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Behavioral approaches to addiction treatment provide a wide range of opportunity to those looking for a way to heal and overcome substance use disorder. Many therapies provide incentives for the user to remain abstinent from substance use while others focus on teaching the user how to utilize important life skills associated with stress reduction and trigger prevention.
If you or someone you love is addicted to drugs or alcohol, behavioral therapy has likely been mentioned to you as part of a rounded approach to treatment and care.
1. CBT
Commonly used to treat alcohol addiction, cocaine addiction and methamphetamine addiction, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy involves preventing relapse through the development of maladaptive behavioral patterns and learning processes that identify and correct these patterns.
2. Contingency Management and Motivational Incentives
Contingency Management is used in the treatment of alcohol addiction, opiate addiction and stimulant addiction as well as marijuana addiction. This approach to treatment involves giving patients “tangible rewards to reinforce positive behaviors such as abstinence,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
3. Community Reinforcement
Used to treat alcohol addiction, cocaine addiction and prescription drug addictions, community reinforcement is often referred to as vouchers or community voucher treatment. This involves providing users with vouchers to community activities, stores, restaurants or similar activities in exchanges for their meeting recovery goals such as abstinence or commitment and participation in counseling sessions.
4. Motivational Enhancement
Treating alcohol addiction and marijuana addiction using motivational enhancement therapy involves the use of counseling that helps to resolve user ambivalence toward treatment and recovery. The idea here is to increase motivation to attend treatment and then later improve the motivation to remain sober.
5. The Matrix Model
This method of behavioral therapy is primarily used in the treatment of stimulant addiction such as an addiction to cocaine or methamphetamine. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “the Matrix Model provides a framework for engaging stimulant abusers in treatment and helping them achieve abstinence.” This process works by monitoring patient drug use through urinalysis and providing a positive, encouraging relationship between patient and counselor upon which improved behaviors and positive change may take place.
6. 12-Step Therapy
The 12-step model of treatment was initially designed to help those suffering from alcohol addiction, but has since been adapted to assist in the recovery from meth addiction, cocaine addiction and opiate addiction. Common behavioral approaches to these addictions are seen in the support offerings of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and the many other “Anonymous” groups that take place worldwide.
7. Family Behavior Therapy
The family unit suffers greatly as a whole when a loved one is addicted no matter what drug or substance the user is addicted to. As such, family behavior therapy focuses on helping the adults and children in a family unit to address co-occurring problems that have been escalated as a result of substance abuse.
Get Help Now
Overcoming addiction is a challenge even for the strongest willed, healthy and courageous individual. Our treatment advisors are ready to take your call and hear your plea for help. If you’re still not sure whether you really need treatment, consider a call to our helpline to sort through the factors in your life that could lead to a significant need for help.