market could be very large because some of these processes also underline some of the behavior of compulsive disorders, such as pathological gambling or compulsive eating. These medications could also be beneficial in addressing some of the disruption that we see in these individuals.” Imagine a drug that stops you from overeating. Or treats gambling. Just think of the numbers of potential customers. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. Billions, worldwide. Even on a smaller scale, says Volkow, “the ability to develop a medication to treat methamphetamine addiction would be quite extraordinary.”
TREATING ADDICTION LIKE OTHER CHRONIC DISEASES
Until these new brain drugs are developed, therapists will treat patients the best way they can with the drugs currently available. Dr. Greenfield stresses that understanding the neurological changes in the brain can help explain to patients and their physicians why getting well and into recovery can be so difficult. “On the other hand, the other part that’s so important for people to understand is, like other types of medical disorders, addiction is a treatable disorder and people do actually get better. But like other medical disorders, like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, people generally don’t get better with a single treatment. They often require several different treatments,sometimes different types of treatments over time, to slowly but surely regain their health—their physical health and their mental health.
Greenfield believes that people have an outdated view of addiction and its treatments. “This stigmatization has really held back the general public’s understanding of all the gains that have been made over the last 20 years: People actually get better; people do much better. It’s a classic ‘bench to bedside’ story: basic biology and treatment-related research demonstrating over and over again that many, many patients can be helped. We are able to treat a vast majority of folks, and in many instances, have people who are in recovery for many years, sometimes with relapses that occur periodically. Hopefully, if they remain connected to treatment and to a treatment community, they can recognize a relapse quickly and associate themselves again with treatment that’s been helpful and shorten the actual duration of their actual relapse or lapse.
“And that’s what we aim for: to keep people as healthy as we can over time, and if they do slip—a relapse—to shorten the duration of that and to return them as quickly as possible to their best-functioning selves.”
The treatments may not be solely through drugs, says Volkow. “There’s actually behavioral cognitive group therapies that have been unequivocally shown that they work. They are effective in the treatment of drug addiction, and yet they are not necessarily all the time accepted as such.” What’s not accepted or understood by the general public is that addiction should be looked at and treated like other chronic diseases.
“One of the reasons has been that people expect the person that goes to treatment to be miraculously cured after going through a rehabilitation program. So they go through the rehabilitation program, they stop taking the drugs. Six months later something happens in their lives and they relapse, and that is then used as an argument. ‘You see? Treatment does not work!’ Of course, we would never use that argument for someone being treated with antihypertensive medication for high blood pressure. The moment he or she stops taking the medicine, blood pressure goes up; you’ll never use the argument ‘You see, that does not work.’
“This relates to the whole stigmatization aspect of it, very differently from the way that we treat other diseases, in terms of what we expect of the treatment of drug addiction. We expect a cure. Yet we know that it’s a chronic disease. So we are treating. Very rarely do we cure right now.”
Greenfield cannot stress that
TREATING ADDICTION LIKE OTHER CHRONIC DISEASES
Until these new brain drugs are developed, therapists will treat patients the best way they can with the drugs currently available. Dr. Greenfield stresses that understanding the neurological changes in the brain can help explain to patients and their physicians why getting well and into recovery can be so difficult. “On the other hand, the other part that’s so important for people to understand is, like other types of medical disorders, addiction is a treatable disorder and people do actually get better. But like other medical disorders, like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, people generally don’t get better with a single treatment. They often require several different treatments,sometimes different types of treatments over time, to slowly but surely regain their health—their physical health and their mental health.
Greenfield believes that people have an outdated view of addiction and its treatments. “This stigmatization has really held back the general public’s understanding of all the gains that have been made over the last 20 years: People actually get better; people do much better. It’s a classic ‘bench to bedside’ story: basic biology and treatment-related research demonstrating over and over again that many, many patients can be helped. We are able to treat a vast majority of folks, and in many instances, have people who are in recovery for many years, sometimes with relapses that occur periodically. Hopefully, if they remain connected to treatment and to a treatment community, they can recognize a relapse quickly and associate themselves again with treatment that’s been helpful and shorten the actual duration of their actual relapse or lapse.
“And that’s what we aim for: to keep people as healthy as we can over time, and if they do slip—a relapse—to shorten the duration of that and to return them as quickly as possible to their best-functioning selves.”
The treatments may not be solely through drugs, says Volkow. “There’s actually behavioral cognitive group therapies that have been unequivocally shown that they work. They are effective in the treatment of drug addiction, and yet they are not necessarily all the time accepted as such.” What’s not accepted or understood by the general public is that addiction should be looked at and treated like other chronic diseases.
“One of the reasons has been that people expect the person that goes to treatment to be miraculously cured after going through a rehabilitation program. So they go through the rehabilitation program, they stop taking the drugs. Six months later something happens in their lives and they relapse, and that is then used as an argument. ‘You see? Treatment does not work!’ Of course, we would never use that argument for someone being treated with antihypertensive medication for high blood pressure. The moment he or she stops taking the medicine, blood pressure goes up; you’ll never use the argument ‘You see, that does not work.’
“This relates to the whole stigmatization aspect of it, very differently from the way that we treat other diseases, in terms of what we expect of the treatment of drug addiction. We expect a cure. Yet we know that it’s a chronic disease. So we are treating. Very rarely do we cure right now.”
Greenfield cannot stress that
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