Jan Klimas Research

Clinical Counselling and Mindfulness Teaching

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September 9th, 2014 – From research to practice: The Community Response organisation in Dublin is pleased to announce a new stabilization programme for people who are in Opioid Agonist Treatment and also who have alcohol problems. The programme aims to assist service users either reduce the amount that they drink, the frequency, or both. It shows that discoveries made by UCD’s researchers have real impact.

I welcome this new programme with great joy, because family doctors in our PINTA feasibility study complained about a high prevalence of alcohol problems in agonist patients and a lack of specialist services where they could get more help. At a 3-way meeting between Coolmine, Community Response and PINTA team yesterday, Nicholas – one of the facilitators – said “the group will aim to reduce drinking as opposed to complete abstinence.”

In 2009, our research group picked a random group of patients receiving agonist treatment in family practice. Three out of every 10 of these patients had drink problems. Recent developments in the addiction research brought effective tools to doctors who treat such patients – they are called the brief interventions. Brief alcohol interventions are for people who drink in excess of the recommended limits, but who don’t have addiction. Ever since our national prevalence study, we struggled with specialist treatments for patients with alcohol addiction, whom family doctors couldn’t help. First, we looked into the medical literature – no success. We asked the patients, interviewed their doctors and even consulted the experts in a national guideline development process, including Nicola Perry from Community Response. The result of the process was a clinical guideline for family doctors and a new study piloting the guideline in 13 family practices (check my previous post about this research). Despite all of these efforts, many services refused to treat problem drug users with concurrent alcohol addiction. This new course is a godsend for the patients and for our work.

For 10 Tuesdays, ten participants of the new course will come to Community Response for a 1.5 hours (10-11.30am) group sessions to learn about:

  1. The Process of Addiction
  2. Progression of Alcohol Use
  3. Stages of alcohol use- Early, Middle, Late
  4. Alcohol Problems in life
  5. Justification verses Reasoning   
  6. Withdrawals, Triggers, Cravings
  7. Learning from relapse
  8. Wheel of Change
  9. Interaction of Methadone and Alcohol
  10. Coping with cravings – “Urge Surfing” technique

Two experienced facilitators will lead the meetings. They will see participants individually too. Community Response’s Peer Support and Life Ring will provide aftercare. Treacy and David, who run a similar group in the Coolmine, focus their group on complete abstinence from alcohol, but they allow “certain percentage of slips. Slips are an opportunity to talk about what they [participants] can do if they relapse.”

How to get on the programme?

Go to www.communityresponse.ieand download a referral form. Complete it and E-mail it to info@communityresponse.ie, or post to 14 Carmans Court, Carmans Hall, Dublin 8. You will then be contacted to make an appointment for an assessment. The 20-minute assessments are every Friday between 9.00 am – 1.00pm, until Friday, 5th September, 2014. For more info, call 01 4549772 and ask for Nicholas, or e-mail info@communityresponse.ie.

Community Response Ltd, established in 1990, based in the Liberties in the South Inner City of Dublin, provides a comprehensive programme for primary alcohol and Hepatitis C services.

To stay updated on the alcohol stabilisation and other courses, follow @CommResponseon Twitter or Facebook

Work of the Primary Mental Healthcare Research Group cited in this article:
  • Klimas, J., Lally, K., Murphy, L., Crowley, L., Anderson, R., Meagher, D., . . . Cullen, W. (2014). Development and process evaluation of an educational intervention to support primary care of problem alcohol among drug users. Drugs and Alcohol Today, 14(2), 76-86.
  • Klimas, J., Cullen, W., Field, C. A., & the PADU-GDG (2014). Problem alcohol use among problem drug users: development and content of clinical guidelines for general practice. Irish Journal of Medical Science, 183(1), 89-101. doi: 10.1007/s11845-013-0982-2
  • Klimas, J., Anderson, R., Bourke, M., Bury, G., Dunne, C., Field, C. A., . . . Cullen, W. (2013). Psychosocial interventions for problem alcohol use among problem drug users (PINTA): protocol for a feasibility study in primary care. Research Protocols, 2(2), e26. doi: 10.2196/resprot.2678
  • Field, C. A., Klimas, J., Barry, J., Bury, G., Keenan, E., Smyth, B., & Cullen, W. (2013). Problem alcohol use among problem drug users in primary care: a qualitative study of what patients think about screening and treatment. BMC Family Practice, 14(1), 98.
  • Klimas, J., Field, C. A., Cullen, W., O’Gorman, C. S. M., Glynn, L. G., Keenan, E., . . . Dunne, C. (2012). Psychosocial interventions for problem alcohol use in concurrent illicit drug users. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (11). http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD009269/frame.html doi:10.1002/14651858.CD009269
  • Ryder, N., Cullen, W., Barry, J., Bury, G., Keenan, E. and Smyth, B. P. (2009). Prevalence of problem alcohol use among patients attending primary care for methadone treatment. BMC Family Practice, 10, (42).
Jan Klimas Research