Aversion therapy pairs addiction triggers with induced nausea to break the habit. Schick Shadl in Seattle runs a 10-day medically supervised program using ipecac and classical conditioning. Amber Hollingsworth walks through how it works and whether the discomfort actually sticks.
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In this video, we're going to talk about aversion therapy as an addiction treatment model. And I can't wait to hear what you guys think. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life and your family back on track and get back to living the life that you want to live. Now, today's video is going to give you a lot of science and psychology. Now, if you don't know what aversion therapy is, just think about what the word averse means. Basically, what it means is you pair things that would be associated with your addiction. It could be the substance itself. It could be the paraphernalia, the sights, sound, smells, all that kind of stuff, and you pair it with something that is not good. Now, to really understand this, we're gonna have to go back just a little bit. Many of you have probably heard about Pavlov and his dog and this whole concept of classical conditioning. You might have heard about it on this channel or even in, like, a psychology class in high school or college. Now, the way I like to tell this story is this. There's this science guy named Pavlov, and he's in his basement one day doing sciencey stuff, probably with some test tubes and beakers or something, and he's working on his stuff, and he has this dog that's his dog. And the way he feeds his dog, every. He rings a dinner bell, and the dog, when he hears belly, runs in there to eat. Well, one day, Pavlov notices that when the dog comes in to get the food, he's salivating. And Pavlov, being a science guy that he is, he's looking at the dog and he's thinking, why are you salivating? Because, to be technical about it, salivating is actually something that's used in the process of digestion. Well, Pavlov was like, why are you in the process of digestion when you haven't even had any food yet? And so he starts to figure out that the bell itself triggers the process of digestion. And that cue gets paired up in the dog's brain. So every time he hears the bell, he knows food's coming. Now, we have all experienced this, right? If you've had a pet, then you've definitely seen this. Your pet probably knows exactly where those pet treats are. And if you go near them, they probably perk up and look over at you, right? So that is called classical conditioning. And in that example, you're pairing the trigger, which is the bell, with a reward, which is the food. And that conditions the dog that if he hears the bell, he knows the food's coming. Well, that can be done in reverse, which is when you would pair some kind of trigger with something unpleasant. That's what aversion therapy is. Now there is one hospital in the whole United States who is doing this kind of treatment. Hang in there, I'm going to tell you exactly how it's done. And you might be like, oh my goodness, I can't believe they do that. So this hospital is called Schick Schadl. I hope I'm saying that right. And it's in Seattle, Washington, and it is a 10 day treatment program. And so they bring you in and they're trying to get you to stop associating pleasant things with your addiction. And the way they do that is to make you feel really nauseous, even to the point of vomiting. When you come into contact with triggers for the addiction. Now you might be thinking, well, how do they do that? Well, typically they administer some kind of medicine, like for example, this, what's it called, the syrup of ipecac. Makes you really sick. Like sometimes parents have it in their house in case their kids like ingest some kind of poison to make them throw it up or something like that. Unpleasant. Okay, very unpleasant. And so let's take alcohol, for example. So let's say you go in and you have alcohol use disorder and you really want to stop drinking. So what they would do is in a controlled environment, very medically supervised with like RNs and all that kind of stuff, they would put you in a room, sort of closed off room. Now this room looks like a bar and there's alcoholic drinks like on the shelves. It looks like a bar. It smells like a bar. You know, it sounds like a bar. It's all the triggers are right there. And they have you ingest the medication, like for example, the ipecac medication. So you would take this medicine. They know pretty close exactly how long it's going to take to make you sick, which is somewhere between 8 to 10 minutes apparently. So they have you ingest this medication and then they have you pour yourself a big old drink of your favorite drink. And first they have you to smell it. Now this is important because they're using, mostly they're using the senses of smell and taste. Smell particularly is the most highly correlated sense to memory. So they have you smell the drink and then they have you put the drink in Your mouth, swish it all around and ingest the drink. Now, not the whole drink. They don't want you to get intoxicated. In fact, if you start to get intoxicated before you get sick, then you're supposed to alert the nurse who comes in and might even force you to get sick because you don't want to continue the pairing of the stimulus or the trigger and the positive reinforcement. You want the trigger and the not good reinforcement, the aversion process. And so pretty soon you smell this, you swish it around in your mouth, you got the smell, you got the taste, and then you get really sick. Now the nurses out there, they give you like a big old throw up pan or whatever it is when you go in there. And they're monitored. Now they've never had anybody die from this treatment, at least that's what I've heard, or even be seriously injured. But as you can imagine, it's pretty dang uncomfortable. Now this treatment is done over the 10 days and there are five episodes of this kind of aversion treatment. Now they do this for other substances too, not just alcohol. Also another interesting thing, during this 10 day process, they put you through these sort of client interviews to see how well the treatment is working. That's not that interesting. What's interesting about it is they put you sort of under like a sedative hypnotic to lower your inhibitions and all that stuff so that you're more likely to tell the truth. And then they transcribe everything that you say. They use all this information to see how well the treatment process is working. Now after the 10 days after you're discharged, they actually have you come back for two more like follow up sessions of this in like 30 days. And I think the other one is 60 days, but it might be 90 days. I could be saying that wrong. But there's two more follow up sessions and that is almost like a maintenance to help hardwire this stuff into your brain. And from what they report, they have some pretty good results as far as creating an aversion to all of these triggers. Now if you go back to the example of the drinking, at first they have you pour, you know, like your favorite drink, and then in subsequent sessions they may have you pour other kinds of drinks so that you get that aversion to alcohol in general, but it kind of always goes back to that, like your favorite drink of choice or no choice or whatever you want to call it. Me personally, I literally hate to be nauseous. Like I despise throwing up Like, I have a major aversion throwing up. I know everyone does, but I especially do not like to be that kind of sick. So the idea of this, for me feels like torture. I can definitely see how it would work. I can definitely understand the science and psychology behind it, but this would be a big move. But then again, you know, if you're battling addiction and it's killing you because addiction is a terminal illness, it destroys you, it destroys your family, and you are desperate and you want to get better, I could see why you might want to consider this. I tell you what, if you did this kind of treatment, it definitely would show some serious willingness. If you yourself have ever done any kind of treatment like this, I would love to hear about your experience experience in the comments below. And for those of you who haven't, I want to know exactly what you think. Would you do this? Do you think this is good treatment? Does it feel more like torture? Do you think it would be effective? Would you be willing to do it? These are all the thoughts that went through my head when I was learning about this hospital doing this aversion therapy. Now, of course, there are lots of different kinds of treatments out there, and I think it's good to know about all of your options. So up next, I'm going to put it right here for you, is the playlist on addiction treatment options. You can go through that playlist and learn about different, various kinds of options so that you can make a strategic choice for yourself or for a loved one.
