On a day prior to the laboratory sessions, subjects participated in a habituation and imagery training procedure involving exposure to the stress of intravenous catheter insertion and specific instructions on progressive relaxation and guided imagery participation. This was followed by 3 experimental sessions on consecutive days where subjects were exposed to 5-minute audiotaped scripts of stress, alcohol-related, and neutral, relaxing scenarios, using a well-established and widely used, individually calibrated guided imagery procedure.10 Only 1 stimulus script was presented per session on each day and condition order was randomized and counterbalanced across participants by group. On each testing day, participants abstained from breakfast and, after a smoke break at 7:30 am, were brought to the testing room at 7:45 am and then prepared for intravenous catheter insertion by the research nurse. After settling into a sitting position in a hospital bed, a heparin-treated catheter was inserted by the research nurse in the antecubital region of the subject’s nonpreferred arm to periodically obtain repeated blood samples during the laboratory sessions. This was followed by a 1-hour adaptation and baseline period during which
