“What if addiction treatment programs gave out prizes to patients just for showing up to treatment? Some might call this a waste of money, or bribery, or counter-productive to addressing the underlying issues of addiction. Others say it actually helps patients succeed. Brandywine Counseling is studying this very question as part of the Advancing Recovery project.~ BCI Blog”

The good people over at Brandywine Counseling in Delaware have started a very interesting program that rewards continued attendance to treatment with small prizes.

Does bribing help in a recovery effort?

Read more below the fold…

Better known as BCI, Brandywine Counseling Inc is Delaware’s largest provider of outpatient addiction services and has a staff of 130 that includes certified alcohol and drug counselors, registered and licensed practical nurses, psychologists, and physicians. They have six different locations and are a full member of the United Way.

Since February of this year, BCI has offered small prizes as incentives for people to continue with their scheduled counseling sessions. For each successful attendance they are given a chance to draw from a fishbowl stocked with chances to win anything from a purely motivational certificate to a $75 gift certificate.

Is it working? Well, from the chart above they posted on their website I would say it was early but results send to be trending positive. It’s my opinion that any effort, whether coerced or not, to expose someone suffering from an addiction to an environment where options are available is worth a try.

I am sure there are many out there that are like myself when I was in the throes of my addiction; that feel there is absolutely no hope. I thought my addiction would kill me and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it except speed up the process. So maybe a little bribery couldn’t hurt, let these people see an environment where hope and recovery are in the realm of the possible. I doubt very seriously that a small prize would have been much of an incentive for me to become sober, but it sure wouldn’t have hurt for me to have seen more palatable options than a rock bottom death.

Summary: An incentive program might lure some of those who may have never had the opportunity to be exposed to a healthy environment where recovery is an option. While doubtful such small incentives would work when other incentives such as incarceration, humiliation, and threat of death have failed, just the change of environment might be the spark that later leads to positive thoughts of recovery.

Take a look inside the brains of mice on drugs! Every drug of abuse has its own unique molecular mechanism. You’ll learn how these various drugs disrupt the synapse to make the user feel “high”~ The Genetics Science Learning Center at the University of Utah

Want to know how cocaine, heroin, and alcohol affect your brain? Well this animated production produced by the University of Utah is by far one of the best learning tools I have seen explaining this complicated science. Make sure to turn your volume up, after you get past the 70’s retro-porn soundtrack a very nice lady will explain the progression of slides.

Hat-tip to TheJunkysWife.com

Survey says… DUH! ”

“In a study of 2,750 men and women, researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis found that the sexes showed some key differences in symptoms of problem drinking. For example, men more often reported problems like bingeing or getting into fights, but women were more likely to report feeling depressed or guilty about their drinking. ~ CNN.com Health”

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A study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis of 2,750 men and women found that there are key differences in the manner the sexes display abusive drinking and alcoholic symptoms.

Psychologist Penny E. Nichol and her colleagues published their less than surprising findings on this subject matter in a journal called, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. I know I am being snarky, but does it really take a team of researchers to discover that there are major physiological and psychological differences between men and women, ergo addiction which manifests in both will greatly vary in its symptoms between the sexes?

Perhaps it is just the CNN summary that short changes the gist of this journal that I have not yet had the opportunity to access. What I would hope is that Dr. Nichol and her colleagues were moving toward is that maybe some of the depression, anxiety, and social disorders that occur more prominently in women may in some cases be caused by an addiction that would otherwise be diagnosed in the often bellicose and more easily read men.(ouch)

Regardless of the sex of the patient, I wish that doctors paid more attention to addiction possibly being a root cause of depression and other mental and physical problems before they arbitrarily prescribe treatment and often drugs. I am a big advocate of drug screening prior to the issuance of most prescription medications.

I have linked to the article above in the lead-in, tell me what you think.