With anti-addiction pill, 'no urge, no craving'

www.cnn.com...

But today, Kent isn't tempted in the least. He says the credit goes to a prescription medication -- a pill called naltrexone. It's part of a new generation of anti-addiction drugs that may turn the world of rehab on its head.

Dr. Mark Willenbring, who oversees scientific research at the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, says alcoholism has reached a point similar to one depression reached 30 years ago -- when the development of Prozac and other antidepressants took mental health care out of the asylum and put it in homes and doctors' offices.

i know addictions are a terrible thing for a person, their families, and society but i totally hate the idea of drugs that mess with the chemistry in a persons mind.

it works in a similar way to chantix.
familydoctor.org...

Naltrexone blocks the parts of your brain that “feel” pleasure when you use alcohol and narcotics. When these areas of the brain are blocked, you feel less need to drink alcohol, and you can stop drinking more easily. Unlike disulfiram (brand name: Antabuse), another medicine that is sometimes used to treat alcoholism, naltrexone does not make you feel sick if you drink alcohol while taking it.

just look into the side effects of a similiar drug called chantix that is used to help people quit smoking and you will kinda understand what i mean.

www.peoplespharmacy.com...

Q. The story about the person who became depressed on Chantix caught my eye. My husband and I were both on Chantix to quit smoking back in June. Neither of us has a history of depression, but after he was on it he tried (with no warning) to take his own life.

www.importantlawsuits.com...

The most common side effects of Chantix are nausea, vomiting, headache, insomnia, abnormal dreams, flatulence, and dysgeusia (an altercation in taste). However, some patients who used Chantix had more severe side effects such as thoughts of suicide and suicidal or otherwise erratic behavior. Because the drug is so new, it is unknown whether these side effects are the result of withdrawal from nicotine or due to the drug itself. The FDA has since released a notice advising health care professionals to observe patients for change in behavior when taking Chantrix

i guess we will have to wait and see if this new drug used to fight addictions is worth the side effects it may cause.

[edit on 15-4-2009 by elitegamer23]

[edit on 15-4-2009 by elitegamer23]

I am VERY wary about pills, as a cure for anything. They generally mask symptoms, they dont fix. them. I have heard great things about this place, though:
www.google.com... SZJq-eAfg

reply to post by cautiouslypessimistic


yeah i just dont believe pills are the way to go to fix an addiction. i have seen plenty of people be addicts for years/decades only to kick their problem with the right kind of support.

a person has to want to get the help or quit, taking a pill to do this is only messing with that persons mind.

i am curious what the relapse rates will be with this ' miracle drug'

I could use that pill. Sign me up. I wish I could quit drinking, I just like it too much.

I'm already on Effexor, the pill that's supposed to make you not care anymore. It doesn't seem to be working well enough these days, unfortunately.

hmm, i used chantix to quit smoking, they really, really, really helped.

i would recommend them to anyone but i'ld tell them to be really careful with them, as i would with any mind altering substance. they've given me better quality of life for longer than i would have otherwise.

that's just smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction......that's proper life destroying stuff, anything that would help an addict as much as the chantix helped me are worth the risk IMHO.

While I completely agree that we depend too much on pharmaceuticals these days that we really do not need, the alcohol treatment pill in the article looks to be promising. Without going into the whole story, I am a recovering narcotic addict. I climbed up the ladder from percocet & vicodin until I got to the point that I was chewing around 320 mg of Oxycontin a day. For those that don't know, Oxycontin is a time release narcotic and chewing up the pills breaks the time release to give you the narcotic all at once. I went to a treatment center (literally a methadone clinic) to get help. I went to meetings and my group was mostly heroin users, since heroin and oxycontin affect a person nearly identically. The difference for me though was that instead of taking methadone to ease out of my addiction, I was prescribed a drug called Suboxone which, to me, sounds similar in effect to the naltrexone described in the OP. The suboxone would keep me from suffering the effects of withdrawl (which is the absolute worst feeling you could ever experience), but would not give you any feelings of being, for lack of a better word, "high". At that point in addiction though you never felt "high" anyway - you would just stop feeling so bad.
Anyway, the point of this is that will power alone for an addict is often not enough. I tried over and over to quit and you always give in because the withdrawl feels so horrible. For me, the suboxone took away the withdrawl or "masked" it or whatever, but it was literally a magic cure for me. Once you get a few months without Oxycontin, you begin to take less and less of the Suboxone until one day you are taking nothing. I have not taken any form of narcotic for years and as a result of my addiction have become very much against all forms of unnecessary meds - but if there is anything that can help out a fellow addict to get through the withdrawl symptoms and on to complete sobriety, then I'm all for it.

I noticed that most people who have had an addiction were for the drug. That is because people who have never had a narcotic addiction or drinking addiction or whatever do not understand the complexity of being addicted. Like they said sometimes will power is not enough. It might last a few days of misery then the person can not handle the situation anymore. Addiction becomes synonymous with need like water and shelter. I don't like meds that have bad adverse effects like those pointed out. Who wants gastroenteritis or the like but in the long run it may worth it. I believe people who become suicidal have the preponderance to be suicidal except they keep that aspect of their psyche in the closet. They may think about it but do not express these thoughts until they make a suicide gesture. I also believe that taking the meds while not truly wanting to quit their addiction affects those suicidal ideations. I am all for the pill if a person is addicted and wants to leave that life behind.

[edit on 15-4-2009 by catamaran]

If they worked I would have quit smoking by now. I have not seen any pill for addiction work. I have no faith.

Effexor I took for depression and it gave me hives =(
I also have come to dislike pills, especially those with high risks for side effects.
In other news,

I wonder if this could work for ANY addiction? Gambling? That would be awesome, so many people could use that.

I could use one for shopping, I think. But I agree that therapy or counseling would be a necessary supplement to any "addiction pill."

K I really wanted to post links, but for some reason at my aunt's place, on her internet, anything I click on through a search engine comes up as "page cannot be displayed" Off topic here, any ideas what's wrong, anyone? lol

Okay, now for my post...

Has anyone heard of Baclofen (Loreisal or something, as another name)
It is a derivative of diazepam but not addictive (there can be a built up tolerance if you are taking large amounts but yeh...)

Anyway, I take it for my neck/back spasms. I don't really like some of the effects and I refuse to take it daily, so I don't know necessarily its potential effects. It was originally used for spasticity in MS and other conditions. But they are finding in numerous studies that it can in a sense, shut down certain addiction-associated areas of the brain that have been wired by an addiction I guess you could say...
Like a person that was on coc aine, for example, was hooked up to brain scanning stuff and shown pictures and stuff of things that he knew were triggers, and they caused certain centres in his brain to light up, cravings, etc.
Then, on baclofen, they did the same. The same areas of his brain did not respond to the stimuli.
A doctor in france has tested it on 12 alcoholics and drug addicts (may not be up to date info here btw) and claims he cured himself of his alcoholism testing baclofen on himself.
I had an opiate addiction for 6 years. I had no intention of leaving the medication alone because I had chronic pain, but I used baclofen for withdrawals between my prescriptions, which I always ran out of waaaay faster than I was supposed to lol
It do not even remember what an opiate craving feels like...don't ask me how, maybe it was the baclofen, maybe it is just my personality type or some crazy sh*t, who knows. But it also was very very good for making the withdrawals FAR more bearable.
So it is interesting to me...

Anyway, sorry I can't provide some of the more intelligent resources in the matter. But google search it if you are interested!!

We actually were taught about it in physiological psychology classes I took in university, as an up and coming drug of interest....that was a few years ago. I was sitting there like "Hey, I'm on that stuff!! " lol but that's where I got the idea to try it for my opiate withdrawals.

I'm off opiates now, and it's not exactly simple because very consciously I keep thinking to myself, omg I'm missing out, why can't I still be on them...
But then when I have gone and used anything as a result, it's very NOT monumental, to say the least....I have no trouble leaving it behind again.

hmm..... guys it's kinda off the subject, but I have been wondering....
If you take pills that help you get off of drugs.....don't you get addicted to the pills instead of the drugs you were taking or so?

As someone pointed out above Naltrexone is good as a short term medication to get through the initial withdrawals, although some would argue that these withdrawals are needed to fight the cravings in the years to come..

They do not however take away cravings, they are a blocker, if you were to take heroin the drug would have no effect. you will still be craving for the high.

we've been using it here in a rehab i worked in for a few years and in my opinion the only real change is that addicts plan the relapse by stopping taking the naltrexone a few days before using, Now this alone will bring down the rate of relapse as those few days will make all the difference to some

IMO the side effects outnumber the benefits...........

Originally posted by Pakd-on-mystery
hmm..... guys it's kinda off the subject, but I have been wondering....
If you take pills that help you get off of drugs.....don't you get addicted to the pills instead of the drugs you were taking or so?

Very often, yes.
As for myself and the baclofen, I haven't taken any for a month and a half (haven't needed to) and never used it for more than 3-5 days in a row, ever.
I have no desire to use them either. They create a sort of anti-addiction brain..environment..or something like that.
Whereas if you're taking methadone or benzos to help keep off heroin or something, you're probably getting addicted to something else, just the same...
That seems....bad.
I believe also, that no matter how much a pill helps an addiction, you still have to work through a lot of other related issues and such if you plan on staying off drugs. It's not as simple as taking a pill unfortunately.

My main worry with developments like this (as a recovering alcoholic myself) is that the physical cravings are only one part of the addiction. A pill like this could be a huge help to people who are really having a hard time getting through the first month or so without relapsing, but I think it would be tempting to use them only long enough to get you to a point where your will-power is a little stronger than the physical compulsion to use: resulting in a lifetime of white-knuckling it because you haven't addressed whatever it was that got you hooked in the first place.

Obviously, this is going to depend hugely on what your drug of choice is, and how and why you started abusing it: if you got hooked on narcotics because an irresponsible doctor overprescribed them or didn't adequately monitor them after an injury, then maybe the physical addiction really is your main problem and a pill will get you through that, with only minor support to rebuild whatever messes you made of your life.

If like me you started drinking heavily as soon as you could get your hands on the liquor because you wanted to escape reality, quiet the obsessive thoughts in your head, and deal with the social fears that both led to and derived from isolation, living a full life eventually will require so much more than just giving up the drug. Addiction really is a soul-sickness, in my experience. Just removing the physical dependence doesn't cure that; it only makes it possible for a cure to begin.

Originally posted by americandingbat

Obviously, this is going to depend hugely on what your drug of choice is, and how and why you started abusing it: if you got hooked on narcotics because an irresponsible doctor overprescribed them or didn't adequately monitor them after an injury, then maybe the physical addiction really is your main problem and a pill will get you through that, with only minor support to rebuild whatever messes you made of your life.

If like me you started drinking heavily as soon as you could get your hands on the liquor because you wanted to escape reality, quiet the obsessive thoughts in your head, and deal with the social fears that both led to and derived from isolation, living a full life eventually will require so much more than just giving up the drug. Addiction really is a soul-sickness, in my experience. Just removing the physical dependence doesn't cure that; it only makes it possible for a cure to begin.

It was both scenarios for me. I had a legit cause, but because I was looking to find ways to get out of my head, I made sure I finally found a doc that would overprescribe after I'd first been given those meds to try for my pain.
I don't know though, I think that you're right, in a sense, that different people come out of addictions easier and differently than others.
And what you say about removing the physical dependence only making it possible for a cure to begin is very true.

Its seems to me like you are just replacing your old addiction with an addiction to the new pill, the only difference is who you are paying for the drug.

ARRRRRRRRRG!!!!

Sorry, i just spent an hour on a post and lost it somehow, Good thing i have great coping strategies now hehe........anyway i have lots to say on this topic but it will have to wait because i am about to fall asleep in my chair.

*hint*

i am free from a 15 year dependence on meds and alcohol that i used to manage depression and anxiety. Meds help stop the free fall but are not a cure and often times hinder growth as the body system becomes dependent on them. Proper brain chemistry can be achieve by retaining your thinking and avoiding man made chemicals. More to come.....


great addiction support forum www.soberrecovery.com...

please google benzodiazapine with-drawl and always research your prescribes meds thoroughly. Only use others experiences as a starting point for your research then discuss with a specialist.(in my experience GP's should stick to penicillin and physicals)
WARNING Never quit anything cold turkey and unsupervised.

good night zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

ps. never in my life since i was born can i remember this much serenity.

My major concern is that the "war on drugs" will get so out of control, some fascist politician(s) will call for legislation mandating that this type of medication be taken by everyone. I've also heard of so-called "immunizations" for drugs like coc aine. Basically, they give you a shot and coc aine (or whatever) has no effect on you anymore. The ability of the government to take away the choice to do anything, even if it is something self-destructive. frightens me.


TheAssociate

Originally posted by TheAssociate
My major concern is that the "war on drugs" will get so out of control, some fascist politician(s) will call for legislation mandating that this type of medication be taken by everyone. I've also heard of so-called "immunizations" for drugs like coc aine. Basically, they give you a shot and coc aine (or whatever) has no effect on you anymore. The ability of the government to take away the choice to do anything, even if it is something self-destructive. frightens me.


TheAssociate

In other threads, and in general there are theories which claim the government to be the only reason for drugs being available in many countries....
If this was true, why ould the government try immunizations for drugs?
Wouldn't that harm their "Drug-buissness" ?

Where are these substances being used? Are they out for civillian usage,or is it one of those Cancer-cure-like theories?
-Pakd

To take this thread into the realms of a changing conspiracy, I feel that something is going on behind the scenes that needs to be found out.

Having been involved in the scene both as an addict then worker for the past 20 odd years it has always been obvious that the government were quite happy for there to be x amount of addicts in the country.

1. it makes the unemployment figures look better as these people are not on these lists, they are registered sick

2. crime related to addiction makes up a huge percentage of the stats, so makes the police look like they are actually doing something worthwhile.

3. methadone has been used as a social control drug, when people are medicated up to the eyeballs they dont have the energy or inclination to fight the system.

there are are many other scenarios but you get the drift.....

So why now are we getting drugs that they claim will cure addiction? I also just heard on the news that alcoholics/addicts will have there benefits removed if they dont join a rehabilitation programme......

Whilst unemployment figures are rising to an all time high what is the real reason behind adding thousands more on to the stats, it's not like theres jobs there for them to take up???????????????


Maybe I should have started this as a new thread?