Alcohol addiction treatment has a higher success rate with the inclusion of behavior therapies.
The goals of a behavior therapy is to change the patient’s behavior; have a healthy life; convince alcoholics to have longer treatment and for medications to have better effects.
Types of Behavior Therapy in Alcohol Addiction Treatment:
Motivational technique aims at challenging and inspiring the recovering addict to change their addictive behavior. Here, the patient is required to learn and understand what is addiction and ways to deal with it.
Over sensitization is the process where patients are discouraged to return to their alcohol addiction by letting them face undesirable consequences when they display negative behavior in the facility. For instance, the patient is given antabuse that can induce unpleasant feeling to the patient when they go back to drinking. Patients may also be given electric shocks that are milder than antabuse.
Covert sensitization makes use of imagery-based procedure where therapist let the patient imagine undesirable behavior such as excessive alcohol drinking. Its aim is to build up an aversion or hatred to a stimulus that caused the behavior. It is covert because it is done through the imagination, but the effects are carried out in actual situations.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is an alcohol addiction behavior therapy that is structured to assist the patients identify, understand and process their thoughts and emotions. This technique helps patients understand that they can control their feelings and thinking, despite their inability to control the situations in the reality.
Token therapy is the therapy that involves giving of tokens to recovering alcoholics as reward for their good behaviors. Tokens can be redeemed for extra privileges or material things.
Behavior Therapy Techniques:
There are varieties of techniques that a therapist can apply to boost the patient’s understanding of the happenings. It also aims at helping them modify their old behavior.
Self-monitoring: Recovering addicts keep a record of their actions all throughout the day. Afterwards, they share the record to the behavior therapist in order for the medical practitioner know and assess their improvement.
Role playing: It is done to let the patients become aware of the social situations that trigger alcohol addiction and help them handle them. The behavior therapist may ask alcoholics to role-play how they are going to show their drink refusal skills.
Behavior modification is a technique where patients are given rewards for their positive behaviors.
A behavior contract is a reinforcing technique to encourage alcoholics not to engage in an undesirable activity. The contract states the patient’s agreement with the therapist, including the punishment if they go beyond it or the rewards or incentives if they follow the agreement.
Scheduled activities is where patients participate in a particular activity before the next therapy session begins. The purpose is to encourage positive behavior to the recovering alcoholics.