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The End of My Addiction

The End of My Addiction

Titel: The End of My Addiction Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Olivier Ameisen M.D.
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Bloomingdale’s for socks and emerge with a bag full of shirts. (I still have some, unopened, in the original plastic wrapping.) It was the same with other sorts of purchases, but especially CDs. While browsing in a store, I never stopped to think that I already had several fine recordings of a particular symphony, say. If I saw that symphony, and wanted it, at that moment I would reach out and take it. I bought what I craved, and I usually craved a half dozen or so CDs each time I stopped in.
    And now, for the first time in longer than I could remember, and without consciously doing it, I was exercising judgment and restraint, and I was walking out of the store without having made a single purchase.
     
    Over the next couple of months, I steadily increased my baclofen dose until I was taking 180 milligrams a day.
    The short-term results of baclofen for me were remarkable. It relaxed my muscles completely, something I had never experienced before. It gave me a peaceful sleep that, again, I had never experienced before; I woke up refreshed and alert, without the lingering side effects of normal sleeping tablets. It controlled my anxiety better than any of the standard antianxiety medications. It reduced my craving for alcohol and enabled me to remain abstinent for longer periods between binges. It limited the extent of my binges. And it speeded recovery after binges and moderated withdrawal from alcohol efficiently without dependency-inducing benzos and their debilitating side effects.
    Baclofen did make me sleepy each time I increased the dose. But it was a pleasant sleepiness that made me feel naturally relaxed and left my mind clear. It was nothing like the dull, foggy cognitive state that Valium and other benzos induced. And just as John Schaefer said it would, the sleepiness went away after a day or two. And I experienced none of the other potential side effects, such as stomach upset, vertigo, and headache, that Addolorato and his colleagues reported as temporary problems in their study.
    The long-term safety of baclofen continued to worry me, however. At 180 milligrams a day, I was in unknown territory, taking six times the dose used in brief experiments with alcoholics. The greatest potential risk seemed to be the possibility that baclofen would relax my muscles so much that it would suppress respiration, with the result that I might suffocate in my sleep.
    Calling John Schaefer again did not seem like an option. I was not eager to reveal that I had withheld information from him, and to consider doing it again, well, I couldn’t do that. And what if John told me baclofen was not an appropriate medication for alcoholism? Given baclofen’s improvement of my sense of well-being and self-esteem, in addition to its other benefits, I was understandably reluctant to give it up.
    It occurred to me that maybe I could discuss the matter with someone at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Salpêtrière has been France’s leading hospital for neurology since the late nineteenth century, when Sigmund Freud studied there under Jean-Martin Charcot, “the Napoléon of the neuroses,” who was the first to identify and describe multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, among other diseases. I called the neurology department, identified myself as a cardiologist, and asked to speak to a neurologist. It was a difficult exercise, because I was not asking for anyone by name, and it took several calls and lots of waiting on the line before I was finally put through to one of Salpêtrière’s staff neurologists.
    I said, “My name is Dr. Ameisen. I am a cardiologist. I have a patient who’s just come from the States. He’s forty-eight years old, and he’s on 180 milligrams per day of baclofen as prescribed by his neurologist there for some muscular problems. What can you advise me? Isn’t that quite a high dose?”
    “Oh, yes, that’s much too high.”
    “Okay, but my patient’s been taking this for two years,” I said. I had been taking baclofen for two months, but I figured I might as well give the neurologist a longer time frame and see if that drew any special response. “He’s not sleepy, he’s happy, he’s doing fine, he’s in good shape. Should I reduce the dose?”
    “I’ve never heard of anyone taking so much.”
    “Do you know of any downside?”
    “Does he have muscle weakness?” the neurologist said.
    “No, not at all. He is jogging, he’s active,” I said, describing my

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