One year follow-up of total abstinence in chronic alcoholic patients following emetic counterconditioning.

The present study is a crossvalidation in the Fair Oaks Raleigh Hills Hospital of a 1970 outcome study by Wiens et al. from the Portland Raleigh Hills Hospital. The 1975 Fair Oaks crossvalidation sample included all 275 patients treated during 1975. These results were further recrossvalidated using all 290 patients treated in the Fair Oaks hospital during 1976. Results were 12-mo abstinence levels of 63% for the 1970 Portland sample and 39% and 50%, respectively, for the two Fair Oaks cross-validation samples. If the more stringent total abstinence without a slip of a single drink was the outcome measure used, these 1975 and 1976 12-mo abstinence levels became 33% and 43%, respectively. Additional analyses revealed the important role in these outcome rates of such demographic variables as Medicare recipient status, marital status, employment status, and a combined status of married and employed.