Stay Clean, Earn Prizes

Clinics Offer Addicts Incentives To Stay Off Drugs

(AP) 
You can't buy cigarettes or alcohol with the vouchers. But almost anything else is OK — sneakers, CDs, an iPod. The catch is, if the patient tests positive, his or her next clean sample will be worth only the minimum, or $2.50.

If past research is a guide, teens getting the vouchers will stay clean at rates roughly 20 percent to 30 percent higher than if they had counseling and medication alone, Marsch said.

"At first, it's sort of like, `Yeah, yeah. Whatever,"' said Jessica, who participated in a program coordinated by Marsch in Burlington, Vt., when she was 18, and agreed to be interviewed on the condition that only her first name be used.

"But once we got going, it was kind of nice to be rewarded for doing something good," she said. "Growing up, I didn't have the best family life. I wasn't used to that extra pat on the back."

Over time, she earned enough to pay off some bills and buy a CD player.

Nancy Petry, a researcher at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, conducted several studies in which a clean urine sample earned addicts a dip into a bowl filled with slips for various prizes — a bus token, a pair of socks, new dishes, movie tickets. And somewhere in the bowl was a jumbo prize worth about $100.

"It turned out to be a big incentive," Petry said of her experiments, which have involved about 1,000 people.

Typically, only 20 percent to 30 percent of patients might complete a full 12-week treatment course without failing a test, but with the prize system in place, that rate improved to between 40 percent and 60 percent, Petry said.

It is unclear how successful such programs are in the long term. Almost all patients eventually have at least one relapse.

Jessica, now 21, stayed sober for seven months after completing Marsch's program but slipped hard once it ended. Within a few years, she had moved on to heroin.

Her latest treatment program, in which she takes methadone and attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings twice daily, has her feeling optimistic. She has been clean for a month.

"I feel like I'm on the right track," she said.