REPLICATION AND FURTHER SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS WILL TELL THE TRUTHFirst of all, we would like to thank Dr Hajek for providing such close scrutiny of our research [1] and for suggesting that our research be replicated [2], a suggestion we most enthusiastically welcome. We also endorse Dr Hajek's suggestion to follow up the Psychodynamic Model Training (PDM) subjects; in fact, we also suggest a follow up of the Zyban subjects and all subjects of either group for good measure, by an independent researcher. From the beginning of the trial, most of us were concerned about recruitment bias favouring a novel psychotherapy as opposed to 'just another medication' and tried as best as we could to counteract any possible media hype of the psychotherapeutic intervention. As Dr Hajek points out, the second recruitment announcement was indeed much less biased than the first.Indeed, out of concern for a possible recruitment bias, we performed the completers' analysis, pursuing a line of argument that Dr Hajek endorses. With respect to the alleged uniqueness of our 3-month results, we re-emphasize that continuous abstinence was defined strictly according to the Russell Standard as detailed by West and colleagues [3] and that in that very same paper, 'point prevalence' is repeatedly defined as 'at the time of the follow-up', i.e., without giving any specified observation period [3]. In our trial, subjects were first contacted by telephone and asked about their smoking status. The overwhelming majority of the relapsers we contacted refused to provide any further information with respect to the exact time course of their relapse. Therefore, continuous abstinence and point prevalence abstinence are, of course, identical at the 3-month time point, i.e., at the first follow-up interview.Whatever the recruitment bias and the uniqueness of the trial centre interventions in Graz may have been, recent large randomized controlled clinical trials by Jorenby and colleagues, on which our trial was closely modelled for easier comparison, and in which minimum non-pharmacological therapeutic interventions were offered, even intention-to-treat (ITT) 12-month continuous abstinence rates for sustained-release bupropion were 18% in their 1999 trial [4], and 15 % in their 2006 trial [5], i.e., not that much different from the 12% of our trial.The reference of Dr Hajek to 'Mommy and I are one', while a sure-fire way to get laughs from some of the readers, suggests a slight disrespect for the deficits in selfassertiveness, self-worth, and deficits in memory recall of loving and satisfying relationships that many substance dependent individuals and, indeed, many of us, suffer from. From my own experience as a needy individual and a psychotherapist, I can assure Dr Hajek that these deficits cannot be underestimated. Now it turns out that a psychotherapeutic intervention that boldly addresses these needs and deficits (the obscene and the shameful) and does so in a psychotherapeutic climate where other psychotherapeutic schools clothe their approach i...
