Can free money help people stay off drugs? These programs are trying it.

Mercedes Pagan spent 13 years, nearly a third of her life, seeking treatment for her addiction to cocaine.

She tried detoxing four times at inpatient facilities but each time she was quickly discharged without follow-up care. She visitedclinicians who specialize in addiction, but the only medications they could offer (methadone and buprenorphine) were for opioid addiction and are not effective for treating the use of stimulants like cocaine.

Nothing stuck until Pagan, a 36-year-old personal caregiver from Revere, learned late last year of an innovative new initiative at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program that gave her a financial incentive to stay sober. Every time she took a drug test that was free of cocaine, showed up for a recovery group meeting, orengaged in physical exercise, Pagan was rewarded with $5 loaded onto a debit card.

While modest, the payments were enough to motivate Pagan to keep coming back, week after week, to a program that taught her new strategies for controlling her cravings.

“When you’re living on the edge, sometimes you need something — even if it’s small — to feel better about yourself and your future,” she said.

Pagan is among hundreds of people addicted to stimulants in New England who are part of a bold but debated experiment: giving financial rewards to people who abstain from illicit drugs.

In cities across the region, treatment providers are embracing the concept of monetary awards as they seek new ways to combat a troubling surge in the use of psychostimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine.

The approach is known as “contingency management” and it’s based on a simple premise: that giving people tangible rewards for staying abstinent can rewire the brain, so people associate not using stimulants with positive outcomes. An abundance of scientific studies and clinical trials have found the approach highly effective.