Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Publication Date

2-1-2025

Journal

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology

DOI

10.1037/pha0000744

PMID

39207396

PMCID

PMC11987080

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

2-1-2026

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Author MSS

Abstract

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is a major public health issue, and greater cocaine use severity has been associated with worse treatment retention and outcomes. Therefore, greater understanding of processes that influence cocaine use is needed. Both anhedonia (i.e., undervaluation of non-drug rewards) and cocaine demand (i.e., cocaine valuation) are related to cocaine use severity and thematically related to each other at face value, but no studies have directly compared these outcomes to our knowledge. The current study represents a secondary analysis from a two-phase sequential, multiple assignment, randomized trial (SMART) aimed at developing adaptive interventions for CUD. We examined the relationship between anhedonia and cocaine demand and how these measures were related to cocaine use severity. Participants (N = 116) were treatment-seeking adults with CUD. All measures were taken at baseline prior to treatment initiation. Analyses revealed 1) “moderate” and “very strong evidence” of relationships between cocaine demand factors (i.e., persistence, amplitude) and anhedonia (PP values ≥77.8%); 2) positive association between cocaine demand (both persistence and amplitude) and measures of cocaine use severity, with the exception of one relationship, which was in the opposite direction; and 3) demand amplitude continued to be positively related to cocaine use severity, even when considering anhedonia. Overall, findings from this study indicate cocaine demand relates to cocaine use severity more strongly than anhedonia.

Keywords

Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Anhedonia, Cocaine, Cocaine-Related Disorders, Reward, Severity of Illness Index, cocaine demand, anhedonia, cocaine use disorder, cocaine use severity, behavioral economics

Published Open-Access

yes

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