Alcohol vs. Cocaine: Impulsivity and Alexithymia in Substance Use Disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) are frequently associated with impairments in emotional regulation and behavioural control. Among the most prevalent substances of abuse, alcohol and cocaine are known to exert distinct effects on neuropsychological functioning. This study aimed to compare individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and Cocaine Use Disorder (CUD) in terms of impulsivity and alexithymia, and to examine the clinical implications of poly-substance use involving both alcohol and cocaine. Participants completed standardized psychometric assessments, including the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Group comparisons were conducted using non-parametric tests, and logistic regression models were applied to control for demographic covariates. The findings showed that impulsivity levels were comparable across groups, whereas alexithymia scores were significantly higher in individuals with AUD and in those with poly-substance use, relative to CUD-only participants. These findings underscore the relevance of targeting emotional regulation difficulties, particularly alexithymia, in the assessment and treatment of SUDs. Integrating emotion-focused interventions may enhance treatment outcomes, especially for individuals with co-occurring substance use patterns. Future research is needed to clarify the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms contributing to these differences and to inform more personalized approaches to addiction care.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".