The Importance of Early Intervention of Addiction and Harm Reduction

In an interview with Joseph Volpicelli, MD, PhD, Psychiatric Times asked about preventing addiction and treating it in the early stages.

“We wait until a person has had problems with drinking for a long period of time before we address the issue of it, when they begin to develop liver problems or other. Terrible consequences for drinking,” Volpicelli said. The cardinal feature of addiction is a tendency for one drink or use of a drug increases the need to use more of it. Someone early their addiction might try to limit themselves to 1 or 2 drinks but they end up having 5 or 6.

“It is important to identify a pattern where someone who is using alcohol in a way that they lack control over their use,” Volpicelli said. Addressing drinking patterns early includes getting them to talk about how their drinking makes them feel, either afterwards or during.

Challenges like dry January, where the goal is to abstain from alcohol for the month of January, can help with getting the patient to assess their relationship with alcohol. “Often people will say, ‘you know what? I didn’t drink this month and for some reason I feel better. I have increased energy, my sleeping is better, my mood is better, I’m getting along better with other people.’ And they can begin to see how the alcohol drinking is affecting their life,” Volpicelli said.

He says telling people not to drink, to completely abstain is not helpful. “For many younger people, they’ll just take that as a challenge to sneak their drinking,” Volpicelli said. It is important to understand and teach people about the harm associated with drinking and to use harm reduction techniques, and to teach them that there is real harm done to their lives by excessive drinking.

This is part 4 of a 5-part interview with Joseph Volpicelli, MD, PhD. You can watch the full interview here.

Dr Volpicelli is the executive director of the Institute of Addiction Medicine.