Role of Hormones in Substance Use Disorders.

Addictive drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, have well-documented actions on behavior. The mechanisms that these drugs employ have been under investigation for decades although the investigation of how gonadal and pituitary hormones impact these mechanisms is a relatively new focus. Here we have assembled a group of primary-literature papers solicited from many of the leading addiction laboratories in the world. The papers in this compellation highlight different drug classes, hormones, levels of analysis, and animal models. Our hope is that this “wide angle” approach provides us some overarching conclusions on common mechanisms. In this editorial, we present an overview of each paper and then speculate about general principles.