A Web-Based Therapeutic Workplace for the Treatment of Drug Addiction and Chronic Unemployment

Abstract

This article describes a Web-based therapeutic workplace intervention designed to promote heroin and cocaine abstinence and train and employ participants as data entry operators. Patients are paid to participate in training and then to perform data entry jobs in a therapeutic workplace business. Salary is linked to abstinence by requiring patients to provide drug-free urine samples to gain access to the workplace. Prior data show that a prototype of the intervention could promote drug abstinence. Preliminary data on the Web-based intervention suggest that it should be able to teach adults with histories of chronic unemployment and drug addiction to become skilled data entry operators in about 3 to 6 months. Early experience in the business provides preliminary evidence that it might become financially successful. The therapeutic workplace intervention may serve as an effective and practical long-term treatment for chronic unemployment and heroin and cocaine addiction.