Scientist beats alcohol addiction with Balcofen

Balcofen a wonder drug?

I was curious when I saw a small news item on a CNN or BBC News page a few days ago about Dr. Oliver Ameisen treating himself for his alcohol addiction with this drug.

After searching a bit more I was amazed to know that this drug has been around for quite some time and used to treat spasticity in children.

Then also came the suprising news that the good doctor published his findings more than 4 years ago and asked for clinical trials to conducted but none has been conducted to date.

But here is a real gem of information. The main ingredient to making Balcofen is suddenly becoming very hard to get. They are talking about a global shortage! Wonder who is trying to 'corner' that market!.

Could it be the 'Chinese'? Certainly not the Russians? Islamists maybe?, or could it be a big bad pharmaceutical company setting up a Balcofen cartel.?

Extra.....Extra.....Read all about it.!!

The following excerpt courtesy of Wikipedia:

Dr. Olivier Ameisen, a French-American associate professor of medicine and a cardiologist at Weill Medical college of Cornell University, reported in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism that he successfully used Baclofen to completely suppress his own addiction. In his paper, he urged for randomized trials of high-dose baclofen to be conducted to test the therapeutic model he had proposed. He renewed his call for clinical trials in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). His therapeutic model was reproduced by Dr. William Bucknam who published a case report in Alcohol and Alcoholism and by Roberta Agabio et al. who published another case in Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Since four years after his call, clinical trials had not been conducted, Ameisen, who currently is a visiting professor of medicine at State University of New York Downstate Medical Center wrote a book to inform public opinion and physicians.

Recently, based on Ameisen's therapeutic model, some trials have been conducted in using Baclofen to treat cocaine addiction. While no final study has been released, people have said once they took Baclofen they felt their desire for cocaine plummet almost overnight. There is a report that baclofen has beneficial role in the management of reflux disease.

Baclofen therapy is usually started with an initial low dose of about 15 mg daily in divided doses and gradually titrated up in a stepwise fashion until symptomatic relief occurs. The usual maximum dose is 80 mg per day.

Discontinuation of baclofen can be associated with a withdrawal syndrome which resembles benzodiazepine withdrawal and alcohol withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms are more likely if baclofen is used for long periods of time (more than a couple of months) and can occur from low or high doses. The severity of baclofen withdrawal depends on the rate at which baclofen is discontinued. Thus to minimise baclofen withdrawal symptoms the dose should be tapered down slowly when discontinuing baclofen therapy. Abrupt withdrawal is most likely to result in severe withdrawal symptoms. Acute withdrawal symptoms can be stopped by recommencing baclofen.

Withdrawal symptoms may include auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, delusions, confusion, agitation, delirium, disorientation, fluctuation of consciousness, insomnia, inattention, memory impairments, perceptual disturbances, anxiety, depersonalization, hypertonia, hyperthermia, formal thought disorder, psychosis, mania, mood disturbances, restlessness, and behavioral disturbances, tachycardia, seizures, tremors, autonomic dysfunction, hyperpyrexia, extreme muscle rigidity resembling neuroleptic malignant syndrome and rebound spasticity.