“If We Don’t Use Today, We’ll Stay Sober Today”: Inoculation-centered Intervention Strategy for Relapse Prevention

As the human and financial costs of substance abuse continue to rise, effective prevention and intervention strategies are needed to counter the epidemic. All too often, success is ephemeral as individuals relapse into old habits, thus highlighting the need for effective strategies to counter relapse. As a robust strategy applied to a variety of health issues, inoculation has the potential to attenuate the current rates of relapse. Thus, this intervention proposes the use of inoculation theory in the context of substance abuse disorders to promote long-term recovery and reduce relapse. Three intervention strategies were developed as part of the project: a core inoculation message, booster messages, and refusal skills training. These strategies utilize inoculation messages in various ways to address the complexity of long-term recovery.