Food fantasies of incarcerated drug users

In a 1966 survey of food preference associations to narcotics, 47 incarcerated male addicts' actual as well as fantasied oral behaviour was studied. A significant preference was expressed for liquid and solid sweets in both the actual and fantasied experience during periods of abstinence. Retrospective, anecdotal reports indicate that the subjects' food preferences are psychologically determined and are chiefly related to infantile components in their personality makeup. The preference for sweets has the quality of a craving, and the substances consumed are thought of as yielding pleasurable effects resembling those of the drug. The hypothesis was substantiated that infantile hunger is the prototype of the adult's morbid craving and that food preferences reflect his type of early psychosexual need.