ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews several explanations of drug dependence. Summaries of each cover their drug specificity, the population studied, the disciplinary background of the theorist and the key variables utilized. Different disciplines or fields seem better suited to explain only certain parts of the drug behavior cycle, that is, the cycle from initiation to cessation of drug use. Sociological elements in combination with biomedical factors may be ideally suited to understanding the escalation of drug use to drug abuse, while psychological and even political and economic elements are essential to an understanding of the cessation of use. The adequacy of an explanation is seldom adjudged solely on its scientific merit, but also by the ripeness of the idea within its particular social and political climate as well as its consonance with the culturally-based epistemology of the reactors. The differences among many of the psychological and personality theories are often their differential emphasis on some psychological variable, rather than major qualitative divergencies.
