Relative and Interactive Associations of Psychosocial Intervention and Alcoholics Anonymous Attendance With Alcohol Use Disorder Outcomes

Objective: Psychosocial intervention and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)/mutual help organization attendance are both associ-ated with alcohol use disorder (AUD) outcomes. However, no research has explored the relative or interactive associations of psychosocial intervention and AA attendance with AUD outcomes. Method: This was a secondary analysis of data from the Project MATCH (Matching Alco-holism Treatments to Client Heterogeneity) outpatient arm participants (N = 952), who were randomly assigned to complete 12-session cogni-tive-behavioral therapy (CBT, n = 301), 12-session 12-step facilitation (TSF, n = 335), or 4-session motivational enhancement therapy (MET, n = 316). Regression analyses tested the association of psychosocial inter-vention attendance only, AA attendance only (measured as past-90-day attendance immediately after psychosocial intervention, as well as 1 and 3 years after intervention), and their interaction with the percentage of drinking days and percentage of heavy drinking days after intervention,1 year after intervention, and 3 years after intervention. Results: When accounting for AA attendance and other variables, attending more psy-chosocial intervention sessions was consistently associated with fewer drinking days and heavy drinking days after intervention. AA attendance was consistently associated with a lower percentage of drinking days at 1 and 3 years after intervention, when accounting for psychosocial intervention attendance and other variables. Analyses failed to identify an interaction between psychosocial intervention attendance and AA at-tendance with AUD outcomes. Conclusions: Psychosocial intervention and AA attendance are robustly associated with better AUD outcomes. Replication studies comprising samples of individuals who attend AA more than once per week are needed to further test the interactive asso-ciation of psychosocial intervention attendance and AA attendance with AUD outcomes. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 84, 281-286, 2023)