Transcript
Limiting drinking to deal with the world
is always a good idea.
However, requiring folks to get rid of all their crutches
before they got the treatment that actually works for PTSD
is a very difficult thing to require of people.
What I would counsel Veterans in that situation,
and we do all the time, is we say --
OK, maybe you're drinking four or five drinks at a sitting,
and that's happening five or six times a week --
what we would say is, "Don't drink right before
you're about to do your homework.
Don't drink in response to the feelings you're feeling."
In some cases, maybe we'll schedule times during the day
for them not to do homework, so they can feel
a little bit more free to do what they want.
We don't want people responding to the treatments
by increasing their alcohol use, which is something we
really don't see, and we don't want people being intoxicated
or high when they're actually listening to their exposures
because that's not really going to be the most effective way
for them to kind of move through the treatment quickly.
Interestingly, because we do this treatment so much
and it's not just us here locally at this VA
but it's VA clinicians across the country,
we have an opportunity to see how this treatment works
with people that are using a lot of substances, and it seems
to help people decrease their substance use in general.