| Course | ADC 665 Advanced Addiction Theories |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 1 |
| Paper type | Critical program review |
| Length | About 1,128 words, 7 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Aspen University |
| Program | Psychology and Addiction Studies |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for ADC 665 Module 1
What the Evidence Says About How We Treat: A Program Review
Student Name
Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University
ADC 665: Advanced Addiction Theories
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
What the Evidence Says About How We Treat: A Program Review
Renee joined an outpatient addiction program in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, two months ago as a licensed counselor. The program runs three evening groups a week. Most sessions begin with a forty-minute lecture or video on addiction as a disease, followed by a group discussion in which members who minimize their use are challenged by the group and the facilitator. Renee's supervisor asked her to review the program's approach for a staff retreat. The program, Renee and her colleagues are composites created for this course. This paper is her review.
The Theories Behind the Practices
The lectures rest on a disease model: addiction is a chronic, progressive illness, and understanding it is a step toward accepting the need for abstinence. The confrontation rests on a view that people with addiction are defended by denial and must be pushed past it. Both ideas have deep roots in American treatment and in mutual-help traditions. Neither is unreasonable on its face, and many staff entered the field through programs that used them. The question for a review is not whether the ideas are sincere but whether the practices built on them help clients.
Project MATCH
Project MATCH Research Group (1997) randomly assigned more than 1,700 people with alcohol problems to one of three individual therapies: cognitive behavioral coping skills therapy, motivational enhancement therapy and twelve-step facilitation therapy. All three produced large improvements in drinking, and the differences between them were small. The trial's main aim was to test whether matching clients to a therapy by their characteristics, such as severity or psychiatric problems, would improve outcomes; with few exceptions, it did not. The lesson for programs is double: several structured, well-delivered approaches can work, and the quality of delivery may matter as much as the brand.
The Mesa Grande
Miller and Wilbourne (2002) gathered controlled trials of treatments for alcohol use disorders and gave each method a cumulative evidence score, weighting trials by their quality and results. Brief interventions, social skills training, the community reinforcement approach, behavior contracting and behavioral marital therapy ranked among the best supported. Educational lectures and films, general counseling and confrontational counseling ranked near the bottom, with many trials showing no benefit. The ranking does not show that education is harmful, but it suggests that a program built mainly on lectures and confrontation is spending its hours on the least effective methods.
What Has Strong Support
Glasner-Edwards and Rawson (2010) reviewed evidence-based practices across substances. Cognitive behavioral therapy, which teaches skills to manage cravings and high-risk situations; contingency management, which rewards verified abstinence; motivational interviewing, which works with ambivalence rather than against it; and medications such as buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone had the strongest support. They also noted a persistent gap between research and community practice, often because programs lack training, funding or confidence in new methods.
| Current practice | Theory behind it | Evidence | Proposed change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forty-minute lectures | Disease model; insight leads to change | Ranked low by Miller and Wilbourne (2002) | Shorten to ten minutes; add skills practice |
| Group confrontation of minimizing | Denial must be broken | Ranked low; risk of dropout | Train staff in motivational interviewing |
| One group format for all | Common path to recovery | Several structured approaches work similarly | Offer cognitive behavioral skills groups |
| Medication rarely discussed | Abstinence means no drugs | Strong support for medications | Partner with a prescriber; discuss options |
Limits of the Evidence
Trial evidence has limits. Project MATCH excluded people with some severe problems, and many trials in the Mesa Grande enrolled samples unlike the program's clients, who include many people with cocaine as well as alcohol problems and many without stable housing. Evidence rankings also depend on how many trials exist; a method rarely studied cannot rank high. And what is called "lecture" or "confrontation" varies in practice. These limits argue for caution, not for ignoring the evidence.
A Proposal
Rather than changing everything at once, Renee proposed a pilot. One of the three weekly groups would replace most of the lecture with cognitive behavioral skills practice and replace confrontation with motivational interviewing techniques, after a two-day training for its facilitators. The program would track attendance, retention at ninety days and self-reported use for the pilot group and the other two groups for six months. If the pilot group did at least as well, the change would spread to the others.
Respecting Colleagues
Renee's colleagues had built the program over years and cared about their clients. She framed the review as a question the team could answer together, presented the evidence without blaming anyone and invited a senior colleague, who had been skeptical, to co-lead the pilot group. Changing practice depends on people as much as on evidence.
What Each Theory Gets Right
A fair review credits the theories as well as testing them. The disease model has reduced moral blame and supported the use of medications and long-term care, ideas that the evidence now strongly favors. The view that clients minimize their problems describes something real; ambivalence about change is common. The trouble lies less in the theories than in the practices built on them. Explaining the disease does not teach a client what to do on a Friday night, and confronting minimization tends to provoke resistance rather than reduce it. Motivational interviewing addresses the same ambivalence that confrontation targets, but works with it instead of against it.
Reading Project MATCH Carefully
Programs often cite Project MATCH Research Group (1997) as support for whatever they already do, since all three therapies worked. That reading misses two points. First, each therapy in the trial was manualized, delivered by trained and supervised therapists and monitored for quality; a program's groups may resemble none of them. Second, the trial compared three structured therapies with each other, not with lectures or confrontation, so it cannot show that those practices work. What it does suggest is that a program has room to choose among several well-supported approaches and should invest in delivering any of them well.
Measuring Change
The pilot's measures were chosen to be simple enough for a busy program to collect. Attendance and ninety-day retention come from existing records. Self-reported days of use over the past month are asked at intake, at thirty days and at ninety days. Renee also proposed a brief client satisfaction question after each group. Glasner-Edwards and Rawson (2010) noted that programs adopting new practices often stop tracking whether they help; building the measures in from the start protects against that.
Conclusion
Project MATCH showed that several structured therapies produce similar outcomes, Miller and Wilbourne ranked lectures and confrontation near the bottom of the evidence and Glasner-Edwards and Rawson identified practices with strong support. For Renee's program, a measured pilot can test better-supported methods without dismissing the staff who built it.
References
Glasner-Edwards, S., & Rawson, R. (2010). Evidence-based practices in addiction treatment: Review and recommendations for public policy. Health Policy, 97(2-3), 93-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2010.05.013
Miller, W. R., & Wilbourne, P. L. (2002). Mesa Grande: A methodological analysis of clinical trials of treatments for alcohol use disorders. Addiction, 97(3), 265-277. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1360-0443.2002.00019.x
Project MATCH Research Group. (1997). Matching alcoholism treatments to client heterogeneity: Project MATCH posttreatment drinking outcomes. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 58(1), 7-29. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsa.1997.58.7
What the ADC 665 Module 1 instructions ask for
Module 1 of ADC 665 often asks students to examine theories of addiction treatment critically against the evidence. The Module 1 instructions in your Aspen course set the requirements; the program here is a composite. Identify the theories behind a set of practices, whether disease, moral, learning or other models. Review outcome evidence, including at least one large trial and one synthesis of trials. Separate the practices with solid support from those with little, and flag thin spots in the research. Propose specific changes and name what would be measured afterward. Use APA 7 references, and write about colleagues' practices with respect, since habits usually have reasons behind them even when the evidence points elsewhere. Where your prompt allows, say how you would present the findings to the people who run the program.
How the ADC 665 Module 1 example is put together
Renee, a composite counselor newly hired at an outpatient program in Baton Rouge, notices that groups consist mostly of lectures on the disease concept and that clients who minimize are confronted by the group. Project MATCH's posttreatment report compares cognitive behavioral, motivational enhancement and twelve-step facilitation therapies. Miller and Wilbourne's Mesa Grande analysis ranks forty-odd treatment methods by evidence. Glasner-Edwards and Rawson's review covers cognitive behavioral therapy, contingency management, motivational interviewing and medications. A four-row table sets current practice beside better-supported options, and a proposal suggests piloting one change with outcome tracking. A section on the limits of trial evidence and a note on presenting the review to colleagues complete the paper.
Where the marks sit in the ADC 665 Module 1 rubric
Strong critical reviews identify the theory behind each practice and weigh it fairly against the evidence. This example explains the reasoning behind lectures and confrontation before showing how they rank in trial evidence. It reports Project MATCH accurately, including the surprising similarity of outcomes across therapies, and does not treat a ranking as the final word. The limits of the evidence, including differences between trial samples and the program's clients, are discussed. Recommendations are concrete and modest: pilot one change and measure what happens, rather than overturning a program at once. The paper also plans how the findings will be shared, which recognizes that evidence changes practice only when colleagues accept it.
ADC 665 Module 1 help from the desk
Critical reviews sometimes dismiss a program's practices without understanding them or accept any practice with a familiar name. Identify the theory first, then the evidence. Read large trials carefully; Project MATCH is often summarized as "matching works" when its main finding was that it added little. Be clear about what evidence rankings measure. Propose changes a real program could make, with a way to check whether they help. Respect colleagues; a review that insults them will not change practice. A tutor can help you organize theories, practices and evidence into one clear table. Finally, separate the theory from its worst version; the disease model, for example, also supports medication and long-term care.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Aspen University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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ADC 665 Module 1 questions, answered
What does ADC 665 Module 1 usually ask for?
Aspen's ADC 665 begins with theories and evidence in addiction counseling, so a critical review of practices against outcome research is typical. Your Module 1 prompt gives the exact task.
What did Project MATCH find?
Three different therapies, cognitive behavioral, motivational enhancement and twelve-step facilitation, produced similar drinking outcomes, and matching clients to treatments by their characteristics added little.
What is the Mesa Grande?
Miller and Wilbourne's analysis ranking treatments for alcohol use disorders by cumulative trial evidence, with brief interventions high and educational lectures and confrontation low.
Where can I find a free ADC 665 Module 1 sample paper?
This page contains the full paper: a program's practices and their theories, evidence from Project MATCH and the Mesa Grande, and a table of proposed changes.
Which addiction treatments have strong evidence?
Glasner-Edwards and Rawson list cognitive behavioral therapy, contingency management, motivational interviewing and medications among the best supported.