Trial abstinence

Trial abstinence begins by making an agreement with yourself and your therapist or counselor not to use drugs for a limited time period. 

Trial abstinence may not be easy, but it will be a healthy start toward overcoming your drug problem. 

Trial abstinence. An agreed-upon period of time to give abstinence a try. 

A recent meta-analysis of total abstinence as an outcome in clinical trials of acamprosate (Mann et al. 2004) included 17 studies and a total of more than 4,000 patients. The authors found a significant advantage for acampro-... 

More than 40 medications have been investigated but none have shown consistent efficacy for primary cocaine or amphetamine dependence. These medications include dopaminergic agonists, antidepressants, and more recently disulfiram, selegiline, and a cocaine vaccine (see Table 5—2 for summary). Studies have been relatively brief and have focused on abstinence initiation rather than on relapse prevention, but even these modest treatment goals have not been attained. The focus in the discussion that follows is on pharmacotherapies for cocaine dependence, because very few clinical trials have been completed with amphetamine-dependent patients. Furthermore, none of the studies of amphetamine dependence have shown results different from those described for cocaine dependence (Rawson et al. 2002b Srisurapanont et al. 2001). 

The primary alkaloid in tobacco is nicotine, but tobacco also contains small amounts of minor alkaloids such as anabasine, anatabine, myosmine, and others. The minor alkaloids are absorbed systemically and can be measured in the urine of smokers and users of smokeless tobacco (Jacob et al. 1999). The measurement of minor alkaloids is a way to quantitate tobacco use when a person is also taking in pure nicotine from a nicotine medication or a nontobacco nicotine delivery system. This method has been used to assess tobacco abstinence in clinical trials of smoking cessation with treatment by nicotine medications (Jacob et al. 2002). 

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