Strong medicine on horizon for addicts

Danielle Taylor was spending up to $1000 a day on P before treatment at the Capri Trust. Picture / Richard Robinson

Treatments for alcoholics and drug addicts are about to improve dramatically, says a visiting American addiction expert.

"We are on the cusp of remarkable pharmacological treatments for addiction," Dr Marvin Seppala told a workshop yesterday, organised by private Auckland treatment provider the Capri Trust.

"In the next 5 to 10 years we are going to have multiple medications available for abstinence."

Dr Seppala is chief medical officer of the Hazelden Foundation in the United States, which is credited with developing the "Minnesota Model", a leading treatment method that grew out of the success of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Professor Doug Sellman, director of the National Addictions Centre at the Christchurch School of Medicine, shares Dr Seppala's optimism.

"New Zealand is a little bit behind other Western countries. We do now have naltrexone, which is probably the number one anti-craving medicine that's used worldwide for alcohol dependence.

"It's effective and it's having an impact on treatment services, but it's a modest effect only. Like all medications it doesn't work in some and works brilliantly in others. There's a big range of effects."

Naltrexone's success had spurred further research and other anti-craving drugs had become available or were being tested.

Dr Seppala also described US work on an experimental nicotine vaccine designed to prime the immune system to incapacitate the drug, present in tobacco, before it could reach the brain and induce pleasure and addiction.

But Professor Sellman said that there was an ethical hurdle to the vaccine's use because it was at least semi-permanent in the body.

Dr Seppala said slightly more than half of people who went through his organisation's drug and alcohol treatment programme were abstinent a year later. The rate was much higher for some people - doctors and pilots in programmes with higher levels of client monitoring.

Professor Sellman said most treatment programmes achieved 20-30 per cent abstinence rates in the short to medium term, although clients might be more motivated at centres such as Capri.

Capri is a treatment centre for private fee-paying clients. It costs $9000 plus GST for a two-week residential programme and follow-up for people addicted to alcohol, methamphetamine or other drugs. Its abstinence rate at a year is 65 per cent.

Clinical director Tom Claunch said about half Capri's clients were addicted to P (pure methamphetamine). "We have been very successful in treating P."

Former Capri client Danielle Taylor, 24, spent up to $1000 a day on P at the low point of her drug-taking and also used cannabis.

Losing custody of her now-4-year-old son was a spur to entering Capri several years ago. She had agreed to a Family Court judge's regime of random drug tests to get him back.

Living without drugs, she was a "200 to 300 times better person" and was now planning to become a teacher aide.

US drug and alcohol treatment provider Hazelden Foundation claims:

* 52-55 per cent of people who go through its treatment programme are still abstaining a year later.

* Success rate is 75-95 per cent for pilots and physicians whose programme has more monitoring.