The research on sensation seeking, social deviance, and alcohol use and abuse has focused primarily on populations who are actively using or who are entering a period of life, such as adolescence, when use and abuse typically escalates. Very little is known about the association between sensation seeking, social deviance, and long-term abstinence. Since sensation seeking is associated with high levels of alcohol use and alcohol seeking behavior, elevated levels of sensation seeking would represent a liability to relapse in abstinent alcoholics. Thus, reductions in sensation seeking in alcoholics attempting to be abstinent are likely to be associated with greater success in remaining abstinent. Our recent studies indicate that long-term abstinent alcoholics (LTAA) show elevated levels of social deviance and poor decision-making compared with controls (Fein, Klein et al. 2004; Fein, McGillivray et al. 2007; Di Sclafani, Finn et al. 2008). This suggests that in spite of the fact that they show evidence of poor self-regulation, on average, our LTAA sample remained abstinent for long periods of time. The present study investigates sensation seeking in this sample of middle-aged LTAA,
