CHICAGO – Alcoholics who were motivated were able to dramatically cut back on drinking over four months no matter what type of treatment they stuck with, including taking dummy pills, a rigorous short-term study found.
The 1,383 alcoholics studied were assigned to get 16 weeks of treatment – either counseling, medication or fake pills – most with the help of a doctor or nurse. All badly wanted to quit, a factor that led some outside experts to question whether the results apply to the real world.
The findings appear in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
The most effective treatments were naltrexone, a drug that reduces alcohol craving, and specialized counseling. When each was combined with medical management, abstinence days increased from about 25 percent to about 80 percent. Combining fake pills was almost as effective.
Unexpectedly, a newer alcoholism drug called Campral, used more often in Europe than in the United States, was no more effective than dummy pills. The researchers aren’t sure why and said more study is needed.
Dr. Stuart Gitlow, an addiction specialist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the study used “worthless” short-term measures to define success.
Alcoholism is a lifetime disease, said Gitlow, who was not involved in the research. “Either you drink or you don’t. Alcoholism is like pregnancy: you are or you’re not. No middle ground.”
But the researchers argued that cutting back is an important step and said the results should help convince skeptics that alcoholism isn’t hopeless.
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