> Rather than activate the receptor, another drug called naltrexone blocks the receptor and can decrease cravings over time.
Naltrexone is essentially a vaccine against both opioids and and alcohol. My recovered-alcoholic friend found that Naltrexone eliminated her ability to consume large amounts of alcohol. But she drank "to make it all go away", and Naltrexone didn't provide any relief for her emotional problems. She took herself off Naltrexone and drank herself into a 2-year prison sentence for her 3rd DUI. She tried to stay sober after getting released, but was unsuccessful because of her anger at her ex-husband (which I somewhat helped her release).
Gabor Maté [0] says that virtually 100% of his most-hopeless drug addict patients had experienced "adverse childhood experiences".
Last month I met "Henry" - our mutual friend said he was trying to get off "Black" (black tar heroin). A while later Henry tagged along with us... Mutual friend disappeared for a bit. Henry told me how scared he was of Black... That he'd once gone to Mexico with his family, thought he took enough to get him through the week, but started to go into withdrawal at the end of the trip.
He also said how much he loves G (meth amphetamine), and that he'd tried to find some that day, but was unsuccessful. He then said, "A junky like me has to shoot something...", and said he'd used Black in the Taco Bell bathroom that afternoon, shortly before getting in my car.
I told him I thought my friend (whom I've mentioned here before) was predisposed to addiction on account of her being adopted. Henry immediately said that he was adopted -- that he was found in a dumpster at 4 months old, screaming his little heart out.
> But people struggling with addiction to cocaine or stimulants such as methamphetamine don’t have treatment options like these. They don’t exist.
I've read some studies that found that Naltrexone is also helpful for reducing people's stimulant use, and that the anti-psychotics (anti-dopamine drugs) cause people to use more cocaine/amphetamine.
Really there's no need for developing "vaccines" for "addictive drugs" - we have tools (naltrexone, the MAOIs, etc) that work well enough to address the reasons that people self-medicate with substances that cause long-term harm. Doctors just need to consider the full conditions of the person who can't limit their use of addictive substances to "recreation".
It would also help to stop teaching addicts to be helpless in jail.
This week I finally found the rest of a quote about 'feeling safe' that I've referenced for years [1]. Someone had asked about "ego" - the response was, "It's very important to develop an ego. When a person feels safe, the false-ego goes away."
Something else I'd point out is that science often goes through the trouble of finding paliative solutions rather than developing a fundamental understanding of the root causes.
If you don't tackle the root causes of addiction, they'll respawn identically or in the form of other addictions, in my opinion.
Re. your quote about the ego, I didn't quite get its meaning. Can you elaborate on it?
I don't think any of the people involved in the science here want to be doing paliative solutions, but rather it's the best they can get funding for.
It's much harder to fund "we have to completely rework our public health infrastructure" (in the US, at least), then "We can help save these lives in <insert relatively short timeframe>".
> I don't think any of the people involved in the science here want to be doing paliative solutions, but rather it's the best they can get funding for.
The claim in that article--"a lifetime of treatment is preferable to a cure"--is bonkers.
It might be true if there was only one pharma company, but surely most companies would prefer that you buy their one-time cure than become a lifetime customer of their competitors. Diabetes is a particularly bad example because an ungodly amount of time and money has been spent trying to protect, repair, or regrow beta cells. Despite this, we have made very little progress. However, Accu-Chek is not bribing researchers to tank their experiments in the hopes of selling more test strips. The problem is that biology is absurdly complex and messy.
Plus, we have a nice counter-example. Until recently, patients with Hepatitis C were treated with a long course of interferon (6 months to a year), with relatively mixed results and fairly nasty side effects. About 50% of patients did not clear the virus, and needed liver transplants.
In 2013-4, Gilead got approval for sofosbuvir, which needs to be taken for only 12 weeks, has a much higher cure rate, and more mild side effects. To be fair, it is eye-wateringly expensive, especially in the US, but that's one way to make 'cures' work.
Type-2 diabetes is a sham diagnosis. A key factor in the development of "insulin resistance" is the overconsumption of vegetable oils. These thin oils go rancid in the production process, and have to be "refined" to remove the rancid smell.
Before the middle of the 20th century, linseed oil and soybean oil were drying oils that were used to make stain and paint. When the paint producers figured out how to make paint from petroleum, the seed oil industry rebranded their product as "vegetable oil".
> Re. your quote about the ego, I didn't quite get its meaning. Can you elaborate on it?
I think the "false ego" is when a person creates a sort of 'personality' that isn't based on reality. These are the people who are always bluffing/lying about their situation. In their world they make lots of money, they can kick your ass, etc.
When a person starts to "feel safe" (financially/emotionally/etc), their need to create an alternate-presentation ("false ego") goes away.
Another friend was picked on as a child. She was always fighting with everyone... Someone said that "fighting" was how she managed to survive her childhood. When she'd grown up fighting didn't help her anymore. She's since trained in martial arts, has enough of a rainy-day fund to get her through a pinch, and is making good progress on not having to fight with everyone all the time. (edit: "feeling safe" allows her to not have to fight with people.)
> I told him I thought my friend (whom I've mentioned here before) was predisposed to addiction on account of her being adopted
How on earth does that follow? Adoption, in and of itself, is not an "adverse childhood experience". You seem to be equating it with abuse, which it clearly isn't.
Some children are fine after getting adopted. Others have issues. For example, the adoptive parents of the recent Florida school shooter tried to get their adopted son help, but he never did well, and apparently completely fell apart after his adopted mother passed away.
As a quite heavy use alcoholic, I would gladly test any vaccine that worked on alcohol.
Also, I've had a pretty amazing childhood with awesome parents. I still became addicted to cocaine a few times and I've done tons of drugs since my teens up to a couple years ago.
Coconut oil helps eliminate the cause of alcohol cravings (insulin resistance of nerve/brain cells). Naltrexone and sugary foods are helpful too. Orange juice is an ideal source of sugar.
What is going to be an issue, is that opiods (like heroin, Fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone) actually have a clinical use apart from the abuse. So either the vaccine is very specific and just changing from say fentanyl to another of the many available opiods defeats the vaccine, or else it renders a whole class of drugs that may be legitimately used for pain management or anesthesia during surgery no longer able to be used for potentially the rest of the person's life.
My thoughts exactly. So somebody gets this vaccine and then breaks their arm or goes into surgery, and suddenly there is no pain treatment available to them because of the vaccine.
For you or me that’s a really valid concern, but the damage to someone from opiate abuse is so extreme I think they’d take that risk. In fact some might even see the inability of a well meaning medical professional to dose them with an opiate as a feature, not a bug.
The hard part is that anesthesia is not just for comfort. I am not a doctor, but having the body in a low excitement mode for complex surgery must be an advantage.
So resistance to anesthesia could mean no surgery beyond the most basic ones.
There are a lot of options for anaesthesia, and many of them are not opioids. For example, there is a whole set of
halogenated ethers like sevoflurane and isoflurane (the most typical inhaled anesthetics). Their chemical structures and mechanisms of action are very different from opioids, so the vaccine-produced antibodies would not recognise or react with them. This is true for many of the other options (benzos, ketamine, even xenon gas).
That said, opioids are useful. They are very good analgesics (pain relievers) and can be used as anesthesia in certain situations, like cardiovascular patients. However, for most people in most situations, there are other non-opioid options.
It is indeed, but as an analegesic, not an anasthetic. Paralytic, analegesic, anesthetic, is the usual trio for general anesthetic surgery. For “twilight sleep” as used in most colonoscopies, it will tend to be fentanyl and Versed.
It goes back to basically any medication that acts on G Protein Coupled Receptors (of which opioid Receptors fall under). If given the same dose for over 10 days, by day 3 you are seeing a significant loss of analgesic effect.
The main pathway for opioid addiction is surgery. Doctors who prescribed the drugs can also prescribe an end to it too.
Simplistic yes, but such a drug could prevent a lot of harm.
Considering how much the mainstream dialogue is about illicit drugs its probably time to start talking about the far more common addictions and associated problems.
> The main pathway for opioid addiction is surgery
Do you have a source for that please? Other countries who don't have an opioid crisis don't prescribe opioids for long term pain as much, but continue to prescribe opioids for acute pain, including surgery.
> Conclusions and Relevance - New persistent opioid use after surgery is common and is not significantly different between minor and major surgical procedures but rather associated with behavioral and pain disorders.
> Nearly 3 million individuals who had surgery in 2016 became persistent opioid users, continuing to take opioids three to six months after their procedure
I've had a few friends that became addicted to opioids over the last ~20 years. It's terrifying to see what it can do to a person, how the addiction takes over. The only product I've seen work consistently to stop relapse and interrupt the craving, is Suboxone and the equivalent. It worked extremely well, returned them to a fully normal functioning state, but they couldn't stop taking it.
The vaccination approach, even if it's unlikely to succeed, I certainly hope that it does, as every opioid addict I've known has ended up in a battle that never actually stops. It becomes a life-long struggle.
There must be a dose where the volume of heroin outstrips the body’s ability to generate antibodies, resulting in opiates passing into the brain. Addicts who have taken the vaccine will increase their chance of overdose when they relapse because they know just one balloon isn’t going to do the trick. And slam 5 balloons instead.
Also, opiate receptors serve a purpose in pain relief and feeling pleasure when the brain secretes endorphins. The article doesn’t cover whether endorphins will trigger the immune response in people who have been modified by the vaccine.
Wait, so we we invent some great drugs for very specific use cases, prescribe them to the masses, just to find out that we created an epidemic and, then, instead of going back to prescribing it only rarely, invent a new drug against the abuse!? I don’t get it
41 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 83.1 ms ] threadNaltrexone is essentially a vaccine against both opioids and and alcohol. My recovered-alcoholic friend found that Naltrexone eliminated her ability to consume large amounts of alcohol. But she drank "to make it all go away", and Naltrexone didn't provide any relief for her emotional problems. She took herself off Naltrexone and drank herself into a 2-year prison sentence for her 3rd DUI. She tried to stay sober after getting released, but was unsuccessful because of her anger at her ex-husband (which I somewhat helped her release).
Gabor Maté [0] says that virtually 100% of his most-hopeless drug addict patients had experienced "adverse childhood experiences".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023802
Last month I met "Henry" - our mutual friend said he was trying to get off "Black" (black tar heroin). A while later Henry tagged along with us... Mutual friend disappeared for a bit. Henry told me how scared he was of Black... That he'd once gone to Mexico with his family, thought he took enough to get him through the week, but started to go into withdrawal at the end of the trip.
He also said how much he loves G (meth amphetamine), and that he'd tried to find some that day, but was unsuccessful. He then said, "A junky like me has to shoot something...", and said he'd used Black in the Taco Bell bathroom that afternoon, shortly before getting in my car.
I told him I thought my friend (whom I've mentioned here before) was predisposed to addiction on account of her being adopted. Henry immediately said that he was adopted -- that he was found in a dumpster at 4 months old, screaming his little heart out.
> But people struggling with addiction to cocaine or stimulants such as methamphetamine don’t have treatment options like these. They don’t exist.
I've read some studies that found that Naltrexone is also helpful for reducing people's stimulant use, and that the anti-psychotics (anti-dopamine drugs) cause people to use more cocaine/amphetamine.
Really there's no need for developing "vaccines" for "addictive drugs" - we have tools (naltrexone, the MAOIs, etc) that work well enough to address the reasons that people self-medicate with substances that cause long-term harm. Doctors just need to consider the full conditions of the person who can't limit their use of addictive substances to "recreation".
It would also help to stop teaching addicts to be helpless in jail.
This week I finally found the rest of a quote about 'feeling safe' that I've referenced for years [1]. Someone had asked about "ego" - the response was, "It's very important to develop an ego. When a person feels safe, the false-ego goes away."
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024780
Something else I'd point out is that science often goes through the trouble of finding paliative solutions rather than developing a fundamental understanding of the root causes.
If you don't tackle the root causes of addiction, they'll respawn identically or in the form of other addictions, in my opinion.
Re. your quote about the ego, I didn't quite get its meaning. Can you elaborate on it?
It's much harder to fund "we have to completely rework our public health infrastructure" (in the US, at least), then "We can help save these lives in <insert relatively short timeframe>".
Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote An American Sickness about this phenomenon. This essay is a good preview: How Economic Incentives have Created our Dysfunctional US Medical Market - https://medium.com/@RosenthalHealth/how-economic-incentives-...
It might be true if there was only one pharma company, but surely most companies would prefer that you buy their one-time cure than become a lifetime customer of their competitors. Diabetes is a particularly bad example because an ungodly amount of time and money has been spent trying to protect, repair, or regrow beta cells. Despite this, we have made very little progress. However, Accu-Chek is not bribing researchers to tank their experiments in the hopes of selling more test strips. The problem is that biology is absurdly complex and messy.
Plus, we have a nice counter-example. Until recently, patients with Hepatitis C were treated with a long course of interferon (6 months to a year), with relatively mixed results and fairly nasty side effects. About 50% of patients did not clear the virus, and needed liver transplants.
In 2013-4, Gilead got approval for sofosbuvir, which needs to be taken for only 12 weeks, has a much higher cure rate, and more mild side effects. To be fair, it is eye-wateringly expensive, especially in the US, but that's one way to make 'cures' work.
Before the middle of the 20th century, linseed oil and soybean oil were drying oils that were used to make stain and paint. When the paint producers figured out how to make paint from petroleum, the seed oil industry rebranded their product as "vegetable oil".
Why this isn't the focus, and instead people receive insulin, escapes my grasp.
I think the "false ego" is when a person creates a sort of 'personality' that isn't based on reality. These are the people who are always bluffing/lying about their situation. In their world they make lots of money, they can kick your ass, etc.
When a person starts to "feel safe" (financially/emotionally/etc), their need to create an alternate-presentation ("false ego") goes away.
Another friend was picked on as a child. She was always fighting with everyone... Someone said that "fighting" was how she managed to survive her childhood. When she'd grown up fighting didn't help her anymore. She's since trained in martial arts, has enough of a rainy-day fund to get her through a pinch, and is making good progress on not having to fight with everyone all the time. (edit: "feeling safe" allows her to not have to fight with people.)
How on earth does that follow? Adoption, in and of itself, is not an "adverse childhood experience". You seem to be equating it with abuse, which it clearly isn't.
Some children are fine after getting adopted. Others have issues. For example, the adoptive parents of the recent Florida school shooter tried to get their adopted son help, but he never did well, and apparently completely fell apart after his adopted mother passed away.
Also, I've had a pretty amazing childhood with awesome parents. I still became addicted to cocaine a few times and I've done tons of drugs since my teens up to a couple years ago.
So resistance to anesthesia could mean no surgery beyond the most basic ones.
There are a lot of options for anaesthesia, and many of them are not opioids. For example, there is a whole set of halogenated ethers like sevoflurane and isoflurane (the most typical inhaled anesthetics). Their chemical structures and mechanisms of action are very different from opioids, so the vaccine-produced antibodies would not recognise or react with them. This is true for many of the other options (benzos, ketamine, even xenon gas).
That said, opioids are useful. They are very good analgesics (pain relievers) and can be used as anesthesia in certain situations, like cardiovascular patients. However, for most people in most situations, there are other non-opioid options.
Opiates are painkillers, anesthetic are a different beast.
Simplistic yes, but such a drug could prevent a lot of harm.
Considering how much the mainstream dialogue is about illicit drugs its probably time to start talking about the far more common addictions and associated problems.
Do you have a source for that please? Other countries who don't have an opioid crisis don't prescribe opioids for long term pain as much, but continue to prescribe opioids for acute pain, including surgery.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...
> Conclusions and Relevance - New persistent opioid use after surgery is common and is not significantly different between minor and major surgical procedures but rather associated with behavioral and pain disorders.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/09/26/1132719/0/...
> Nearly 3 million individuals who had surgery in 2016 became persistent opioid users, continuing to take opioids three to six months after their procedure
The vaccination approach, even if it's unlikely to succeed, I certainly hope that it does, as every opioid addict I've known has ended up in a battle that never actually stops. It becomes a life-long struggle.
Source: self. Have used it, not for addiction, but know people who have, with unbelievable results.
Also, opiate receptors serve a purpose in pain relief and feeling pleasure when the brain secretes endorphins. The article doesn’t cover whether endorphins will trigger the immune response in people who have been modified by the vaccine.