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Alcohol Treatment : What really works?

Alcohol treatment comes in many forms. An exhaustive review by Miller and Hester (1986) of the literature on alcohol treatment examined nine major classes of interventions. They found the four most common being drug treatment, psychotherapy or counseling, Alcoholics Anonymous, and alcoholism education. Some the less commonly used approaches included family therapy, aversion therapies, behavior modification methods, controlled drinking and various other approaches spreading across a broad-spectrum of therapeutic approaches. Alcohol treatment is best approached according to Beck, Wright, Newman and Liese, (1993) as a two-stage process which require different interventions at each specific stage. The first set of interventions include promoting changes in drinking behavior toward abstinence or moderation, which frequently utilize some type of behavioral self-control training. The second set of interventions of an alcohol treatment program should be more focused on maintenance of the sobriety, which may involve additional interventions such as social skills training, in order to increase an individuals confidence in relating to drug-free individuals.