Relapse

The most insidious aspect of drug addiction in humans is a high and recurrent propensity to relapse. Over the past several decades, the reinstatement procedure has received widespread use as an animal model of drug relapse, to study the basic mechanisms underlying drug-seeking responses in laboratory animals. The objectives of this chapter are twofold. The first is to describe the primary paradigms and procedures that have been developed to study reinstatement of drug-related behaviors in the laboratory. The second is to define and characterize the three major triggers of reinstatement to drug seeking that constitute the foundation of this work. These triggers include priming injections of a previously self-administered drug, reexposure to drug-associated cues, and exposure to stress. The role of these triggers in reinstatement will be characterized within the context of an overview of key behavioral findings in the literature and their theoretical implications.