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Abstract & Objectives: 

This training examines what we know, what we think we know, and what we can prove about disordered gambling, recovery and relapse.  Especially novel in this workshop are insights for beginning and seasoned counselors, beginning with a review of current theories of relapse and current research on gambling relapse.  Updated to include recent ASAM definitions, the presentation offers evidenced-based approaches to relapse prevention.  Other mechanistic static approaches are haltingly disjointed and misleading, because the variations in recovery complicate any one size fits all relapse prevention plan.

Relapse does not occur the moment one starts gambling but is rather a gradual process of recovery becoming dysfunctional long before the gambling starts. Understanding relapse requires understanding recovery.  This is counterintuitive to gambling as an impulse control disorder; clinicians have known for a long time that disordered gambling is best treated as an addiction.  ASAM’s new definition of addiction notwithstanding, recent research examines the wrong parameters (total or partial abstinence, or extrapolations from alcohol and drug literature). Moreover, the definition of relapse changes with the growth of a recovery program.  Unfortunately, most relapse prevention is limited, whereas this workshop promotes an interactive, evolving plan leading to sustained, growth-oriented recovery.

Participants in this workshop will

1. review briefly the most often cited but misleading current research
2. gain insights to addictive disease, disordered gambling, its recovery and relapse, by immersion into each.
3. be enabled to draft group education and therapy content that eclipses mechanistic RPT of setups and trigger management, or cue extinction.
4. better understand the role of post acute withdrawal and other phases  of the relapse process in gambling, and the use of successful clinical interventions at each phase,  for use in individual and group practice with gamblers and families.

Outline

1. current directions in clinical research
2. addictive disease in disordered gambling, its recovery, tasks and phases
3. relapse warning signs in gambling clients
4. wrap / evaluation