Posted on May 18, 2004 at 10:35 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Scientists have tried for years to understand why some people develop addictions while others don’t and why some choose to kick their drug habit while others continue despite losing money, jobs, family and more. Understanding how drug users make such choices is the focus of a new study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), which has been awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“Preferences for smaller, immediate rewards over larger, but delayed, rewards is a hallmark of drug abuse,” says UAB psychologist Rudy Vuchinich, Ph.D., an investigator for the Department of Psychology’s Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Training and associate director of the Medical Psychology Program.

“Drug abusers over-engage in short-term rewards that later lead to long-term costs,” Vuchinich said, “and they under-engage in constructive activities that would later lead to long-term benefits. … Normal development involves an increasing preference for long-term rewards, but the rate of that progression may be related to stability or change in drug use, which will be investigated in this study.” The study could one day result in more effective drug prevention efforts, Vuchinich said.

Studies show that substance abuse is a national health problem that is estimated to cost the United States more than $100 billion annually. The costs include substance abuse prevention and treatment services and incarceration and supervision incurred by the criminal justice system.

Researchers at UAB will use behavioral economics as the framework for the study. Behavioral economics is a discipline that examines how the decision-making process influences the choices that people actually make.

For the study, researchers will survey 210 subjects — half men and half women — who fall into three groups: abstainers, occasional users and abusers. The subjects will be interviewed a second time 18 months later to determine how their decision-making processes change over time. The researchers will examine problems related to drug use, factors that influence choices, environmental reinforcements, personality and intelligence.

The UAB Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Training, in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences’ Department of Psychology, was established in 2003 to facilitate coordinated and collaborative patient-oriented research, training and programs in substance abuse treatment and prevention.