Episodic Thinking (ET) as a Candidate Technique to Reduce Alcohol Consumption

After the initial consent and assessment sessions, participants will be asked to provide daily self-report assessments of previous-day drinking over cell phone for 7 days with no other study intervention taking place. The purpose for this baseline period is to quantify baseline drinking patterns and ensure that the participant reliably responds to and conveys study information via cell phone. At the end of this baseline period, participants who indicated adaquate patterns of drinking and successfully reported their level of drinking will be invited to continue in the study. Participants will return to the laboratory to be provided with a SOBERLINK breathalyzer and be given instruction in its use. The SOBERLINK device will automatically upload breathalyzer results, the participant's location, and the picture of the user to a centralized, secure website where the data will be available to research staff.

Participants will be counterbalanced to either the active or control group based on alcohol use (e.g., average drinks per day). Both groups will be exposed to the same treatment events. The intervention period will last for 14 consecutive days, with three breathalyzer screens per day. During this 14-day period as they did during the baseline period, participants will self-report their previous-day alcohol use daily with a text message and/or phone call. Assessment sessions will be conducted prior to the intervention, immediately following the intervention, and at a 1-month follow-up.

All participants will either be allowed to use their own personal cell phone for study communications or receive a prepaid cell phone with service through a nationwide cell phone service provider. The study-provided phones include usage controls, allowing us to restrict phone communication to a study phone and 911 service.

Throughout the intervention phase of the experiment, participants will be required to submit three daily breathalyzer assessments at the predetermined times. They will be reminded via text message when a sample is to be collected, and samples will be accepted up to 15 minutes before the scheduled time and 30-60 minutes after the scheduled time, giving the participant 45-75 minutes total to submit the sample.

Participants will be assigned to either the active Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) condition or the control Episodic Recent Thinking (ERT) condition. EFT participants will generate positive future events they are looking forward to and that could happen at different future time points (e.g., in 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year) and participants in the ERT condition will list positive recent events (events that have already happened) that they enjoyed that occurred at different past time points (e.g., 12 hours ago, 24 hours ago,1 week ago). Participants will be instructed to use and think about their episodic cues as they make decisions. All participants will be provided with a copy of their episodic cues to take home with them and will receive periodic text messages from research staff to remind them of their cues. In addition, each day, participants will be asked to report how many alcoholic drinks they consumed the previous day (from the time they awoke to the time they fell asleep). Participants will be allowed to report this information via text message or phone call. Participants will receive a reminder to report their previous-day drinking with text messages, followed by a phone call if they haven't contacted us by early evening.