ABSTRACT
The widespread abuse of cocaine is a serious public health problem; it has stimulated laboratory searches for new behavioral and pharmacological treatments. Desipramine is an antidepressant drug that may be a pharmacological adjunct for the treatment of cocaine abuse. Despite the growing number of laboratory evaluations and clinical trials examining other measures and other treatment drugs, no effective pharmacotherapy for cocaine abuse has been identified. The laboratory search for treatments for cocaine abuse might advance faster if a safer method of studying cocaine in humans could be developed—one that would not pose serious risk to participants and require extensive medical support. Sensitive behavioral measures that may be useful in studying drugs of abuse are currently under development in research into the discriminativestimulus, reinforcing, and withdrawal effects of caffeine. Stimulus-fading procedures have recently been used to explore the limits of human sensitivity to theobromine, a methybcanthine structurally similar to caffeine and found in chocolate.
