Clinical Guide to Alcohol Treatment: The Community Reinforcement Approach

This book is the first complete guide to implementing the Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA), an empirically based, highly effective cognitive-behavioral program for treating alcohol problems. CRA acknowledges the powerful role of environmental contingencies in encouraging or discouraging drinking, and attempts to rearrange these contingencies so that a non-drinking lifestyle is more rewarding than a drinking one. Unique in its breadth, the approach utilizes social, recreational, familial, and vocational strategies to aid clients in the recovery process. This authoritative manual is a hands-on guide to applying these therapeutic procedures.
The authors present a step-by-step guide to each component of the treatment plan, many of which have been shown to be effective forms of treatment in themselves. Topics include behavioral skills training, social and recreational counseling, marital therapy, motivational enhancement, job counseling, and relapse prevention.
Each chapter provides detailed instructions for conducting a procedure, describes what difficulties to expect, and presents strategies for overcoming them. Sample dialogues between clients and therapists, annotated by the authors, further illuminate the treatment process. The book concludes with a chapter that both addresses the common mistakes made when implementing CRA, and emphasizes the flexibility and benefits of this total treatment plan.
This book is an invaluable resource for a wide range of practitioners including psychologists, psychiatrists, substance abuse counselors, and social workers.

Robert J. Meyers, M.S., is the Clinical Director of several CRA grants at the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions (CASAA) at the University of New Mexico.