About the Author

My name is Dr John McMahon and I have a PhD in psychology. I have worked in the alcohol and drug field in various capacities for around 25 years. In that time I have been a therapist, have designed and run treatment interventions for both alcohol and drug problems.

I have carried out research on treatment efficacy, the nature of and how to measure motivation to change, and binge drinking and drinking culture and have published approximately 50 articles in scholarly journals and books and have given presentations at numerous national and international conferences.

I am currently a senior lecturer in the biggest post-graduate course on alcohol and drugs in the UK and research supervisor for 4 PhD students and around 25 MSc students.

I am a board member and research director of a large treatment agency in Central Scotland and was previously Chairman of the National Therapist Training Committee for alcohol counsellors.

I have organised three international conferences on addiction. I regularly undertake consultancy work for local and national organisations carrying out evaluations of treatment specifically or services in general and have written action plans, strategies and bespoke training courses.

I also help organisations with data collection, organisation and analysis, for it is only through testing and evaluating our practice we can tell what actually works.

Contact me

Links to Some of My Publications

The Negative Expectancy Questionnaire" A questionnaire to measure motivation to change. This can be found on the NIAAA site.

Alcohol expectancy in lone and group problem drinkers A paper that tests whether there are differences in expectancies of people who drink alone or in groups.

A paper about expectancy and value. This paper looks at the expectancies people have of alcohol and the value they place on them.