Verbal behavior related to drug reinforcement in polysubstance cannabis users: Comparison across drugs.

Abstract

Verbal reports of drug effects are often used in behavioral pharmacology. Two reports related to reinforcement are drug use (Harford, 1978;Liu et al., 2018) frequency and drug preference. Anecdotally, some individuals may specify a favorite/preferred drug (e.g., psilocybin) despite using another drug more frequently (e.g., tobacco). Research comparing these two measures has led to contradictory findings and included ratings from participants who may not have experience with the rated drugs. No comparisons have been made between use frequency and preference across multiple drugs in polysubstance users. To compare use frequency and preference for drug classes, and examine relations across drug classes, individuals reporting polysubstance use (N = 428) provided frequency and preference ratings for nine drug classes. Mean ratings showed smoked tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis were the most frequently used and most preferred drugs. Mean ratings showed 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and classic hallucinogens were the least frequently used and least preferred drugs. However, more divergence between use frequency and preference was observed when these metrics were examined among individuals. Correlation coefficients between use frequency and preference were lower than previously published literature. The majority of polydrug comparisons were nonsignificant, and correlations between different drug classes differed depending on whether use frequency or preference was examined. Verbal reports about use frequency are likely not strongly predictive of verbal reports about the same drug preference. Clinicians and researchers should recognize that different verbal reports related to drug reinforcement might be proxies for distinct aspects of reinforcement and should consider these implications for assessment and research findings. Public Health SignificanceVerbal reports of drug use and drug preference are commonly used in drug use research. We found that different types of verbal reports are likely proxies for distinct aspects of drug reinforcement, and the relation between different types of verbal reports vary at the individual level.

Polydrug Definition and Assessment: The State of the Art

“…In future research on both concurrent and simultaneous polydrug use, depending on aims attention should be paid to the period of time referred to—the most common in the literature being the past 30 days and the past 12 months—in order to guarantee comparability of results. The frequency and magnitude of consumption of each of the psychoactive substances used should also be clarified, taking into account the different reinforcing effects of each substance, which may imply divergences between frequency and preference, the most consumed substance not always being the most preferred [ 61 ].…”

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

“…Importantly, besides informing the contents of the drug-elicited experience, NLP allows to investigate the modulation of language production itself, which can be informative of drug action beyond what is reported during the subjective acute effects (Tagliazucchi, 2022). While NLP has been applied to investigate the effects of different compounds, including psychedelics (Bedi et al, 2014; Cox et al, 2021; Cox & Johnson, 2021; Hase, 2022; Sanz et al, 2021; Sanz et al, 2018; Zamberlan et al, 2018), there are no works to date applying this tool to the study of microdosing.…”

Using the novel functional purchase task to examine prescription stimulant drug effect preferences in college students.

“…Although functional assessment is far less widely used within addiction-related topics, there are some examples of measures that quantify the reinforcing function of use using similar variables, like the Drinking Motives Questionnaire which assesses endorsement across four motivations for alcohol use (Cooper, 1994) or the Functional Assessment of Smoking for Treatment Recommendation which assesses across five possible functions for tobacco use (Burrows et al, 2020). There have also been some studies investigating NMPSU drug preference through quantifying frequency of use and ranking preferred drug choice (Cox & Johnson, 2021). However, the use of a HPT to quantify the reinforcing value of a drug according to its function (a functional purchase task [FPT]) has not been studied and presents an opportunity for extension to enhance utility in modeling NMPSU.…”