Contact:

Robert Meyers, (505) 842-8932 Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821

November 1, 2001

CASAA PROFESSOR PUBLISHES BOOK ON TREATING ALCOHOL AND DRUGS USING COMMUNITY REINFORCEMENT APPROACH

Dr. Robert Meyers, a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions at UNM, has been involved with the community reinforcement approach to treating patients with alcohol and substance abuse problems for nearly 30 years. The community reinforcement approach, or CRA, is an alcohol and drug treatment method that has gained a reputation for its success over the past three decades.

In his new book, A Community Reinforcement Approach to Addiction Treatment (Cambridge University Press, 2001) Meyers provides basic guidelines for clinicians, focusing on communication skills, problem solving, drink-refusal strategies and addresses the needs of the client as part of a social community.

Combining practical advice on matters with a scientific survey of CRA in use, the book offers a new treatment approach to all involved with the support and treatment of individuals with alcohol and drug problems. It is designed to make changes in the client’s daily environment, to reduce substance abuse and promote a healthier life-style.

“One of the great things about the community reinforcement approach is that we have never had a negative trial when we’ve tested CRA against another method,” Meyers said.

A unique new part of the CRA family is CRAFT, which stands for Community Reinforcement and Family Training. This mode of treatment is designed to help a family member motivate a treatment-resistant substance user to enter treatment. In a recent clinical trial CRAFT had a 65 percent success rate getting people into treatment when tested against the Johnson Institute’s Intervention method and Alcoholics Anonymous, which have success rates of 29 percent and 13 percent respectively.
Meyers feels the main difference in the success of CRAFT is the involvement of family members as part of the overall treatment.

“The key is family members,” Meyers said. “We help family members of a user who refuses help. They have an enormous amount of information on the user that is very important, they just don’t know how to use that information. They help us get the individual in to accept treatment. We teach empowerment, and how to take care of themself. We want family members of the users to lead fuller and more balanced lives even if the user never enters treatment.

“We try to teach family members how to disassociate themselves from the user when they are drunk or stoned and we show them how to give praise when the user is sober,” Meyers said.

CRA can be likened to operant behavior where a rat would hit a certain lever and get a reward. The CRA therapist helps the user find pro-social rewards to the user to get him or her to stop.

“It’s not meant to be a rigid treatment method,” Meyers said. “The key is to define what is rewarding to the individual user. Each culture has different rewards and that’s the challenge. People have to quit for a reason, the don’t quit for nothing.”
CRA is a fairly well-known treatment method throughout the world including various programs in Australia, Poland, South Africa and Sweden.

“What’s nice about CRA is that it adapts to various communities as opposed to the community adapting to CRA,” said Meyers.

Meyers has been at CASAA for the past 15 years and has been involved in addiction treatment for more than 25 years. Meyers has given talks on CRA from California to Vermont.

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