By: Tom Brown, Ph.D. CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) is a non-confrontational approach to getting a loved one to enter addiction treatment. It is an approach designed for the concerned other (spouse, family member, friend), who is seeking assistance in getting their loved one help. CRAFT can also help the person you are concerned about reduce their substance use, even without their direct cooperation. CRAFT is successful in getting people into treatment by a three to one margin over traditional intervention strategies. CRAFT is motivational rather than confrontational. Concerned Significant Others (CSO) learn how to motivate loved ones to change, by rewarding sober activities and discouraging activities that include drugs or alcohol. The motivational approach to ...

Will insurance cover addiction if it's not a disease? Some highly vocal addiction recovery advocacy groups claim that addictions, or at least some addictions, are diseases. These groups argue that insurance coverage for addiction treatment is crucial for recovery, and that insurers will not pay for treatment if addiction is not understood as a disease. Therefore, they say, we need to keep insisting that addiction is a disease, and keep insisting that our insurers cover addiction treatment. Defining Diseases and Conditions However, insurers already pay for many conditions that are not diseases. For instance, broken bones, pregnancies, and the repair of congenital defects are not normally called diseases, but these conditions are covered by most insurance plans. The term that is relev...

The disease perspective discourages many people from seeking help and implies that addiction is a disease. Suppose you have had a “few too many,” and you have done so a few too many times in recent weeks or months. You might also be interested in: Addiction is Learning, Not Disease Most people, under these circumstances, will realize that a problem could be emerging. The idea that someone has to “hit bottom” before thinking about their addictive behavior is ridiculous! 1) So You Decide to Cut Back (Why Entirely Give up a Good Thing?) But if you aren’t successful, you might seek outside help. Unfortunately, there is almost no help for you, unless you are willing to say you have a disease! At the early stages of addiction problems, almost everyone could honestly say they don’t have a ...

Racism, dogmatism, and sexism are the judgments that one race, set of beliefs, or sex are superior. I am introducing the term “recoveryism,” defined as the judgment that one approach to recovery is superior. Recoveryism often gets even more extreme: there is only ONE approach to recovery. Any other “approach” is just pseudo-recovery. Individuals who try these pseudo-recoveries will not recover until they finally seek the one true way. A Recent Example of Recoveryism One clear-cut example of recoveryism can be found in James Frey’s book, A Million Little Pieces.  Although aspects of Frey’s book have come under intense criticism, I suspect the recoveryism aspect of his writing is accurate.  He describes his two-month stay in residential treatment, and the intense hours just before and...

Research shows that substance use disorder (SUD) patients who attend 12-step mutual help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous experience reduced healthcare costs and better outcomes. However, many individuals with SUD never attend 12-step meetings, while others who attend initially do not follow through. The reasons for non-attendance and dropout of 12-step meetings have not been thoroughly studied. Kelly, Kahler, and Humphreys asked, “Why do individuals stop attending 12-step groups (and why do others refuse to attend meetings in the first place)?” (2009). These researchers suggest that the questions are important because 12-step groups are almost universally recommended as a component of drug rehab, addiction treatment and long-term addiction recovery. The Research:Why Do Some Avoid...

Traditional Chinese medicine revolves around herbal remedies and acupuncture for addiction recovery. Might these ancient therapies be successfully used in modern addiction treatment? Chinese and American researchers studied the existing evidence and concluded that, although more testing is need, some traditional remedies can compliment modern medicine for promoting addiction recovery (Lu et. al., 2009). What We Know The research team examined texts and computerized literature concerning treatment and neurobiology of herbal medicines as well as acupuncture for drug abuse and dependence. They found that acupuncture showed evidence for clinical efficacy in opiate withdrawal, but it showed poor efficacy for alcohol and nicotine withdrawal and relapse prevention. No large studies support...

External rewards in drug recovery was not as effective as learning solid coping skills. Researchers at the University of Connecticut Health Center found that, for regular (dependent) users of marijuana, long-term abstinence was more likely to occur for patients who actively used recovery coping skills. Abstaining patients developed more confidence in the effectiveness of the coping skills and their ability to use these skills. Rewarding abstinence by paying the patients (an approach called “contingency management”) was successful in the early days and weeks of drug recovery. However, unless the patients also developed new insights and actively changed recovery-related behaviors (including actively taking steps to prevent relapse), the initial benefits of rewards wore off over time. ...

Adolescent alcohol use and alcohol use disorders among adolescents constitute serious problems. By grade 12, nearly 60 percent of adolescents have been drunk, and studies suggest that approximately 6 percent of adolescents have an alcohol use disorder. In adulthood, males typically drink more frequently than females. However, during adolescence, females drink at rates equivalent to those of males. Among adults, alcohol-dependent women seem to be more susceptible to brain damage due to alcohol use. Animal studies suggest that the adolescent brain is more susceptible to brain damage due to alcohol use. Thus, alcohol use may affect male and female adolescent brains differently, and females may be more susceptible to brain damage from alcohol use in alcohol recovery. Researchers from the Un...

In Spain, alcohol dependence affects up to 10 percent of the population and a major public health problem. Previous studies have suggested that personality disorders affect from 2.8 and 11 percent of the population, and studies of personality disorders among alcoholics suggest that the prevalence of personality disorders ranges from 24 to 78 percent among alcohol-dependent individuals. There have been discrepancies in studies of personality disorders among alcohol-dependent individuals, but the literature nevertheless suggests that personality disorders are more prevalent in this group than in the general population. Thus, the possibility of personality disorders should be explored in alcohol treatment and alcohol recovery. A team of researchers in Spain set out to discover the most fre...

A recent study suggests that depression, obesity, and alcohol use disorder are interrelated conditions among young adult women but not among men. A better understanding of the relationship between these interrelated conditions would help young women in alcohol recovery. A team of Washington University researchers collected data from young adults at the ages of 24, 27, and 30 (McCarty et. al., 2009). Nearly half of the 776 participants met the criteria for depression, obesity, or alcohol use disorder at each time point.   Alcohol Use Disorder Stats From The Study The study found that women with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) at age 24 were more than three times more likely to be obese at age 27. Women who were obese at age 27 were more than twice as likely to be depressed whe...