The Drug Matrix is concerned with the treatment of problems related to the use of illegal drugs by adults (another deals with alcohol-related problems). It maps the treatment universe and for each sub-territory (a cell) lists the most important UK-relevant research and guidance. Across the top columns move from specific interventions through how their impacts are affected by staff, the management of the service, and the nature of the organisation, to the impact of local area treatment systems. Down the rows are the major intervention types implemented at these levels.

What is cell A2 about?

Whether medical or psychosocial, chosen positively or under pressure, patients have to decide to get help and find their way to treatment or get sent there. Decisions must be made about treatment objectives and the form, intensity and duration of care, relationships forged, and attention paid to psychological problems and social circumstances which affect the chances of a sustained end to dependent substance use. Specific medical and psychosocial interventions are respectively covered in cells A3 and A4. This cell is about factors common to both – for example, the very fact that someone or some institution sanctioned by society has identified the patient/client as in need and deserving of help, believes they will benefit, and is accepted as an authority in the problem and its solutions, components of the so-called ‘placebo effect’, but which are actually active ingredients in the treatment of behavioural problems.

This cell is about these generic functions and ‘common factors’, now widely recognised as at least as important as the particular therapy. Also here we touch on the nature of addiction and the nature of the caseload seen in treatment services, helping place those services in the context of the spectrum of dependent drug use in society and the ‘natural’ processes of recovery which treatment seeks to harness and accelerate. Other cells home in on common factors to do specifically with how the practitioner relates to the patient/client and the nature of the treatment service.