Cue exposure as an assessment technique in the management of a heroin addict: case report.

A recently-detoxified heroin addict was exposed to a battery of drug-related stimuli which he had previously assisted in identifying as personally relevant. Skin conductance was measured during exposure to both drug-related stimuli and neutral stimulus items. The amplitude of the first skin conductance response following stimulus presentation and the number of skin conductance responses during stimulus presentation were significantly different for the drug-related and neutral stimuli. Post-exposure subjective ranking of the drug-related items differed markedly from pre-exposure ranking; and the post-exposure subjective rankings were closer to the ranked order of the measured physiological responses than the pre-exposure subjective rankings. The use of cue exposure assessment in planning treatment for relapse prevention and the possible importance of idiosyncratic cues in the environment are discussed.