How Is AI Helping Doctors Combat Alcohol Addiction?

Alcohol use disorder is a difficult condition for many people to battle, from those who are experiencing it to the healthcare providers treating it. While each journey has its own timeline, several factors can slow down an individual’s recovery.

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) has had quite an impact on many industries in recent years. When it comes to the healthcare landscape, AI may also be able to help people combat alcohol use disorder.

What Is Alcohol Use Disorder?

Alcohol use disorder is a term for chronic and compulsive drinking. While many people can drink without issue, forming even a mild dependence on liquor can create an unhealthy habit. Generally, alcohol consumption is viewed as medically unsafe when you have three to four drinks or more in a day.¹ Drinking it weekly or monthly is also dangerous.

Research notes that over 12% of Americans could be diagnosed with alcohol use disorder.² Young people are susceptible to these conditions, but any person can develop an attachment to alcohol.

It’s vital to note that not everyone who is exposed to or consumes alcohol will develop an addiction to it. Some people may try it and decide that it’s not for them, or enjoy alcohol without issue.

Causes Behind Alcohol Use

Every person has their own reasons for using alcohol. Here’s an overview of possible causes behind their alcohol use:

• Personal history: Those who form an alcohol dependence may have a personal history of being exposed to the substance at a young age. Some may even have an inclination that drinking is good, which contributes to the habit in the first palace.
• Stress: People with poor mental health may find pleasure in drinking alcohol, especially after a stressful day. However, stressors are constant throughout life. Forming an overreliance on alcohol can lead to a drinking disorder.
• Environmental circumstances: Certain ecological and financial circumstances can be a contributing factor to alcohol use disorder. For instance, about 78% of people with an annual household income of $75,000 or more are more likely to consume alcohol.³ There’s also the matter of proximity to liquor retailers or drinking bars.
• Digital peer pressure: A study explores how teens are more likely to use alcohol when they see it on social media.⁴ It details how 95% and 31.44% of participants see alcohol-related content posted by peers on Instagram and Snapchat respectively. There’s also the matter of influencers sharing alcohol content.

The Impact of Alcohol Use Disorder

Alcohol use disorder can heavily affect a person’s life when it isn’t intercepted. Here’s a general outline of the aspects that an alcohol dependence can result in:

• Finances: Many people use their funds to purchase alcohol and satisfy their cravings over and over again. A repeated purchase of this expensive commodity may drain their savings and put them in debt.
• Relationships: Those who are dependent on alcohol tend to drift apart from the people they are close to. This is especially the case for people who act brazenly and push their peers away when their cravings aren’t satiated.
• Personal health: Alcohol use disorder affects brain function, which fogs up one’s line of thinking. Soon, it starts to affect the kidneys and liver. Conditions such as alcohol-assisted liver diseases can cause a loss of appetite, fluid buildup in the body and passing blood in bowel movements.⁵ It can also lead to death.
• Society: Alcohol use disorder as a whole can have implications on society and its economy. Local, state and federal governments pay for a portion of the costs associated with binge drinking, with about $28 billion spent annually on alcohol-related healthcare.⁶ There are also costs associated with DIU expenses and lost workplace productivity.

The Difficulty of Combatting Alcohol Use Disorder

Alcohol is incredibly prominent in today’s world, which is part of the reason why it can be hard to eliminate alcohol use disorder. Drinking is often present in social gatherings of every kind, whether you’re with family, friends or colleagues. The culture of drinking has become so normalized that it can be hard to separate yourself from it even when you’re actively trying to escape it.

These variables also play a part in the frequency of relapse. About 40%-60% of people who have alcohol use disorder find themselves going back to their drinking habits after a year.⁷ This recurrence of their condition may occur because they’ve been exposed to liquor or tempted to drink. There may also be a lack of control over your habits.

Bringing AI to Alcohol Use Disorder Treatment

While the reality of alcohol use can seem grim, it is possible to get better. Addiction treatment is available in the form of support groups, medication, rehabilitation centers and personalized plans. AI also elevates the treatment process.

AI in health care has made strides in a variety of ways. Tools of this nature assist in surgery rooms and pharmaceutical labs. In the context of treating alcohol use disorder, read some of the factors that AI is helping medical professionals with.

Detection and Diagnosis

Detection of a disorder and diagnosis is the first step before treatment. It may initially be challenging to pinpoint whether there is alcohol abuse involved or not. When patients are asked about their alcohol tendencies or stress levels, they may simply lie about it.

However, AI can help in this stage. Machine learning can allow healthcare providers to set inclusion and exclusion criteria. This disease-based diagnostic approach can allow medical professionals to confirm substance use without review bias.

Treatment Matching

Finding the right solution in addiction treatment is tricky. “How a patient responds to a particular drug is the result of many factors, including their genes, behaviors and environment… And while we think about risks, side effects and other factors when considering medications for patients, we don’t have a good way yet to specifically match a treatment to a person,” shares Virginia Commonwealth University associate professor Albert Arias, MD.

Virginia Commonwealth University associate professor Albert Arias, MD, and his team ran a study for people who will drink two different forms of medication. While participants take their substances, researchers came up with predictive AI models to assess the effectiveness of their treatment. ⁹ The models focus on genetic profiles, overall mood and alcohol cravings.

The research has proven to be a success, citing that genetics was integral in the AI to determine which treatment is ideal for a person with an addiction. Arias notes that their developed method still needs improvement but acknowledges that this is a start to projecting how patients may respond to their medication.

Rehabilitation Operations

A rehabilitation center can provide the optimal environment for a person to overcome their alcohol cravings. However, there are time-consuming administrative tasks, such as organizing health records, coordinating schedules and regulating budgets.

Thankfully, AI is paving the way in streamlining these processes. It can even automate some of the aforementioned tasks, which frees up the schedule of medical experts. This technology ensures that they can provide an optimal level of support to people.

Analysis and Prediction

Staying on track to recovery can be one of the most delicate stages of combatting alcohol use disorder. Luckily, AI can assist with predictive analysis. A system will monitor and assess the language and behavior of a former person with an addiction to determine whether they are susceptible to relapse. Early detection and intervention will keep them sober.

There’s already a study that finds that AI can predict alcohol use post-liver transplant alcohol‐associated hepatitis.¹⁰ This comes after they noticed that specific scoring systems did not evaluate liver transplant candidates who had a short term of alcohol abstinence.

“These reflect high negative predictive value as these models have poor positive predictive value limiting clinical utility,” the researchers wrote. “Using a widely expanded list of psychosocial variables, we subsequently applied artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain a model with higher positive predictive value and to identify novel predictors of post‐LT harmful alcohol use.”

Implementation Concerns for AI to Alcohol Addiction

While AI can improve many of the processes for alcohol addiction treatment, there may still be some apprehension towards its implementation. It’s essential to address these factors to ensure a smooth transition into its utilization and qualm any fears from healthcare providers and patients.

• Privacy troubles: As with other life aspects that technology has had a hand with, there is a cause for concern about whether the data accumulated by AI is in safe hands. Sensitive information such as personal details and habits of a person with an addiction is on the line. There’s a must to provide reassurance regarding data privacy and protection.
• Unethical development: Multiple AI programs come from computer engineers who know how to make a machine learning algorithm. However, it’s key to have medical professionals vet these programs. Letting out applications without the review of field experts can increase diagnostic bias and hallucinations.¹¹
• Lack of human presence: There are recurring fears of AI replacing the human workforce, which can be worrying in a person-centered niche like alcohol addiction treatment. Human empathy plays a big part in a person’s recovery, so the implementation of AI should be presented as a tool rather than a replacement.

Adopt AI Against Alcohol Addiction

Many people can develop alcohol use disorder, which is detrimental to themselves and the world they live in. By integrating AI assistance in the process of treating those with alcohol addiction, the healthcare industry can be more than capable of distributing rehabilitation and recovery services. It’s just important to treat implementation with a meticulous plan and care.

Sources:

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10. Lee BP, Roth N, Rao P, et al. Artificial intelligence to identify harmful alcohol use after early liver transplant for alcohol-associated hepatitis. American Journal of Transplantation : official journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. July 2022. Accessed January 16, 2024. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9541176/.
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