LAUSR

BACKGROUND Psychosocial intervention and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)/mutual help organization attendance are both associated with alcohol use disorder (AUD) outcomes. However, no research has explored the relative or interactive associations of psychosocial intervention and AA attendance with AUD outcomes. METHOD A secondary analysis of data from the Project MATCH outpatient arm participants, who were randomly assigned to complete 12-session cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT, n = 301), 12-session twelve-step facilitation (TSF, n = 335), or 4-session motivational enhancement therapy (MET, n = 316). Regression analyses tested the association of psychosocial intervention attendance only, AA attendance only (measured as past 90-day attendance during psychosocial intervention, as well as 1- and 3-years postintervention), and their interaction with the percentage of drinking days and percentage of heavy drinking days at postintervention, 1-year postintervention, and 3-years postintervention. RESULTS When accounting for AA attendance and other variables, attending more psychosocial intervention sessions was consistently associated with fewer drinking days and heavy drinking days at postintervention. AA attendance was consistently associated with a lower percentage of drinking days at 1- and 3-years postintervention, when accounting for psychosocial intervention attendance and other variables. Analyses failed to identify an interaction between psychosocial intervention attendance and AA attendance with AUD outcomes. CONCLUSIONS Psychosocial intervention and AA attendance are robustly associated with better AUD outcomes. Replication studies comprising samples of individuals who attend AA more than once per week are needed to further test the interactive association of psychosocial intervention attendance and AA attendance with AUD outcomes.