Rationale: Individuals with addictive disorders commonly exhibit a shortened temporal window, which interferes with treatment focusing on long-term sobriety. Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) involves generating personalized cues related to anticipated, positive events at various future time points. EFT has been shown to reduce the reinforcing value of addictive substances; however, this has only been shown in non-treatment samples.
Purpose: To examine the feasibility, cumulative, and sustained effects of implementing EFT in a treatment seeking addiction sample over a 1-week protocol on decision-making and alcohol motivation.
Methods: Twenty-eight treatment seeking individuals were randomly assigned to either undergo an EFT intervention or a control Episodic Recent Thinking (ERT) protocol. Assessments were completed at baseline, end of week 1, and a 1-week follow-up. Measures included a delay discounting task, hypothetical alcohol purchase task, clinical outcome measures, and cognitive mechanism measures.
Results: There were significant reductions in alcohol demand indices, delay discounting rates, and an increase in mindful attention awareness after both acute and extended exposure to EFT. Furthermore, the EFT group showed greater reductions compared to the ERT group after extended exposure to their cues.
Conclusion: The results suggest that early implementation of EFT in a treatment seeking addiction sample is beneficial to counteract motivating factors for relapse. This study lays the foundation for future clinical trials for EFT as a supplemental therapy for addictions treatment. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / People with substance use disorders have a significantly shortened time perspective compared to healthy controls. This means that these individuals struggle with thinking about future events beyond several days to a week. Shortened time perspective can be a significant barrier to addiction treatments that typically focus on long-term positive benefits of sobriety or low-risk use. This study examined whether mindful thinking about future events impacted decision-making and motivation for alcohol and drugs. The study used an experimental protocol known as Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) that involves participants interacting with personalized cues related to positive future events. Prior research using EFT in addiction samples has found that interacting with future cues significantly increases delay of gratification, reduces cigarette use, and decreases reinforcing value of alcohol. In this study, we recruited 28 participants with an alcohol use disorder (AUD). Participants practiced EFT training over a two-week protocol. We tested decision making, alcohol craving, and other variables following a single EFT protocol, and changes in these measures over repeated practice. We found significant changes in alcohol craving, decision making, and mindfulness awareness. The study provides proof-of-concept for using EFT in an AUD treatment population and lays the foundation for future clinical trials of EFT as a complement to existing addiction treatments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/24747 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Patel, Herry |
| Contributors | Amlung, Michael, Neuroscience |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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