Ketamine, an illicit mind-altering drug used as a general anesthetic, may help alcoholics decrease their drinking by changing the memories they associate with drinking.
Every year, 3.3 million people die of alcohol worldwide (5.9% of all deaths according to the World Health Organization). And yet, there are currently very few effective drugs to treat alcoholism. However, a new study could well change the situation. According to work published on November 26 in the journal NatureCommunicationsa simple injection of ketamine, an illicit mind-altering drug used as a general anesthetic, could help alcoholics slow down by changing the memories they associate with drinking.
For Dr. Ravis Das, psychopharmacologist, researcher at University College London (Great Britain), if doctors find it so difficult to cure alcoholic patients it is because they do not take into account the good memories linked to consumption. of alcohol. So he came up with the idea of using ketamine to target the memories of heavy drinkers.
For this study, he and his team recruited 90 people who drank much more than the average but who had never been treated for alcoholism. Participants were first exposed to photos of beer and even got to drink it in the lab. During this time, they described their craving for beer, the pleasure of drinking and, once the beer was finished, their desire to drink another.
Alcohol consumption reduced by half
A few days later, the participants were divided into three groups. The researchers showed the members of the first group pictures of beer and the second of orange juice. Then they gave them an intravenous dose of ketamine. The third group looked at pictures of beer and received a placebo.
A week later, the volunteers who had looked at the pictures of beer before receiving the ketamine reported having less desire to drink. Nine months later, their alcohol consumption was still halved. This could be explained because ketamine would block certain brain receptors linked to the memory of the pleasure of drinking.
But surprisingly, after the study, the other participants had also greatly reduced their alcohol consumption. No doubt because this experience helped them to become aware of their problem.
“Behaviour can change for a variety of reasons that are not specific to the experimental treatment. What is interesting here is the initial decline in alcohol use in people who used ketamine when they were given was reminiscent of beer”, comments David Epstein, addiction researcher at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore (United States), quoted by Science News.
Ketamine could also treat depression
Further research is now needed to confirm the short-term effect of ketamine on alcohol consumption and to establish how long it may last. The researchers plan to test this substance on a larger number of heavy drinkers.
Since ketamine is an illicit drug to which one can become addicted, it could scare many people who want to treat their alcoholism. But while a single dose can slow binge drinking, “it’s a pretty easy trade-off from a health standpoint,” Das says. “If it works, it works”, continues the researcher who also works to try to weaken other types of problematic memories, such as those involved in post-traumatic stress disorder.
Lately, ketamine has been increasingly tested by researchers. A recent study showed that this substance could also have a rapid, even immediate effect against depressive symptoms. According to the researchers, two-thirds of the participants in their study who did not respond to traditional antidepressants experienced rapid and lasting remission of their depressive symptoms after receiving intravenous ketamine.
Because under the effect of this substance, the G proteins, the accumulation of which in the brain is partly responsible for the development of depressive symptoms, are destroyed much more quickly than under the effect of conventional antidepressants, explain the scientists. And also to remember that the drugs take weeks to act on the depression, leaving a significant time field for the patient’s suicide attempts.
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