Add Up Articles Directory | Free Articles | New Articles Daily | The Important Medications Used to Treat Alcoholism

Research shows that adding an approved medication for alcoholism to counseling or other forms of addiction treatment improves treatment outcomes. Alcoholism medications have been found to:
• Reduce enduring symptoms of withdrawal that can prompt relapse (acamprosate)
• Help minimize alcohol cravings
• Help recovering alcoholics who temporarily slip back into drinking to avoid complete relapse
• Prolong intervals between slips or relapses
• Increase the benefits of counseling or other alcohol treatments
Medication can help an alcoholic in early recovery stay sober long enough to develop sober living and social skills that provide a continuing base for further sobriety. These medications also reduce the severity of cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
Acamprosate (Campral)
Acamprosate helps restore brain function damaged by alcoholism, and in doing so helps alcoholics maintain abstinence.
Alcohol causes intense but relatively brief withdrawal symptoms, and much longer lasting but milder symptoms of withdrawal. Although milder, these enduring withdrawal symptoms (such as difficulty sleeping, irritability and anxiety) can lead to alcohol relapse.
Acamprosate helps motivated recovering alcoholics maintain abstinence by reducing the severity of these longer lasting withdrawal symptoms. Acamprosate is thought to reduce glutamate activity, but its exact means of action remains poorly understood.
Oral naltrexone is effective at helping people maintain abstinence or drink less. Studies of oral naltrexone have shown that, compared to people taking a placebo, people taking the medication:
• Have lower rates of relapse
• If they do drink, drink less often and drink less in a sitting
Advantages of Oral Naltrexone
• It works well, particularly for people who experience heavy alcohol cravings and who are motivated to maintain abstinence.
• It is well tolerated, causing few side effects (the most common side effect is nausea).
• It has no abuse potential and causes no withdrawal symptoms.
Disadvantages of Oral Naltrexone
• It cannot be used by some people with liver problems.
• It cannot be used by anyone using methadone, Suboxone or requiring opiate pain medications.
• It may increase a person’s vulnerability to opiate overdose by decreasing opiate tolerance.
Most people begin oral naltrexone therapy within three to seven days after achieving alcohol abstinence. Naltrexone is FDA-approved for up to three consecutive months of treatment.
Normally, alcohol is metabolized by the body into acetaldehyde and then into acetic acid. Disulfiram disrupts the final stage of this process (the metabolization of acetaldehyde into acetic acid), causing a much higher level of acetaldehyde in the body after any alcohol consumption.
High levels of acetaldehyde in the bloodstream lead to very uncomfortable reactions, such as the following:
• Hyperventilation
• Thirst
• Nausea and vomiting
• Chest pains
• Dizziness
• Confusion
• Muscle weakness
At higher doses, the combination of disulfiram and alcohol can lead to serious reactions that can include symptoms such as:
• Seizures
• Heart failure
• Respiratory depression
• Death
Disulfiram is no longer given in doses high enough to likely cause a very severe or dangerous reaction. In the past, disulfiram was given in high dosages to patients in combination with alcohol, but that is no longer accepted medical practice.