Research Issues in Treatment

The history of research into the treatment of substance abuse is relatively limited. Prior to the 1930s, drug and alcohol abuse in the United States was primarily viewed as a moral deficit and therefore, a matter of personal choice that was often worthy of contempt. With the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in the 1930s, the Zeitgeist changed to associate substance abuse, primarily alcohol abuse, with an incurable disease condition that could be arrested only through the cessation of use and the adherence to a strict code of conduct and participation in AA. However, despite the new disease, or biological, conceptualization of substance abuse, the empirical investigation of substance abuse treatment did not receive much attention until several decades later.

In the second half of the ...