Equally popular was the position, also supported by Jellinek, that craving was a direct sign of drug withdrawal. WITHDRAWAL-based craving was often described as physical craving, distinguishing it from craving that led to relapse during long periods of abstinence after withdrawal had subsided. Craving that occurred after an addict no longer was experiencing withdrawal was typically viewed as the result of psychological factors. The craving concept was suf-ficiently controversial that a committee of alcoholism experts brought together by the World Health Organization in 1954 (WHO Expert Committees on Mental Health and on Alcohol, 1955) recommended that the term craving not be used to describe various aspects of drinking behavior seen in alcoholics.
The use of craving as a key process in theories of addiction decreased during the 1960s and early 1970s as a result of several factors. During this period, many studies showed that alcoholics did not necessarily engage in loss of control drinking when they dranksmall doses of alcohol. The failure to confirm Jellinek's conceptualization of alcoholic drinking cast doubt on the idea that craving was synonymous with loss of control over drug intake. Furthermore, withdrawal models of craving could not account for the common observation that many addicts experienced craving and relapsed long after their withdrawal had disappeared.
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