Pharmacology and Alcoholism

Pharmacology’s making it easier to stop drinking. As anyone familiar with alcoholism knows, getting alcohol out of the body is only the bare beginning. The reason alcoholics often return to drinking is due to the psychological obsession with alcohol, the ongoing craving for alcohol even after the body has been detoxified.

The alcoholic will crave alcohol long after detox, and this is why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous are important. It also helps when the recovering alcoholic has support from family and friends, from a physician, and, often, from ongoing counseling. If the recovering alcoholic starts nutrition and exercise plans, both will help the recovering person get past the mental obsession. After a few months, the brain will heal and the recovering alcoholic will not longer crave alcohol — it could happen even earlier, as we’re all different.

Now, pharmacology might offer one more tool to the recovering alcoholic to assist in that early, difficult part of recovery. It’s a medicine that’s usually prescribed for asthma. Here is an excerpt from Medical Daily:

Giving up alcohol isn’t the hardest part of overcoming alcoholism — the subsequent cravings are what lead most to relapse. A new study from UCLA may have a way to better address these cravings. According to the research, a drug commonly used in Japan to treat asthma also has the unexpected side effect of quelling a desire for alcohol by reducing the pleasurable effects of drinking. The findings could one day make the drug a candidate for use in alcohol abuse treatments.

According to a study now published online in  Neuropsychopharmacology, the drug ibudilast significantly lowers user’s cravings for alcohol and helps to improve their mood when confronted with alcohol which they are not allowed to drink. In addition, the drug seems to alleviate user’s depression, a condition very common in heavy drinkers.

Recovering alcoholics need all the help they can get. Hopefully, this asthma medicine can be turned into an approved medicine for the treatment of alcoholism. It’s hard to describe the obsession with alcohol that tortures the alcoholic mind — it confounds loved ones, friends, employers and even medical professionals. It seems insane for a person to crave something that’s killing them, but this is the nature of alcoholism — now, hopefully, there’s more help to deal with this chronic brain disease.