The role of attachment styles and brain-behavioral systems in substance abuse relapse of ‎opiate addicts

The present study aimed to investigate the role of attachment styles and brain-behavioral systems in ‎substance abuse relapse of opiate addicts. ‎

In this causal-comparative research, 50 addicts with opiate relapse were selected randomly from among those admitted to ‎Omid and Rahaei addiction treatment clinics and MMT government unit of Sabzevar city; 50 addicts with the purity ‎of over one year from among the participants in NA groups and 50 individuals from among non-addicts in Sabzevar city ‎in 2016 through convenience sampling. All the subjects completed Revised Adult Attachment Inventory (RAAI) and ‎Gray-Wilson Personality Questionnaire (GWPQ). For data analysis, univariate and multivariate analysis of variance test, ‎Kruskal Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney U test in SPSS-23 software were applied.‎ 

The results demonstrated that people with substance abuse relapse compared to the non-affected group and ‎individuals with the purity of over one year had greater insecure ambivalent attachment ‎style (P=0.001). Further, non-addicts relative to pure people suffer from less ambivalent attachment (P=0.012). ‎Although there was no significant difference between pure people and abusers in terms of brain-behavioral systems, the ‎activity of the approach component in the behavioral activation system (BAS), the component of passive avoidance in the ‎behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the component of flight in the fight-flight system was higher in two groups of people ‎with substance abuse relapse and pure people compared to non-addicts (P<0.05).‎

It seems that the insecure attachment style and brain-behavioral systems have an important role in ‎substance abuse relapse.‎