Cue Exposure: One Approach to the Extinction of Addictive Behaviours

In recent years there has been growing dissatisfaction with the traditional treatment approach to alcoholism, the goal of total abstinence based on the hypothesis that alcoholism is an irreversible disease. Jellinek (1960) stressed that the disease concept of alcoholism should be only a “working hypothesis” to be discarded if disconfirmed by empirical evidence. Evidence against the disease model is gradually accumulating and many research workers believe that we are at this very moment in the throws of a rather violent paradigm shift, (Sobell, 1976). To this end, studies have demonstrated relatively poor outcome for all sorts of different approaches while others (e.g., Edwards and Guthrie, 1967) have been unable to demonstrate that the traditional in-patient approaches are at all effective. In these circumstances we must generate alternative working hypotheses as to the nature and treatment of addictive behaviours and then make sure that these working hypotheses do not become dogma but are adequately and repeatedly tested.