How One Shot Could Stop Drug Addiction

[FarCenter]

Researchers are making breakthroughs on a decades-old quest to use our own bodies to defend against addiction — by priming our bodies to stop the small molecules that cause an addictive high before they reach the brain.

Drugs like nicotine (which are in cancer-causing tobacco products like cigarettes) and cocaine not only cause expensive health problems and death, but also are a huge drain on society. Addicts often can't work or build up large amounts of debt paying for their habit.

"There's no question that drug addiction is a major problem with society, with everything from nicotine addiction and cigarette smoking, which is widespread with millions of people involved," study researcher Dr. Ronald Crystal of Weil Cornell Medical Center told us. Nicotine addiction is "associated with significant development of disease, and then there's addictions like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and so on that change social behavior."

Specifically, Crystal's group is working to halt addiction to cocaine and nicotine using specially created vaccines. Vaccines could be given to addicts in recovery to stop their high if they relapse.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-one-shot-could-stop-addiction-2012-7

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Would it work for food addicts?

[FarCenter]

2. I doubt it -- if you block the "sugar high", you probably die.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Aw, nuts. :^(

[HopeHoops]

3. Sadly, one shot often DOES end drug addiction - through death.

Every time a story breaks about some new "brand" of heroin that the authorities say is so potent it is lethal, the junkies scramble to get their hands on it. I guess if you are trapped in that sort of word, leaving it that way makes sense. But it's still sad.

[datasuspect]

4. google "krokodil"

yikes

[HopeHoops]

5. Yeah, that's some nasty shit.