YSK: A Subsidised Medication Can Help Reduce Alcohol Cravings Without Major Lifestyle Changes
YSK: A Subsidised Medication Can Help Reduce Alcohol Cravings Without Major Lifestyle Changes
Naltrexone works by reducing cravings and the pleasurable effects of alcohol. All the person has to do is take a pill daily. The person doesn't need to change any other behaviors or quit cold turkey. It just makes people want alcohol less.
The person doesn't need to be a total train wreck to get help. It has been prescribed for "hazardous drinking", which affects about 670,000 of us. Talk to your GP for more info.
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/datasheet/n/naltrexonetab.pdf
Thought this was spam but it's actually quite helpful
Haha I had to do a double take as well, heaps of drug spam on Lemmy (which hopefully people don't see too often as it should be caught pretty quickly).
Yeah, it's all fallen out of patent and generics are available. Dr. John David Sinclair did a lot of research in the 80s and devised "The Sinclair Method". I've seen it work to disrupt decades of entrenched behaviour. It might not be the silver bullet but it's definitely a stepping stone in the right direction.
The winning point from my perspective is that the person is usually instructed to take the pill and continue to drink normally, which almost anyone is willing to try. Continued drinking is actually how the pill works, it dulls to "reward" which means that the drinking behaviour isn't reinforced. Over time, the brain rewires itself to forget that "alcohol = good". The drinking behaviour must continue to achieve the rewiring. Then over time, the person just stops caring about alcohol so much.
There's a TEDx talk if you want to hear someone talking about their personal experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts