The End of My Addiction

(SSRIs)
    self-hypnosis
    serotonin
    sertraline (Zoloft)
    Smith, Charles R.
    smoking cessation, drugs for
    sonogram
    Sontag, Susan
    Southern California, University of
    Spielberg, Steven
    spirituality
    status epilepticus
    Steiner, Jeff
    stress test
    suicidal thoughts and behaviors, drugs associated with increased risk of
    Sungar, Murat
    Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
    sympathetic nervous system
     
    talk therapy
    tardive dyskinesia
    Taylor, John Bellamy
    Texas, University of
    threshold response
    Titus, Edward William
    tolerance, drug
    Topamax, see topiramate topiramate (Topamax)
    transaminase
    Tranxene
    twelve-step programs; relapse rates of; see also Alcoholics Anonymous; Narcotics Anonymous
     
    urine monitoring
     
    Valium, see diazepam valproate
    varenicline (Chantix)
    ventricular tachycardia
    vigabatrin (Sabril)
    Vioxx
    Vivitrol, see naltrexone
     
    Weill Cornell Medical College; see also Cornell University Medical College
    Wernicke’s encephalopathy
    Wiesel, Elie
    withdrawal; baclofen and; GHB and; neurotransmitter release triggered by; preventing symptoms of
    World Health Organization (WHO)
    World War II
     
    Xanax
     
    yoga
     
    Zofran
    Zoloft

Acknowledgments
    First of all, I thank my parents for their boundless love and for showing me by their example the power of dreams when everything appears to be lost. In my biological prison, I heard the greatest experts say that my alcoholism was in one of the disease’s most severe forms. They told me that addiction was chronic and irreversible, that no medication existed or would ever exist to change its course. I was ready to accept everything that was happening to me, brutal though it was, but the word irreversible I could not accept. I always found it extraordinary that when a whole continent had capitulated to the Nazis, my father and mother, though on the list for programmed death, never for one moment doubted the Allied victory. In view of their situations at the time—my father a French army officer transferred, as a Jew, from a normal prisoner of war camp to a forced labor camp, and my mother in Auschwitz—their conviction was absurd. But without it, neither one nor the other would have survived. That is what they taught me: for a miracle to happen, one needs to have dreamed it.
    I thank my brother, Jean-Claude, and his wife, Fabienne, and my sister, Eva, and her husband, François, for keeping their love for me intact despite the damage that addiction inflicts on families. And I thank my cousin Steve Israeler for being on my side and believing in me all along.
    There is not space to name here all those who gave me much-needed support and encouragement during my illness. Thanks especially to Joan (at her request I have not used her real name) for sending me a newspaper article about baclofen as described above. Without that act of kindness, I would probably have died from alcoholism and would never have been able to write this book.
    Thanks to Rebecca, for her friendship during and after my disease; to Vanessa, for her inspiration and empathy during the final phase of my alcoholism; to Anne, who believed in my recovery and my treatment model; to Michèle, for her support; to Jean-Luc and Martial, for their persistence on my behalf; to the late Raymond Barre and his wife, Eva; to the late Arif Mardin, his wife, Latife, and their children, Joe and Julie; to Murat and Ayse Sungar; to the late Maurice Blin and his wife, Melita; to Ladislas and Clare Kerenyi; and to Yvette Nicolas and her sons, Olivier and Renaud.
    The late Jean Bernard and the late Philippe Coumel inspired me with their passion for medical research and instilled something of that same spirit in me. My colleagues John Laragh, Jeffrey Borer, and Paul Kligfield contributed to reinforce this passion in our work together, as my friends Jean and Rosita Dausset and the late Joshua Lederberg and his wife, Marguerite, did in our many conversations. I am grateful to them all.
    I feel the deepest gratitude to the physicians who treated me during my illness, especially Drs. John Schaefer and Elizabeth Khuri in New York and Dr. Jean-Paul Descombey in Paris, whose friendship and concern particularly touched me, and Drs. Dorothée Lecallier and Françoise Georges for their kindness and compassion.
    Without prolonged close contact in Alcoholics Anonymous and rehab with many fellow acoloholics and other addicts, I would never have been able to understand my disease, and I thank them all for