Abstract
BACKGROUND: Community-based recovery organizations (e.g., mutual-help groups) can be a potent source of social support that facilitates addiction recovery. To increase awareness of and engagement with these organizations, we developed a digital intervention called Let's Do Addiction Recovery Together! (LDART) for individuals who want to reduce their hazardous alcohol use. LDART encourages daily goal-setting, provides motivational video messages from peers, and provides information on recovery organizations. METHODS: We conducted a single-arm study to evaluate feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of LDART. Thirty adults (mean age 44.5 years old, 53.8% women) who wanted to reduce their hazardous alcohol use were invited to use LDART for 28 nights. Participants completed an acceptability survey post-intervention, and a subset were interviewed to provide additional feedback. Measures of recovery organization engagement and alcohol use were collected pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at 1-month post-intervention and summarized using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: The recruitment rate was 10 participants per month, and 76.7% of enrolled participants completed the post-treatment assessment. On average, participants accessed LDART on 22.9 out of 28 nights (81.8%). Most participants (81.0%) reported that they would recommend LDART to someone trying to cut down or quit drinking. Participants self-reported more recovery organization engagement and less alcohol consumption during the month they used LDART and the month after completing LDART, relative to the month prior to using LDART. CONCLUSIONS: LDART was well-received by adults wanting to reduce drinking, as determined by engagement rates with LDART and acceptability ratings. Preliminary efficacy results warrant further testing of this intervention as a way to increase engagement with recovery organizations and decrease hazardous alcohol use.