The End of My Addiction

drinking, I feared he would say, “Ah, baclofen, you are asking about that for alcoholism. But, Olivier, you must not try to be your own doctor for that kind of illness.”
    So when I called John in New York, I said, “Do you remember the benign idiopathic fasciculations in my calf muscles?”
    “Sure,” he said.
    “What about baclofen for that?”
    “Not a bad idea, my boy,” he said in his thick Australian accent. “Not a bad idea at all. It’s not addictive, it’s a good, safe medication. But you have to take it gradually. And if you decide to stop taking it, you have to taper off gradually, just as you would have one of your cardiology patients taper off a medication for hypertension.”
    “Any contraindications?” I asked.
    “Not for you.”
    “I had seizures when I was admitted to the hospital in your division.”
    “Yes, but you’re not epileptic. Those were withdrawal seizures. They’re not a contraindication whatsoever. You start with 5 milligrams three times a day, and then go up to 10 milligrams three times a day, and so on. At each dosage level, you may experience some somnolence, but that will pass after twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and you can then go up in the dosage again.”
    “Up to where?”
    “To where it works.”
    “But what about…?”
    “Olivier, it’s a very safe drug. Don’t worry.”
     
    In France identity cards issued by the Conseil National de l’Ordre des Médecins (National Council of the Order of Physicians) give physicians the legal right to purchase medications for themselves or others without a prescription.
    But was baclofen available in France? I still didn’t know. The first two pharmacies I tried had never heard of it. The third told me the same thing, but I showed the pharmacist my medical card, and asked to see the French equivalent of the Physicians’ Desk Reference , listing all available prescription drugs. To my relief, in the generics section I found “Baclofen Irex,” manufactured by Sanofi. Later I learned that baclofen was available from several manufacturers and in France was best, if still relatively little, known as Lioresal, the brand name under which it was originally patented and marketed by Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis). In the United States, it is available under the brand name Lioresal and, from a different manufacturer, the brand name Kemstro.
    The pharmacy was happy to order the drug for me. The next day I picked up a small package of 10-milligram tablets of baclofen, but I hesitated to take it. For several days I carried the package around with me unopened. John Schaefer had vouched for its safety. But I had not been completely honest with him about why I wanted to try it, and insofar as my French doctors were concerned I would be taking it AMA, “against medical advice.”
    Until this point I had steadfastly tried to be a good patient and had avoided being my own physician, but it seemed to me that in order to save my life from alcoholism, I had no choice but to risk walking out onto a tightrope without the normal safety net of another physician’s supervision.
     
    On March 22, 2002, following John Schaefer’s recommendations, I began taking baclofen in three doses of 5 milligrams each, breaking the tablets in half to do so. Right away I experienced muscular relaxation that I thought was magic, and that night I slept like a baby. I never expected such a dramatic effect, and would not have believed it beforehand.
    The next morning I had an appointment with my CBT practitioner. He didn’t seem to notice anything different about me, but I felt calmer than usual.
    On the way home from the CBT session, I stopped, as I always did after my sessions, in the big FNAC store in Montparnasse. I loved going in there, browsing the huge CD and DVD selections. I always found something—many things—I longed for. Reissued landmark recordings of the classical and romantic repertory by artists like Josef Hofmann and Arturo Toscanini; the modern composers Ligeti, Berio, Morricone, and Dutilleux; Art Tatum, Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, Norah Jones—it ran the gamut.
    Forty-five minutes later, as I was leaving the store, I stopped short. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “where is my stuff? I must have left the bag at the cashier.” I was charging back, through the crowd of shoppers, when I realized: I had not bought anything.
    Until that moment, I had never recognized that I had long had bouts of compulsive shopping. I’d go into