What is addiction?
We all talk about how we’re “addicted” to things. “Oh, I am so addicted to chocolate!” or “Have you seen how I look in those jeans? I am just ADDICTED to denim!” At this level, what we’re really saying is that we have a strong preference for certain things. However, when it comes to more serious things like shoplifting, using personal loans or credit cards in they way they weren’t intended to be used, substance abuse and other life-disrupting behaviors, addiction can be very real. It is no laughing matter.
But now there may be a pill for that, called naltrexone.
Caleb Hellerman reports for CNN that this new anti-addiction medication “may turn the world of rehab on its head.”
A breakthrough in treatment
Dr. Mark Willenbring of the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse says mental health care and the substance abuse tied to it has reached a point where treatment is not necessarily tied to being institutionalized. Now more can be done in homes and doctors’ offices.
“There will be a ‘Prozac moment’ when primary care doctors start handling functional alcoholics,” Willenbring says.
According to Hellerman, medical scientists are excited about findings like these:
- A study led by Dr. Bankole Johnson of the University of Virginia found that topiramate (Topamax) — already used to treat epilepsy and migraines — reduced the number of days on which alcoholics drank heavily, by 25 percent more than among alcoholics who got just therapy
- A federally funded study known as COMBINE compared cognitive-behavioral therapy alone with therapy along with naltrexone. Patients receiving both were more likely to stay abstinent and drank less if they did relapse
Slow to change minds
Studies have shown the medication to be effective, but rehab programs have been slow to adopt it. In the case of alcoholism, Dr. Kevin Clark believes the intensive therapy of 12-steps programs is best. “It is a disease of the brain, but it’s a multifaceted disease. It has a spiritual component, a behavioral component to it. Our experience tells us that having the network of support and recovery is what really makes the difference,” he says.
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Naltrexone is an opioid receptor antagonist used primarily in the management of alcohol dependence and opioid dependence.
Naltrexone is an interesting drug – like other addiction treating drugs, it’s an alcohol and opiod antagonist. What it does is that it basically eradicates the tolerance to the intoxicating agent in question. So if a person went on an intense course of it and then got intoxicated, it would be toxic to them. Essentially you have a cure for the mental addiction and then an incentive not to abuse, because it could kill you.