Hot off the press! Our study @JSATjournal on how optimism relates to mechanisms of behavior change among sexual minority men w/ HIV enrolled in an MI-based alcohol intervention @ChrisKahler_PhD @khmayer1 #NadineMastroleo #DavidPantalone #PeterMonti https://t.co/zgvyJ28w6V

And of course none of this would have been possible without an incredibly supportive mentor team @JaneMetrik John McGeary @JenMerrillPhD @sleepyteens @eraston_phd

Beyond excited to have my Career Development Award funded and to start this line of research @VAProvidence !

📰New pre-print available at @DrugAlcoholDep! We examined time-varying associations between sleep and cannabis use during adolescent treatment. Thanks to @bberey77 @Mel_Pielech_PhD @SamMeisel @HTPadovano @RobertMirandaJr

Check out our new chapter in Neuromethods where we discuss approaches and decision points for different laboratory alcohol administration paradigms!

monetary expenditures. As such, purchase tasks or other ways to quantify cannabis-related reinforcement may be useful tools to help identify Veterans at elevated risk for escalating their cannabis use in the future. #AddictionSciJC

There is still much work to do in terms of improving prevention and intervention strategies for Veterans who use cannabis to treat their sleep disturbances. Results from this study suggest that Veterans with sleep disturbances find cannabis particularly reinforcing in terms of

ways to advance this line of research at the VA and one common theme that came up was cannabis-related stigma and the potential repercussions this may have given that cannabis is still federally illegal. #AddictionSciJC

lower productivity, it may be beneficial to focus on other potential consequences like poor medication adherence or adverse drug interactions between cannabis and other medications. Anecdotally, I recently met with a Veterans Engagement Group at the Providence VAMC to discuss

It’s important to keep in mind that this issue extends beyond just Veteran samples and is relevant to any research involving persons who use cannabis for medical purposes. Rather than traditional measures that focus on consequences like feeling bad about your use or experiencing

certain forms or modes of administration differentially impact sleep or whether rates of cannabis use for sleep differ based on states that do or don’t permit medical/recreational cannabis use. #AddictionSciJC

I do think one key point is that Veterans who use cannabis for sleep in states where it is legal likely have greater access to different products (e.g., edibles, concentrates, etc.) that may be harder to get in states where cannabis is illegal. However, it’s still unclear whether

@JaneMetrik, John McGeary, and Brian Borsari who have been incredibly insightful about how & why Veterans choose to use cannabis for their sleep. That being said, I’m not convinced that cannabis’ legal status makes much of a difference in terms of using cannabis for sleep or not.

It’s worth noting that as a non-clinician, I have minimal interface with Veterans in clinical settings so I haven’t had the chance to speak to those individuals personally about this. I have been incredibly lucky though to work with collaborators affiliated with the VA

(e.g., latency, wake after sleep onset) that aren’t easily or reliably captured with self-reports alone but are often mentioned as a benefit from using cannabis. #AddictionSciJC

interested to examine how actigraphy-derived sleep efficiency, or the amount of time in bed spent sleeping, related to future cannabis use and problems. Sleep efficiency seems especially relevant because it incorporates several other important aspects of sleep

It’s hard to say how they would’ve differed since there’s a general lack of research combining self-reported and objective sleep measures in relation to cannabis use outcomes, particularly among Veterans. Even though this is one of the 7 PSQI components, I would have been very

to examine how Veterans valued cannabis from a behavioral economic perspective and whether cannabis demand helped to explain the link between sleep disturbances and cannabis use. #AddictionSciJC

decisions in context surrounding various health-related behaviors (e.g., vaccine uptake, other substance use, food consumption, etc.). However, minimal research has examined how sleep impacts these decision-making processes or cannabis’ reinforcing value. As such, I wanted

actually does more harm than good. Equally important, regardless of how cannabis affects sleep, we need a better understanding of how and why sleep problems confer risk for negative outcomes. Second, behavioral economics has provided incredible insight into how individuals make