Withdrawal symptoms and alcohol dependence: fruitful mysteries

Abstract

Five types of question are posed around withdrawal symptoms. (1) The reasons for the fluctuations over time in medical awareness of alcohol's capability to produce withdrawal symptoms. (2) What type of drinking schedules instigate withdrawal experience? (3) Do withdrawal phenomena get worse over time? (4) The 'addiction memory' question; and lastly (5) Is withdrawal a reinforcer for drinking behaviour? These issues point to a need for a renascence in the kind of research which is based on clinical observation and on listening to what patients have to tell, with such lines of work brought into much closer contact than before with corresponding laboratory investigation.