UAMS Scientist Finds Therapy and Incentives Enhance Treatment for Marijuana Addiction
| LITTLE ROCK – People addicted to marijuana are more likely to stop smoking and stay abstinent if they are given incentives along with cognitive-behavioral therapy, according to a senior scientist at the Alan Budney, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine and CAR senior scientist, worked with colleagues at the Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: individuals who received vouchers as incentives to remain drug-free; participants who received cognitive-behavioral therapy only; and those who received a combination of therapy and vouchers. Vouchers for items not related to their addiction were awarded for having marijuana-free urine samples. In therapy, people were taught to recognize unhelpful patterns of thinking and reacting and to modify or replace these with more realistic or helpful ones. At the end of three months of treatment 43 percent of the combination group was no longer using marijuana, compared with 40 percent of the voucher group and 30 percent of the therapy group. A substantial difference, however, was noted at the end of the 12-month follow-up, with 37 percent of the combination group staying abstinent, compared with 17 percent of the voucher group and 23 percent of the therapy group. “We found that vouchers generated greater rates of marijuana abstinence compared with therapy alone, but that therapy enhanced the voucher effect following treatment,” said Budney. “Together, the combination of vouchers and therapy resulted in higher abstinence rates during the year following treatment than vouchers alone. This suggests that therapy helps maintain the initial positive effect of using vouchers to initiate abstinence during treatment.” The positive effect of using vouchers has now been demonstrated across treatments for alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and opiate dependence, indicating that combining a voucher program with other types of substance abuse treatment is likely to improve outcomes, Budney said. UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, five centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has about 2,320 students and 690 medical residents. It is one of the state’s largest public employers with almost 9,000 employees, including nearly 1,000 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital and the VA Medical Center. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in