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THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING

Craving is considered to play an important role in the persistence of drug use and relapse of drug use. Very few studies have looked into the subjective experience of this phenomena. This study attempts to study craving comprehensively as described by the subjects. In the present study 30 patients o...

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Autores principales: Dhawan, Anju, Kumar, Ramesh, Yadav, Seema, Tripathi, B.M.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Medknow Publications 2002
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954341/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21206559
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author Dhawan, Anju
Kumar, Ramesh
Yadav, Seema
Tripathi, B.M.
author_facet Dhawan, Anju
Kumar, Ramesh
Yadav, Seema
Tripathi, B.M.
author_sort Dhawan, Anju
collection PubMed
description Craving is considered to play an important role in the persistence of drug use and relapse of drug use. Very few studies have looked into the subjective experience of this phenomena. This study attempts to study craving comprehensively as described by the subjects. In the present study 30 patients of heroin dependence syndrome were assessed (using a semi-structured questionnaire) for the subjective experience of craving and its various dimensions. All subjects reported having experienced craving. Majority of subjects (90%) described craving as a strong desire to use the substance. About 77% reported that intensity of craving could vary while others described it as a strong urge. Majority (83.3%) reported that only heroin or other opiates could satisfy the craving they experienced for heroin. During craving, thoughts of using the drug by all means would preoccupy their mind. Withdrawal symptoms (70.0%), increased respiration (56.7%) and palpitation (53.3%) were the common physical symptoms and anger (83.3%), tension (63.3%), anxiety (50.0%) were the common emotions experienced during craving. Craving was described as difficult to control and resulted in consumption of heroin on an average of 76.7% occasions. All subjects reported multiple cues that induced craving. Frequency of craving decreased with increase in length of period of abstinence. After being abstinent for 3 months, 90% subjects did not experience craving or experienced it once in a day. Socio-cultural factors do not appear to have prominent influence on subjective experience of craving.
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spelling pubmed-29543412011-01-04 THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING Dhawan, Anju Kumar, Ramesh Yadav, Seema Tripathi, B.M. Indian J Psychiatry Original Article Craving is considered to play an important role in the persistence of drug use and relapse of drug use. Very few studies have looked into the subjective experience of this phenomena. This study attempts to study craving comprehensively as described by the subjects. In the present study 30 patients of heroin dependence syndrome were assessed (using a semi-structured questionnaire) for the subjective experience of craving and its various dimensions. All subjects reported having experienced craving. Majority of subjects (90%) described craving as a strong desire to use the substance. About 77% reported that intensity of craving could vary while others described it as a strong urge. Majority (83.3%) reported that only heroin or other opiates could satisfy the craving they experienced for heroin. During craving, thoughts of using the drug by all means would preoccupy their mind. Withdrawal symptoms (70.0%), increased respiration (56.7%) and palpitation (53.3%) were the common physical symptoms and anger (83.3%), tension (63.3%), anxiety (50.0%) were the common emotions experienced during craving. Craving was described as difficult to control and resulted in consumption of heroin on an average of 76.7% occasions. All subjects reported multiple cues that induced craving. Frequency of craving decreased with increase in length of period of abstinence. After being abstinent for 3 months, 90% subjects did not experience craving or experienced it once in a day. Socio-cultural factors do not appear to have prominent influence on subjective experience of craving. Medknow Publications 2002 /pmc/articles/PMC2954341/ /pubmed/21206559 Text en Copyright: © Indian Journal of Psychiatry http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Article
Dhawan, Anju
Kumar, Ramesh
Yadav, Seema
Tripathi, B.M.
THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING
title THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING
title_full THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING
title_fullStr THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING
title_full_unstemmed THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING
title_short THE ENIGMA OF CRAVING
title_sort enigma of craving
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954341/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21206559
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