Heroin habit quicker in alcoholics?

[bcubed]

Recently finished reading William S. Burroughs' Junky, a fascinating read.

In it, he states something to the effect that a habit comes back quicker for an experienced user versus a newbie (that is, if a long-time user and a noob both were completely clean, and both used the same amount for the same time, the experienced user would wind up more addicted, with worse withdrawls.)

Now, this certainly isn't a "double-blind" study, but I'm inclined to give the man some deference in this regard.

Here's the story: SWIM's a fairly experienced alkie (27 yrs; off and on dependency the last 3) and he'd like to go on a 7-day H binge. He feels this would let him experience both the euphoria and (just a bit) of dope sickness.

Would his booze experience have any impact on how quickly he might pick up dependency? He recently came off a 15 drink a day habit over 6 days, and it was farily unpleasant (and would have been much more so w/o Valium).

Sorry if this has been covered, but a (half-assed) search came up empty.