CHEMICAL AVERSION THERAPY - RAT DATA SUGGEST IT MAY BE COUNTER-THERAPEUTIC TO PAIR AN ADDICTIVE DRUG STATE WITH SICKNESS

The injection of a low dose of alcohol after a rat drinks saccharin solution usually produces a mild saccharin aversion. One would expect that if alcohol sedation had previously been paired with a very toxic injection of lithium, the capacity of alcohol to produce saccharin aversions would increase, since the alcohol would then elicit conditioned lithium sickness. Contrary to expectation, however, alcohol-lithium pairings were found to eliminate the capacity of a small dose of alcohol to produce saccharin aversions. Similar results are obtained with other recreational drugs. If this finding is applicable to humans, a technique which might be expected to produce an aversion to a drug state would have exactly the opposite effect. © 1979.