Mental Health Center

Using Drugs to Curb Cravings

Addiction is a Memory continued...

Side effects of naltrexone are relatively mild and rare, with about 10% of alcoholics reporting nausea. And with a new injectable form of the drug that is under development, O'Brien thinks that rate can be further reduced. "You give a lower dose that lasts for 30 to 40 days."

Alcoholics aren't the only people being helped by naltrexone. Heroin addicts who take the drug don't relapse, he says.

And naltrexone isn't the only anti-craving medication. Zyban has been successfully helping smokers kick their habit for several years. The experimental agent Rimonabant helped overweight people drop an average of 20 pounds in one study and doubled the chances that smokers would quit in another. Campral, also not yet approved in the U.S., is being successfully used to reduce relapse rates among recovering alcoholics in other countries.

A Promising News Strategy

Eric Collins, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York and co-chairman of the session, says that anti-craving agents represent "a promising new strategy."

"Dr. O'Brien is at the frontier of the field," he tells WebMD. "Eventually we will have agents that help to maintain people off drugs and alcohol after they have quit."

While it's unlikely there will be any global anti-craving drugs, Collins says "we will find specific agents that work for specific individuals."

David Baron, DO, chairman of psychiatry at Temple University at Philadelphia and co-chairman of the session, agrees.

"There will be certain subgroups for which one drug or another will work," Baron says. "Just like aspirin might not work for one person and acetaminophen might not work for another, one anti-craving drug will not work for everyone."

The anti-craving medications "are right on the edge of becoming a standard treatment of choice," he says. "We're not that far away from identifying which patients will respond."