Drinking motives and alcohol intervention for patients with HIV

Background For individuals with HIV, heavy drinking can interfere with medication adherence and impair liver function. Yet, many individuals with HIV drink heavily. A recent alcohol intervention trial [1] indicated that motivational interviewing (MI) enhanced with HealthCall (consisting of selfmonitoring and discussion of drinking data collected through self-monitoring) was effective at reducing drinking in HIV patients. Also using this data, Elliott et al. [2,3] showed that patients’ drinking motives at baseline were associated with both past-year and end-of-treatment drinking. However, it remains unknown: (a) whether motivational interventions also decreased drinking motives, and (b) whether the predictive validity of motives extended to end-of-study (i.e., 12-months post-baseline).