hankojedi wrote:For the last few years I tried something new. Right after 8 hours of rapid detox under general anesthesia, I inject the patients with Vivitrol. That is an FDA-approved long-acting opiate receptor blocker lasting 30 days. These opiate addict patients showed no physical withdrawal, and thanks to Vivitrol are no longer able to feel the effect of opiates for the next 30 days. Then I instruct them to get monthly Vivitrol repeat injections for the next 11 months. For those that follow the instruction, the relapse rate at one year has been zero percent. For those that do not follow the instruction, the relapse rate at one year has been 30 percent. At least this is a quick way to stop the physical addiction and allows the patients to begin to go to counseling and group therapies to deal with the psychological aspects of the addiction problems once they go home after spending 3 days with us.
This sounds very interesting. But withdrawing from drugs does not necessarily treat the condition that drove an addict to use drugs in the first place. This procedure should be followed with treatment of the underlying biochemical abnormality that causes people to use drugs.
Read:
Drug Addiction is a Nutritional Disorder
I believe if you were to combine Vivitrol treatment with nutritional therapy, you would be able to get clients off any drug, including Vivitrol, in about a year's time. (See
here).
This would be worth a PhD study by some institution. What do you think?