ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on several elementary features of how people make choices. Although they are perfectly ordinary and are active in all decision making, they can result in drug binges, excessive drug use, and the pattern of remission and relapse that characterizes addiction. Clinicians and researchers rely on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to distinguish drug addicts from drug users so that this manual provides a useful starting place for characterizing addiction. Voluntary actions and involuntary activities differ in the degree to which they are maintained by their consequences. The idea that voluntary behavior is self-correcting predicts that addicts can quit without the assistance of explicit clinical interventions. According to the DSM, addicts are compulsive drug users, e.g., binge on drugs, take more drugs than initially intended, quit using but then relapse. Addictive drugs may also induce residual cognitive deficits that interfere with global bookkeeping.
