Originally, 635 African-American substance dependent men were recruited: 590 from the Substance Abuse Treatment Program (SATP) at the Department of Veteran Affairs New Jersey Healthcare System (VANJHCS), East Orange Campus and 45 men originally screened as controls (see below) who were found to have lifetime substance dependence. Most of the participants recruited from the SATP were inpatients on a 21 day residential treatment ward, however some were recruited from the outpatient clinic or from the methadone clinic. Criteria for inclusion in the study were that participants were ≥ 18 years of age, met DSM-IV criteria for substance dependence, self-identified as African American and had been abstinent for at least two weeks. Exclusion criteria included mental retardation, dementia and acute psychosis. Patients were interviewed by a psychiatrist (A.R.) with the substance abuse section of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) (38) to determine lifetime substance dependence diagnoses. The mean (SD) age of the patients was 45.6 (7.8) years.
