Newpharmablog. Health News

Addicts who have stayed off drugs for a time often recall how taking prescribed drugs eventually led them back to their drug of choice. Heroin addicts who stay off heroin for a time, either on methadone, tranquillisers or alcohol, often end up back on heroin itself.

‘I did manage to give up heroin for a few days,’ remembers Susan. ‘But whenever I did this I always substituted with another drug. I wouldn’t leave the house without a bag of tranquillisers. I was also drinking very heavily and smoking dope.

‘My fiance used drugs too. With him I managed to scrape together enough money to get treatment from a private doctor. We were paying the doctor to give us substitute drugs to make it easier to get off heroin. At the same time we were still taking the heroin. It sounds completely insane, but it illustrates how I couldn’t control the habit.’

Each time Susan went off heroin, she turned to tranquillisers or alcohol as a substitute. Each time, she went back to heroin eventually. A year and a half later she found Narcotics Anonymous, has stayed off all drugs for nearly two years since and is enjoying life.

‘I don’t have to use drugs, any drugs at all, or drink now. I am truly grateful for that each day. But I am sure I wouldn’t be clean now except for NA. I know from the amount of times I tried to stop using, that I couldn’t do it on my own.’

Sometimes addicts or alcoholics simply make a complete switch. They discover that the new drug, whatever it is, is just as good as their old one.

Nor do drugs work any better with alcoholics. Giving alcoholics drugs will not stop them using alcohol. Many alcoholics simply take their doctors’ prescriptions and drink on top of the pills.

Even those who do not mix pills and booze are not stopped from drinking by taking pills. ‘I went to my practitioner and told him I was an alcoholic several years before I went to AA,’ says George, a thirty-two-year-old printer, married with two small children. ‘He gave me some Hemineverin and I stopped drinking. Religiously I took those pills and I didn’t have a drink. My wife watched me like a hawk. And when they were finished, I went and had a drink. A bottle of whisky in twelve hours.’

Nor is Antabuse (disulfiram) or Abstem (citrated calcium carbimide) a long-term answer. Alcoholics will simply stop taking the Antabuse tablets and start drinking again. Even knowing the dangers, some alcoholics simply drink on top of these pills and get violently sick.

Neither drug dependence nor alcoholism can be medicated away.

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