WASHINGTON – The hottest topic in cocaine addiction is another drug, a medicine already sold to wake up narcoleptics.
Hundreds of cocaine users are testing whether that legal pill, called modafinil, could help them kick the addiction, and there’s early evidence that it may.
In addition to blunting cocaine’s notorious cravings, modafinil might also counter the damage that cocaine wreaks on users’ brain circuits, damage that in turn fuels the cycle of addiction.
The National Institutes of Health is spending $10.8 million researching modafinil as a potential cocaine treatment. Results from the first of three key clinical trials could arrive by year’s end.
Scientists are cautious: In a hunt spanning two decades, no one has found a medication to help treat cocaine addiction, and there’s no guarantee that modafinil will pan out.
But for Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, the narcolepsy medicine tops the list of promising potential therapies. It may help restore proper function of a crucial brain chemical, dopamine, that addiction hijacks.
And in describing why he’s hopeful, one leading researcher recounts the man who accused his drug dealer of selling bad coke before realizing modafinil had kept him from getting high – and several other modafinil testers who told of flushing cocaine down the toilet.
“I’ve been treating cocaine-addicted patients for something like 25 years, more, and I’ve never heard of anybody throwing away cocaine,” says Dr. Charles Dackis of the University of Pennsylvania, who led a small pilot study that suggested modafinil more than doubled addicts’ chances of going cocaine-free for at least three weeks.
The main side effect so far: insomnia, not surprising as modafinil is sold today to help narcolepsy patients fend off that neurologic disease’s sudden sleep attacks.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
