Self-regulation, behavioral inhibition, and risk for alcoholism and substance use disorders

Addiction liability involves multiple aspects of the person and the context. The within-person aspects can be organized within a broad temperament framework involving constituents of self-regulation. A fundamental dual-process model helps organize and structure the research program because self-regulation is conceived as involving both bottom-up and top-down capacities. From this perspective, addiction liability emerges and expresses itself in relation to early consolidation of bottom-up appetitive systems, organization of top-down control and executive processes, and progressive assembly of either self-regulation or its disruption in dysregulatory psychopathology such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct problems. Several key studies supporting this hierarchical and sequential emergence of liability and addiction risk are summarized in this chapter.