I have trademark dibs on the name "Chill Pill" for the pharmacological
therapy regimen.
Give me a second here to catch my breath and self-medicate...
Puff Puff cough hack choke wheeeeeze..... ah! that's better!
.
New drug therapies may be needed to help abusers who don’t respond to
psychotherapy, according Auriacombe.
“The high relapse rate and number of cannabis dependent individuals
suggests the importance of developing pharmacotherapies for patients
who may be less responsive to other treatments,” Auriacombe said. “In
general, the problem in treating cannabis-dependent individuals has
been less that of treating and more of preventing relapse.”
.
Excuse me while I relapse ...
Puff Puff ..... ah! that's MUCH better!
Perhaps treating an 'abuse' that isn't an 'abuse' presents a certain
degree of difficulty for the psychotheraputic community, they need to
drug the 'abuser' to create or exacerbate incipent or non-existant
psychological symptoms. FWIW, I know of a dentist that used to drill and
fill teeth that weren't caried... he lost his licence to practice and
was sued into poverty.
Fri 21-Jul-2006
Marijuana Abuse Responds to Psychotherapy, Overall Is Hard to Treat
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/522148/?sc=dwhn
Newswise — Marijuana dependence and abuse can be moderately improved by
various psychotherapy treatments — but reduced use rather than
abstinence may be the best clinicians can hope for at this time, a new
review finds.
One-on-one cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is most effective, but
other counseling approaches also help users to cut down or improve
social problems associated with their marijuana use.
Dr. Marc Auriacombe of the Addiction Research Group at the Université
Victor Segalen in Bordeaux, France, and colleagues analyzed results from
studies of 1,267 people who received no or delayed intervention,
motivational enhancement therapy (MET), family therapy, CBT or
combinations of these for marijuana abuse or dependence.
The researchers measured outcomes such as abstinence from marijuana
(cannabis) use, improvements in family and social problems, other drug
abuse and continuing treatment to assess the various approaches.
“The six studies included in this review show that cannabis dependence
is not easily treated by psychotherapies in outpatient settings,” the
authors write. “Cognitive-behavioral therapy both in individual or group
sessions and motivational enhancement in individual sessions has been
demonstrated to be effective to reduce cannabis use.”
The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a
publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization
that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based
conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content
and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
Because the researchers compared studies with varied interventions and
timelines, they didn’t perform a meta-analysis that measured the overall
results, and so did not provide overall comparisons across studies. But
they found improvements in different measures of patients who received
some type of psychotherapeutic interventions, especially CBT. Among these:
--In the study of 450 users that showed the greatest benefit of CBT,
marijuana use was lower for those who received sessions of CBT or MET,
and at four months, 22.4 percent of those in one-on-one CBT intervention
had been abstinent for the previous 90 days compared with 8.6 percent of
those treated with MET.
--Another study of 212 users showed those who received CBT or social
support had a reduction in marijuana use throughout the post-treatment
follow-up period and at 12 months; about 14 percent reported abstinence
from marijuana use and 19 percent reported use at 50 percent or less of
their pretreatment levels.
--A smaller CBT-MET study rewarded users for staying clean. Some of the
60 participants received vouchers exchangeable for retail items
contingent on them submitting negative urine specimens. However, results
showed no clear benefit with either treatment, although participants who
received vouchers were more abstinent than those who did not.
CBT emphasizes the role of how people think, rather than external
influences, in causing negative feelings and behavior, and encourage
patients to make positive changes. MET seeks to enhance motivation for
behavior change by working with and resolving ambivalence, while family
therapy focuses on changing the interaction patterns within a patient’s
entire family.
New drug therapies may be needed to help abusers who don’t respond to
psychotherapy, according Auriacombe.
“The high relapse rate and number of cannabis dependent individuals
suggests the importance of developing pharmacotherapies for patients who
may be less responsive to other treatments,” Auriacombe said. “In
general, the problem in treating cannabis-dependent individuals has been
less that of treating and more of preventing relapse.”
In terms of the improving low abstinence rates, Auriacombe said,
“Alcohol research has suggested that the therapeutic effects of
pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy may be synergetic, with the greatest
treatment efficacy seen when medications are combined with
psychotherapy.” He said that similar combinations “may prove optimal in
the treatment of cannabis dependence.”
People often fail to notice that a friend or neighbor has a marijuana
problem because the consequences of cannabis use are less striking than
those associated with other drugs, according to Dr. Alan J. Budney of
the University of Vermont’s Treatment Research Center. “You don’t see
the severe acute consequences you get with alcohol or cocaine,” Budney said.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, marijuana is
the most widely abused drug in the world.
Denis C, et al. Psychotherapeutic interventions for cannabis abuse and/or
dependence in outpatient settings (Review).The Cochrane Database of
Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 3.
