Behavioral Avoidance Training In Heroin Abstainers

For a long time,relapse has been the most important issue for people who want to rehabiliate from heroin dependence.Meanwhile,based on the Dual Process theory and Embodied Cognition,behavioral avoidance training has proven to be a promising approach in treating substance abuse,including alcohol and nicotine dependence.So far,behavioral avoidance training has not been applied in the field of heroin rehablitation.The present study is the first one to introduce.Behavioral avoidance training as a possible intervention for heroin addiction.It will be of great value in both understanding the mechanism of behavioral avoidance training and providing guidance for treating heroin dependence and evaluating as well as improving the rehabilitation method.In the present study,Randomized Controlled Trial(RCT)is adopted to invetigate the effectiveness of behavioral avoidance traning as a treating method in order to prevent relapse in heroin abstainers.It was conducted in a compulsory isolation detoxification center in Zhejiang province.Sixty-four heroin abstainers were recruited as partcipants in the study and were randomly assigned into the training group and the control group with equal number(32 participants in each group).All received routine education and physical rehabilitation in the institute.Additionally,participants in the training group were asked to complete 20 behavioral avoidance traning sessions within two months.Before and after training(including right after training,one monthe after training,and three months after training),heroin approach-avoidance task,stop signal task,and heroin dependent personality scale were conducted to observe particpants' motivation for heorin,either unconsciously or consciously.The results of 4(time:pre-test,post-test)*2(groups:control group,experimental group)of repetitive measure anova,showed that the interaction effect of time*group was significant,F(3,62)=3.464,p = 0.02.The following main conclusions were obtained:(1)Behavioral avoidance training does implicitly increase heroin abstainers's avoidance motivation for the drug.(2)The training effect can be generalized into novel materials.(3)The training effect may remain for at least three months.