Medicine To Stop Cocaine Dependency

NBC10, Philadelphia

For the first time ever, a medication is showing success in stopping cocaine dependency.

It is known as the awake pill. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say it could be the key to breaking some of the toughest addictions.

"Cocaine is a highly addictive substance. In fact, animals will self-administer cocaine until death," said Dr. Charles Dackis.

Penn's chief of psychiatry, Dackis headed the study involving 62 people addicted to cocaine for as many as 25 years.

"We intentionally selected only patients who were severely addicted to cocaine, in the jaws of the addiction, and almost all the patients, all but two, were crack cocaine users," Dackis said.

Patients took either a placebo or Modafinil, which is sold under the brand name Provigil.

Dackis said that Provigil works on the pleasure centers of the brain, which are responsible for addictive urges.

"It has an awakening effect, an energizing effect that tends to reverse cocaine withdrawal," Dackis said.

HeathWatch talked to one study participant. He said that he didn't believe taking a pill four times a day would break the crack cocaine addiction that had controlled his life for nearly 20 years.

"In a couple weeks it started hitting me. It took away the craving. It took away the hours of just thinking about getting high. My thinking process was changing and everything I'd do was just different," The man said.

"We found that patients who took Modafinil for eight weeks were twice as likely to produce cocaine-free urines and three times more likely to have abstinence at the end of the trial," Dackis said.

The man has now been clean for over a year.

"It changed my life to a point where I'm able to be myself again, where my family can look at me and say, 'There's my son,' or 'There's my brother,' or 'There's my uncle, he's back,'" the man said.

Provigil showed no real side effects. It is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat addictions, but could be within the next four years.

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