Completing Detoxification Determined Eligibility for CBD Outpatient Follow-Up
Only participants who completed all ten inpatient days were eligible for the outpatient phase. The people contributing relapse follow-up were therefore a selected subset of those originally randomized.
The phases had different denominators
Seventy-eight participants were randomized, forty to CBD and thirty-eight to placebo. Sixty-two completed detoxification, and fifty completed the entire study. The outpatient phase followed detoxification completers for twelve weeks while treatment and other care continued. These counts should not be collapsed into one study-wide completion percentage.
Post-randomization selection changes the question
Finishing inpatient treatment can be related to tolerability, circumstances and participant characteristics. Restricting the next phase to completers limits direct generalization to everyone starting treatment. It does not prove that selection caused the null comparison or establish what the excluded participants would have experienced if they had continued.
Match the claim to the phase
The inpatient cue-craving experiment and outpatient time-to-relapse outcome had different settings and eligible populations. CBD did not establish superiority on the primary outcomes. Any claim about sustained outpatient effectiveness should retain the entry requirement, attrition and accompanying care. Neither treatment retention nor completion of detoxification independently demonstrates a CBD-specific clinical benefit.
Related analysis: the cocaine-craving and relapse findings.
Research cited
Mongeau-Pérusse and colleagues (2021). Cannabidiol as a treatment for craving and relapse in individuals with cocaine use disorder: a randomized placebo-controlled trial. DOI: 10.1111/add.15417.
