‘Problem drinking’ refers to heavy alcohol consumption that is associated with moderate to severe harms, but not with serious co-occurring drug use or mental health disorders. Recent evidence suggests text messaging may be an effective supplement to in-person interventions to reduce problem drinking; however, little literature on the efficacy of text messaging as a stand-alone intervention exists. A new single-blind randomized control pilot study attempted to fill this gap by comparing the effects of four different types of alcohol-reduction-themed texts on alcohol consumption. Participants were 157 adults aged 21-65 years who were recruited through online alcohol screening and help-seeking sources and drank between 13 (women) or 15 (men) and 45 drinks per week. They were randomly assigned to receive daily tailored motivational messages with alcohol content (groups included gain-framed, loss-framed, statically tailored, or adaptively tailored messages), daily non-tailored messages without alcohol content, or weekly control mobile alcohol assessment only messages for 12 weeks. All participants completed assessments at baseline, 4 weeks, and 12 weeks, in which they reported their past-month substance use and alcohol-related consequences. Results showed participants in all treatment groups, except for gain-framed messaging, reported greater reductions in weekly alcohol consumption and number of heavy drinking days and larger increases in number of non-drinking days than control group participants. No treatment group was found to be significantly more effective than the others. There were no significant differences in types of severity of consequences between the control and treatment groups. Retention in all groups was very high (94%).
Take away: Results of this study support the efficacy of daily text messaging at significantly reducing drinking frequency and quantity more than weekly self-tracking messages alone. None of the five treatment conditions (gain-framed, loss-framed, statically tailored, adaptively tailored messages, or non-tailored motivational messages without alcohol content) were found to work significantly better than the others.