Detailing their findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers discovered that the web-based program offers a number of strategies — including movies where characters demonstrate cognitive behavioral strategies — to handle real-world issues often encountered by drug and alcohol abusers. Such strategies, according to the researchers, resulted in a reduction on substance abuse figures when compared with those participating in standard group counseling sessions as well as private sessions with therapists conducting the very same cognitive therapy lessons.

“We spend billions of dollars on stuff that doesn’t work in terms of treating addiction, so it is exciting that a cost-effective website in and of itself outperforms standard treatment and produces durable benefits,” said Kathleen Carroll, Yale’s Albert E. Kent Professor of Psychiatry and senior author of the study. “Why can’t treatment be fun and engaging and teach skills that really help?”

To reach the conclusion that the online program was more successful than traditional treatment options, the team organized a group of 137 drug and alcohol abusers into three groups. The first group participated in weekly, outpatient group counseling sessions while the second group received private sessions with just a therapist. The third group was granted access to the online program called CBT4CBT, featuring videos, interactive exercises, practice exercises and quizzes focused on teaching substance abusers cognitive behavioral coping strategies.

Before completing both the standard group counseling and private therapy sessions, roughly half of the participants dropped out of those programs while only a quarter of the participants had not completed the web-based program.

“The CBT4CBT program is engaging, with movies that reflect real world problems — a woman trying to stop drinking has a horrible day a work, and has a fight with her husband who opens up a bottle of wine,” Carroll said. “The viewers can see how to use cognitive and behavioral self-control skills to deal with the problem. There is something powerful about seeing the problem rather than hearing about it in the abstract.”