A midcoast hospital is the first in Maine to use a research-backed method to take on the state’s growing use of dangerous stimulant drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine.
Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick has started a pilot treatment program that gives gift cards with a cash value to participants who continue to test negative for the drugs, as an incentive to stay off of them. The gift cards will be restricted to bar the purchase of alcohol, marijuana, tobacco or firearms, according to a press release.
Those incentives, which are part of an approach known as contingency management, are meant to address one of the most vexing aspects of meth and cocaine addiction: While there are medications that can help people overcome their cravings for opioids such as fentanyl and heroin, there is no equivalent prescription for people struggling with stimulants.
“We found that there is no medication available to treat stimulant use disorder,” Christine Wyman, a clinical director overseeing the program, said in the press release. “Contingency management is the only behavioral intervention demonstrated through research to be effective. The incentive needs to be meaningful for the patient and is most effective if patients are eligible for at least $500 a year per patient.”
Both in Maine and across the country, the crisis of fatal drug overdoses has primarily been driven by fentanyl over the last decade, but meth and cocaine have played a growing role in recent years. Even as fatal overdoses dipped nationally in 2023 for the first time in several years, deaths involving stimulants — often mixed with fentanyl — increased.
The pilot project at Mid Coast Hospital started on May 30 and will enroll around 30 patients in its first year, with the possibility of growing in the future. It’s modeled after a program that started in California last year and is being administered by a behavioral health organization affiliated with MaineHealth, the parent group of the Brunswick hospital.
MaineHealth did not immediately respond to a request for an interview about the program.
Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of using incentives to encourage healthier behaviors, including quitting tobacco and exercising more.
While the effects are still not well understood, experts believe that the satisfaction from the rewards can strengthen the neural pathways associated with better behavior, while also helping those struggling with addiction to feel less isolated and more accomplished in their recoveries, according to the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
