The End of My Addiction

of alcohol and the 1 to 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight at which it suppresses self-administration of other addictive substances in animal studies. The rationale for a 30 milligram a day limit in alcoholism studies, Giovanni Addolorato et al. have written, is that this dose “represents the minimum therapeutic dosage recommended by the drug manufacturer in order to avoid side-effects.” 8
    The two potentially limiting side effects of high-dose baclofen are somnolence and muscular weakness, but they usually last at most a day or two and are always completely reversible. I experienced inconvenient somnolence at 270 milligrams of baclofen a day, but only milder somnolence at lower doses. I have none at my maintenance dose of 120 to 160 milligrams a day. And I have never experienced muscular weakness on baclofen.
     
    Although I am the first person documented to achieve complete suppression of addiction through dose-dependent baclofen, I am not the last. I have been joined by Dr. Bucknam’s patient, Mr. A., and by the patient whom Dr. Hallberg discussed on Minnesota Public Radio. In the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology , Roberta Agabio et al. described an alcoholdependent patient whose craving for alcohol was suppressed at only 75 milligrams of baclofen a day. At Hôpital Paul Guiraud in Paris, my friend Dr. Renaud de Beaurepaire is successfully treating with high-dose baclofen two alcoholic patients whose cases failed to respond to all conventional therapies.
    In Geneva, Pascal Gache has now tried seventeen alcoholic patients on high-dose oral baclofen. Twelve patients have had a one-year follow-up. Two of these patients dropped out of treatment with high-dose baclofen, apparently from lack of motivation to control their drinking. Ten patients gave baclofen therapy a full trial, and nine achieved suppression of craving and other symptoms of alcoholism with daily doses ranging from 75 to 300 milligrams a day, within the limits that neurologists have safely used since the 1960s.
    It is remarkable that nine of ten found a craving-suppressing dose that does not give them persistent somnolence or other troubling side effects. Neither placebo nor any other medication has ever produced such results. And as in my own case, all these patients achieved a craving-suppressing dose in only a few weeks. High-dose baclofen has an apparently unique ability to produce rapid-onset, effortless abstinence.
    In this regard, it is worth noting that patients frequently stop taking naltrexone, acamprosate, and topiramate because they experience so little benefit from them. The problem of noncompliance in taking oral naltrexone led to the development of an injectable form. In contrast, the benefits of baclofen begin to be felt almost immediately in increased muscular relaxation and sense of well-being, which should increase compliance in taking it.
    One of Dr. Gache’s patients, the woman alcoholic who showed him the Top Santé article, visited me in Paris. She said, “I can’t believe what has happened to me,” and asked, “Can I call you Sigmund?”
    I said, “Why Sigmund?”
    “For Sigmund Freud.”
    “Well, I am not a big fan of his, so I would rather you called me Olivier.”
    She said, “People came from all over the world to see Sigmund Freud in Vienna. I had to come to Paris to see you face-to-face. I went to rehab all the time. Everything was falling apart. I could no longer function as a mother. Now I have a normal life.”
    It moved me greatly to receive this visit and hear these words, as it also did when Mr. A. and his wife made a point of seeing me when they were in Paris on vacation in the summer of 2007. Given the availability of my self-case report on the Internet, there may well be a number of other patients who have found true and lasting relief from baclofen, as prescribed by their physicians, without coming forward to break their anonymity.
    In February 2008, I received an e-mail with the subject heading “Alcoholism & Baclofen. Sober 21 Months[.] Thank you for Saving My Life!!!” It was from a woman in Montana who first e-mailed me in October 2006. At that time she wrote,
    I am a 47 year old woman…who has suffered with alcoholism most of my adult life. I have been a member of AA, attended thousands of meetings, have been in a total of 9 in-patient and out-patient rehabs.
    I have been to numerous physicians, counselors, psychologists, all with the same outcome. Relapse