Dean's World

It would be interesting if your average alcoholic could take a pill like this and no longer worry that it's going to devastate him or his life if he has a glass of wine with dinner or a beer while watching a ball game.

Of course some will object to this, and say it's just masking the problem. From my perspective, though, I'd take this. I despise having to constantly exert willpower when I'm at a restaurant and others around me are having beer or wine, I despise deciding now and then to give in and then having to force myself to stop before I get too sauced.

I'm drinking far, far, far less than I was a year ago at this time, yet still I go over the top once in a while and scare myself.

I would support heavy drinkers taking this drug and I'd love more research to help problem drinkers.

I don't have the drinking urge but smoking, man I struggle quitting all the time.

Dean, these drugs have helped many people suffering from alcohol. I remember my Mom taking something a while back that was to help her but it just made her sick and of course she was not getting to the root of understanding that alcoholism is a disease. She was a closet drinker for so many years.

Another person in my family had the doctor prescribed a pill to him also but like the article pointed out only 13% was prescribed. That is due to the men and women to sick in their disease and continued to drink while on medication. Both of my loved ones were heavy drinkers so a real careful bondary has to be drawn before the pills are dispensed so far. The really good alcohol counselors do need to watch a heavy drinker.

The root is there and the roots to depression is there along with diabetes and high colestral. Genetics as we all know are to be examined in our blood lines and be aware so you can get help when any of the above diseases starts to take a hold of our minds. Family dynamics play an essential role in helping addictions.

You were very wise to take the hypnois therapy. My Mom was in that time frame of not understanding why she may have inherited from her father that died in his forties leaving my Mom without a Dad at only eight years old. She did inherit his brillance in money management and being a tremendous budget analist for the US Government. Or bloodlines can most definetly give us tremendous benefits as well.

I am so glad these things like depression and alcohol came to the forfront in our society.

This new medication coming out along with the one mentioned is tremendous. Counseling goes a long way for a family in treating disease and addictions learning the root of why. It is a family in need of kind counseling especially for a husband and wife so they can watch for signs of danger for one another suffering. Will power is not a weakness, it isn't even thought of that way by professionals in the field of disease and addiction.

I am holding out for my dearest relative now. He is hopefully going to go to the Veterans Administration since he is entitled to enlist the help of other veterans suffering addictions and disease. I found his veterans admin. for him. We all from time to time must understand the person suffering and read up all we can so we can help the one suffering...families are made whole again in seeking help.

While I applaud the development of this and any other number of drugs that seek to specifically treat alcoholism, this disease is more than just a chemical imbalance. Drink-seeking behavior (sorry if I get a little technical, but I do drug related neurobiology research) is influenced by somatic(internal) and social factors, and both should be treated. I'm not a big advocate of 12 step programs (having watched them fail in my family), but I think that we must be careful to prescribe these drugs to people who have adequate support, including therapy and/or 12-step so that we treat both underlying issues.

Additionally, I am sceptical of the drug touted in this article because frankly, it's just an opiate and it would seem that the mechanism of action of the drug doesn't specifically target the neural circuitry involved in drug-seeking, but rather dampens the entire circuit, which leads to a decrease in drinking. It makes sense that this would work better in people with one genetic profile rather than another because some people are genetically more susceptible to the effects of this kind of drug.

More specific anti-drinking treatments that target the cells in the brain that are most closely associated with drinking are being developed, and much research is going toward understand how alcohol actually drives the addiction, with an eye towards understanding who becomes an alcoholic and who doesn't.