Clinical use of benzodiazepines and decreased memory activation in anxious problem drinkers

Clinical use of benzodiazepines (BZDs) may improve treatment outcome in anxious problem drinkers. Decreased activation of alcohol-related memories by negative affective cues may partly explain the beneficial effects of BZDs. To explore this possibility, the present study assessed semantic priming of alcohol words by negative affective words in anxious problem drinkers who received their standard dose of BZD and in unmedicated controls. Two groups of nine subjects each were matched on levels of anxiety, alcohol use, and alcohol dependence before performing a lexical decision task. Medicated subjects displayed significantly less activation than did unmedicated subjects on trials containing negative affective primes and alcohol-related targets, but displayed equivalent activation on control trials with neutral, categorized words. Degree of activation also correlated with a drug's affinity for the BZD receptor. These preliminary results suggest that BZD-induced amnesia may contribute to the therapeutic effects of these drugs in anxious problem drinkers.