Monitoring drinking behavior with the alcohol dipstick during treatment.

The present communication is the first report on the clinical use of the alcohol dipstick to continuously monitor alcoholics' drinking during treatment. Daily urine samples from 34 alcoholics were tested for alcohol by the clinical staff using the alcohol dipstick. The patients also provided self-reports of drinking daily. Patients' compliance for submitting urine samples and for completing daily monitoring sheets (DMS) was 93 and 95%, respectively. Over 75% of the patients drank on at least one occasion; about half of these patients denied drinking detected by the urine tests. Drinking was confirmed by both methods in 39% of the patients who drank, and by the urine testing alone in 54%. The patients in treatment for less than 2 months were abstinent on 85% of the days compared to 98% for those in treatment for 6 months or longer. Seventy-two percent of all alcohol-positive urine samples were submitted by patients on days when they denied drinking. Monitoring of patients' drinking was useful in their clinical management. The alcohol dipstick was a simple, inexpensive, and rapid alcohol measuring procedure that could be used by the clinical staff in the treatment setting.