Alcohol addiction, or "Alcohol Use Disorder" (AUD), is a psychiatric disorder of global magnitude, being a major cause of preventable death and carrying with it large individual, national and international economic loss as well (Witkiewitz et al., 2019). Loss of control in limiting alcohol consumption is characterized by both positive and negative reinforcement patterns, which involve both neuroanatomical and neurochemical shifts of function (Koob and Volkow, 2016). Treatment for AUD currently consists of individual behavioral and psychological treatment, group therapy and pharmacological intervention, with varying degrees of success depending on severity of disease, patient social and genetic background, as well as patient compliance (Ray et al., 2018).
Alcohol addiction is marked by a change from causal to compulsive alcohol intake, involving dysregulation of both the reward and stress systems of the brain (Volkow et al., 2017, Dong et al., 2017, Crowley et al., 2019). Alcohol abusers usually start their voyage into drinking abuse in a controlled manner and as a goal-directed behavior, that is made in anticipation of a particular outcome. However, repeated exposure to alcohol along with paired environmental stimuli may shift alcohol-seeking to habitual behavior.
