The pattern of alcohol addiction, related to reward dysfunction, can be amply illustrated by excerpts from two case histories from Knapp (1996) and Goodwin (1981). In the first representative case history, an individual progresses from the state where they stated, “I drank when I was happy and I drank when I was anxious and I drank when I was bored and I drank when I was depressed, which was often,” to, “I loved the way drink made me feel, and I loved its special power of deflection, its ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feelings,” and, “There’s a sense of deep need, and the response is a grabbiness, a compulsion to latch on to something outside yourself in order to assuage some deep discomfort” (Knapp 1996). Similarly, in a second representative case history, “Alcohol seemed to satisfy some specific need I had, which I can’t describe,” and, “There were always reasons to drink. I was low, tense, tired, mad, happy,” and, “The goal, always,
