This article is almost three years old. I’m posting it to remind myself to get updated information on this rich topic. And who knows, maybe it will help someone.
What Addicts Need
Addiction isn’t a weakness; it’s an illness. Now vaccines and other new drugs may change the way we treat it.
By Jeneen Interlandi
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 12:43 pm EST Feb 23, 2008
Annie Fuller knew she was in trouble a year ago, when in the space of a few hours she managed to drink a male co-worker more than twice her size under the table. Of course, she’d been practicing for a quarter of her life by then; at 47, she was pouring a pint of bourbon, a 12-pack of beer and a couple of bottles of wine into her 115-pound body each day. She had come to prefer alcohol to food, sex or the company of friends and loved ones. Her marriage had ended; she had virtually stopped leaving the house, except to work and to drink. Fuller had tried and failed enough times over the years to know that she would not be able to sober up on her own. The last time she’d stopped drinking her body went into violent seizures, a common and terrifying symptom of alcohol withdrawal. But the single mother and mortgage-company VP refused to sign into rehab. “I live in a small town,” she says. “And when you go to a hospital for something like that, everybody knows about it.” So when a family doctor told her about Vivitrol, a monthly injection that prevents patients from drinking alcohol by obliterating its ability to intoxicate, Fuller agreed. She took a sabbatical from work, sent her 15-year-old daughter to stay with relatives and hunkered down to weather the painful, frightening blizzard of detoxification in the comfort of her own living room.
What does it mean to be an addict? View full article »
