1. DSM-5 or DSM-5TR principal diagnosis with proper specifiers (if applicable)
2. Justify principal diagnosis criterion using case information
3. A treatment goal
4. An outcome objective
5. Specific interventive model: Education and behavior change
6. A process objective (based on the intervention model selected) for the outcome obj)
7. One potential differential diagnosis you considered
8. Explain why you did not select the potential differential diagnosis you were considering
9. One question you would ask to get additional pieces of NEEDED information to further solidify the diagnosis

Oliver Vincent never saw himself as an addict. He had always been "on top of things." At age 35, he was independently wealthy as the owner of several clothing franchises, lived with an ex-partner in a more-than-comfortable apartment in New York City, worked out every day, enjoyed the company of a group of loving friends, and, although single, had not given up on the idea of someday (preferably soon) finding the perfect man to share his life with. Mr. Vincent came out to his Irish Catholic family when he was 19. His parents had already guessed that Mr. Vincent was gay long before he told them, and they took the non-news fairly well. Their main concern had been that their son might be discriminated against because of his sexuality, get hurt, and live a lonely life. Nothing could be farther from the way things turned out: Mr. Vincent was "out and proud" and living it up.

When Mr. Vincent found himself with a substance use problem, he addressed it the same way he had dealt with pretty much everything else: head on. For the first time in his life, he decided to see a psychiatrist.

Mr. Vincent described a pattern that revolved around weekend "party and play" activities. On Friday and Saturday eveningsand occasionally during the weekhe would go out to dinner with friends and then to a club or a private party. He tended to drink two or three cocktails and four to five glasses of wine during the evening. Without the alcohol, he found he could easily say "no" to substances, but "after a good buzz, if someone has cokeand there is always someone around who has cokeI use. And then my heart starts to race, and then I do everything I can to hook up. I used to go online, but these days, it's all on Grindr."

Party and play are code words for drugs and sex, respectively. The term is sometimes abbreviated PNP.

Grindr is a smartphone application that uses GPS to identify and connect similarly inclined individuals in a person's geographical vicinity.

Overall, Mr. Vincent drank alcohol and used cocaine three to four times a week and "occasionally used tina and bath salts." He could hardly attend Monday morning meetings, much less prepare for them, and had been trying to cut down on his cocaine use for the prior 6 months without success.

Tina is slang for crystal methamphetamine. Bath salts is slang for a powder that contains a variety of synthetic stimulants.

Since Mr. Vincent had started using cocaine regularly, he had lost weight and had trouble sleeping. He worried that his effort at the gym was going to waste. His business continued to succeed, but his own effectiveness had decreased. Most importantly, he did not practice safer sex when high on stimulants, and he worried about HIV seroconversion.