Substance use and the value of control

Abstract Clinical criteria for substance-use disorder collectively specify a loss of instrumental control over consumption; yet little empirical work has addressed how substance use shapes the utility of agency in motivated behavior. We combined a hierarchical gambling task with cross-sectional substance-use surveys and computational cognitive modeling to assess the preference for controllable environments in adult humans with self-reported abstinence from psychostimulants, opioids, alcohol, or sedatives. For psychostimulant use, longer abstinence selectively increased the preference for instrumental control. In contrast, for opioids and alcohol, longer abstinence respectively predicted increased preferences for divergent outcome distributions and free choice, regardless of controllability. These associations between substance use and decision making were dissociable from participants’ ability to maximize monetary payoffs in controllable environments. Our findings implicate the dopaminergic system in agency coding.