Social Support Intervention for Addiction Recovery (LDART)

Piloting a Novel Social Support Intervention for Addiction Recovery

The purpose of this research study is to determine whether using a web-based intervention is feasible, acceptable, and helpful for people who engage in hazardous alcohol use and want to cut down or quit.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Alcohol; Harmful Use; Alcohol
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: LDART

Detailed Description

This pilot study will determine the feasibility and acceptability of a novel online social support intervention (Let's Do Addiction Recovery Together!, abbreviated as LDART) that uses pre-recorded videos created by members of recovery support services to help individuals in early recovery from hazardous alcohol use sustain motivation during recovery and introduce them to freely available recovery support services in the community. The investigators will recruit participants to use the web-based intervention daily for a month; they will also fill in questionnaires about their substance use and engagement with recovery support services at the beginning and end of the study to determine preliminary efficacy.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 30
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Connecticut
    • New Haven, Connecticut, United States, 06510
      • 1 Church St

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18 years of age or older
• Is at the time of study participation residing in Connecticut, USA
• Is fluent in English and has a 6th grade reading level or higher
• Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) score of ≥8
• Has had at least one heavy drinking day in the past month
• Has some desire to cut down or quit their alcohol use
• Has a smartphone or computer with access to internet

Exclusion Criteria:

• Has vulnerable population status (e.g., pregnant people, prisoners)
• Is at the time of study participation receiving in-patient psychiatric treatment involving hospitalization

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm

Intervention / Treatment

Experimental: LDART; Participants will be asked to log onto the LDART website each night for a month.

Behavioral: LDART; LDART is a newly developed web-based social support intervention that can be accessed by smartphone or computer. Each night, the participant sets a recovery goal for the next day (e.g., drink less than usual, go to a support group meeting). The next night, they log on to LDART to indicate whether they reached their goal for the day. Depending on their response, they will be shown either a celebratory or encouraging message from someone in the addiction recovery community, along with specific information on that person's recovery organization.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Recruitment Feasibility	Feasibility of recruitment is measured as the number of adults who consent to study participation divided by the number of months the trial recruits for.	Baseline
Retention Feasibility	Retention rate is calculated as the number of participants who complete the study divided by the number of participants who consented to participating in the study.	One-month post-intervention (Day 56)
Intervention Acceptability (Engagement With Intervention)	Acceptability is calculated as the number of nights participants login to LDART within the 28-day window.	Duration of intervention (Days 1-28)
Intervention Acceptability (Subjective Experience)	Acceptability is measured with a 9-item self-report acceptability assessment questionnaire. This comprises questions regarding the motivational and supportive properties of the content, perceptions on the frequency of engaging with the intervention, and whether they enjoyed using the intervention. Each question is rated on a 5-point Likert scale, where higher values indicate greater acceptability. There will also be two open-ended questions for participants to indicate what they liked and did not like about the intervention and ways to improve it. Data reported here reflects percentage of participants who answered "agree" or "strongly agree" to the question: "I would recommend LDART to someone trying to cut down or quit drinking".	Post-intervention (Day 28)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Percentage of Drinking Days Per Month	Timeline Follow Back is a validated, self-reported instrument that provides specific dates for alcohol use in the past 28 days, and the number of standard drinks consumed on each drinking day. Percent Drinking Days Per Month is calculated as the percentage of days in the 28-day window in which one or more standard drinks is consumed for two consecutive windows.	Day 0 (Pre-intervention), 28 (Post-intervention), and 56 (1-month post-intervention)
Percentage of Heavy Drinking Days Per Month	Percent Heavy Drinking Days is calculated from the Timeline Follow Back instrument as the number of days in the 28-day window in which four/five or more standard drinks is consumed for women/men for two consecutive windows.	Day 0 (Pre-intervention), 28 (Post-intervention), and 56 (1-month post-intervention)
Hours Spent Engaging With Recovery Support Services	Self-reported total number of hours spent engaging in recovery support services (e.g., being at a recovery community center, attending a support group meeting) in the past 28-day time window for two consecutive windows.	Day 0 (Pre-intervention), 28 (Post-intervention), and 56 (1-month post-intervention)
World Health Organization Quality of Life - Brief Version	World Health Organization Quality of Life - Brief Version (WHOQOL-BREF) is a questionnaire with 24 items that correspond to four domains: physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environment. Each question is rated on a five-point Likert scale. Each domain score is transformed based on the lowest possible score to create a modified range of 0-100 for each domain. All four domain scores are then averaged to create a single score on a range of 0-100, where higher values indicate higher quality of life.	Day 0 (Pre-intervention), 28 (Post-intervention), and 56 (1-month post-intervention)
Brief Assessment of Recovery Capital	Brief Assessment of Recovery Capital (BARC) is a 10-item self-report measure of recovery capital with ten domains (substance use and sobriety, global psychological health, global physical health, citizenship and community involvement, social support, meaningful activities, housing and safety, risk-taking, coping and life functioning, recovery experience). Total score ranges from 0-50, where higher values indicate higher recovery capital.	Day 0 (Pre-intervention), 28 (Post-intervention), and 56 (1-month post-intervention)

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Yale University
• Collaborators: Society of Addiction Psychology
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Marc N Potenza, MD, PhD, Yale University; Principal Investigator: Li Yan McCurdy, PhD, Yale University

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• McCurdy LY, Kong G, Krishnan-Sarin S, Kiluk BD, Potenza MN. A non-randomized pilot study protocol of a novel social support intervention for individuals in early recovery from hazardous alcohol use. PLoS One. 2023 Oct 5;18(10):e0292293. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292293. eCollection 2023.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): January 26, 2024
• Primary Completion (Actual): July 15, 2024
• Study Completion (Actual): July 15, 2024

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: August 23, 2023
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 30, 2023
• First Posted (Actual): September 1, 2023

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimated): November 5, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 10, 2025
• Last Verified: October 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Compulsive Behavior; Impulsive Behavior; Behavior, Addictive
• Other Study ID Numbers: 2000035434; 000 (Other Identifier: CTGTY)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No