Drug abuse is a severe problem, that requires the development of more effective intervention. While the psychological models that have been applied to substance abuse and its treatment vary widely, they almost all deal with the issue of emotions and thoughts. Many of these theories assume that some substance abusers use, in part, to reduce (i.e., escape or avoid) negative emotions such as stress, depression, or anxiety. Few of the empirically based approaches attempt to change this emotional avoidance directly -- rather emotional avoidance is taken as a given and attempts are made to modify other components, such as reducing the emotional or cognitive states that the drug user seeks to change through drugs. Some of the less empirically-oriented therapeutic perspectives (e.g., humanistic therapies, Gestalt therapy, and so on) are directed at emotional avoidance per se, but there are few data on the efficacy of these approaches. Data from several lines of research suggest that emotional avoidance itself can be changed through psychological acceptance methods. If drug users can become more willing to feel emotions without needless resistance, they may have fewer reasons to use drugs. This project proposes to develop a psychological acceptance protocol, to develop several process measures that can be used to assess changes in emotional willingness, and to pilot test the effectiveness of an acceptance approach compared to the treatments typically given drug users with a group of polydrug abusers.
