ACT10Npack

Find this article on foodbeast and thought that it would be a interesting article to share with SR. It's similar to what Antabuse does.

--------------

Science Creates the World’s First Alcoholism Vaccine | Foodbeast

Scientists in Chile have spent the past year designing a drug that will give anyone who drinks alcohol an immediate (and very nasty) hangover.

We won’t lie, that sounds like a pretty evil plan, but it’s for a good cause — they’re trying to treat addiction. A research team at the Universidad de Chile has spent a year developing a vaccine for alcoholism. Basically, the vaccine works by sending biochemical messages to the liver not to express genes that metabolize alcohol. If someone who’s had the vaccine tries to drink alcohol, they’ll experience severe nausea, tachycardia (accelerated heartbeat), and general discomfort—basically a medically induced hangover of epic proportions.

The Santiago Times reported that the Universidad is looking to launch a preclinical trial of the vaccine next month, followed by a seven-month-long study in India, so it’ll be awhile before the vaccine is available to the general public.

12skiptomylue

I've had a lot of bad hangovers, and yet, I still managed to pick up again.

LindaLou

Not sure why, but this sounds a bit scary to me.

LadyinBC

Me too, was one of my excuses to pick up a drink again.

ReadyAtLast

I think the term vaccine is misleading. A vaccine improves/provides immunity to a disease.

This just makes you sick if you drink alcohol. You'll still be an alcoholic. If you have the urge to drink you'll still want to drink whether you've taken this or not

Bubovski

Hmmm! Sounds like more ad hoc Big Pharma medical consumerism.

A guy I met in de-tox had been on antabuse. Didn't work for him?

BadCompany

The Russians tried this 40 years ago. It failed.

shoreladylu

sounds like adverse conditioning... might work for people in the early stages of alcoholism

jennikate

What's the difference between this and antabuse or vivitrol?

gincognito

I'm not sure how that is different from or any less useless than antabuse.

Coldfusion

I see a huge difference--because it is injected, it could be given to people against their will. No wonder they're testing it in India!

Dee74

Vivitrol (naltrexone) can be injected too.

I've never heard of forced injection tho - I think that's probably more to do with science fiction and A Clockwork Orange than fact.

D

AnotherPaul

I don't think this will work for any substantial length of time. Aversion therapy has shown pretty good results with helping people stop smoking - better than Chantix and other prescriptions. But as a smoker for 20 years and a drunk for 15 who is now neither, I can safely say that they're completely different monsters. I would imagine this stuff could convince an early stage alcoholic to quit for as long as they were taking this stuff but not one minute longer. A more serious alcoholic will simply stop taking this stuff after a day or two, tops.

The bottom line is that recovery from serious alcohol addiction requires a fundamental change in the psyche. There is no miracle drug that can replace that and there never will be.

vegibean

Well said AnotherPaul, I totally agree. While I think it's great the OP shared that, I wish they had something that actually took that obsession/craving away, that I think would be most helpful, that is the biggest fight for the majority, fighting our own will. :/

paul99

The only medicine that treats alcoholism is alcohol.

Dee74

Even if they invented something that took cravings away I think old me would have still drunk anyway to be honest.

cravings were not my problem - dealing with life without a crutch was

D

vegibean

Dee, I agree with what you're saying, but I do know for me, sometimes it's just that stupid craving, there's nothing going on, I know I'm okay, it would nice to just be able to erase that thought, or just not have it at all.

I realize I'm back at square one (better than when I first got sober though), and this time is much easier for me, and I know I'm taking the right steps in doing the right thing, but the cravings... Grrrrrr!!! I don't necessarily act on them either though.

wpainterw

No thanks. Accelerated heart beat is not what I need, particularly at my age with an aortic valve that's starting to calcify and narrowing of my carotid artery. Chemical "control" like this, such as antabuse, not only creates risk but merely postpones a person from doing the things that lead to a real program of recovery. It's like calling "time out!" in a ball game. Nothing gets done in the time out. And the longer it goes, the more a person tends to get a false sense of security. When the medication stops then a voice inside the brain says, "You're O.K. now. You can handle it. Why not have just one glass of wine or maybe one beer?" Then you do that and "nothing happens". "Nothing"? Don't you believe it! Everything starts to happen! We've got proof of that, thousands of folks doing that kind of "research" with their lives and it's like, "When you're in a hole, and time out ends, should you get yourself a shovel and start digging it deeper?"






w.

Dee74

Cravings kept it real for me, and learning to deal with them (with things like urge surfing) was a cornerstone of my recovery...but we're all different, and probably at different points too, I think Vegi

D