honos-Webb, Kropp, & Somoza, 2001; Perkins, 2009). Although the significance of craving is not limited to its predictive utility (Tiffany, Warthen, & Goedeker, 2009 ; Tiffany & Wray, 2009, 2012), there are a number of theoretical and clinical reasons for investigating relationships between craving and drug use. All major theories of drug dependence propose that craving plays some role in motivating drug use (Drummond, 2001), and many (e.g., conditioning theories, positive Dacomitinib expectancy theories, incentive-sensitization theory) suggest that craving and relapse should be tightly coupled (Marlatt, 1985; Robinson & Berridge, 1993; Siegel, 1989). Not all models identify craving as necessary for relapse, and modern theories of addiction seem to be moving away from this convention (e.g., Kavanagh, Andrade, & May, 2005; Tiffany, 1990; see Lowman, Hunt, Litten, & Drummond, 2000 for additional examples).