Drug Associations as a Measure of Habit Strength for Specific Drugs

Several forced choice association studies with opiate addicts and normals were undertaken to test the hypothesis that some portion of associations between words and a drug is based on accumulated habit strength for a drug. Heroin addicts generally associated more words to heroin than to benzedrine, alcohol, goofballs (barbiturates), or reefers (marijuana). The tendency was most marked on words regarded as relevant for drugs such as take, custom, high, hide, buy, and habit. Heroin addicts gave more heroin associations to drug-relevant words than did normals. Addicts who had been experimentally addicted to methadone associated more words to methadone than those who did not have the experience. Individual differences in heroin associations were correlated with those for morphine, but not for methadone in spite of the similarity in the subjective effects of these drugs.