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07/06/2007 - New Treatment for Meth Addiction Provides Hope
Methamphetamine, or “meth” is a powerful stimulant that causes the heart to race and the blood vessels to constrict, which can lead to a number of serious medical problems, including heart attack, stroke and even death.
Experts once thought cases of meth addiction were hopeless because of high rates of relapse, but today they know that recovery is possible.
For more than a year now, Dr. Michael Levy, founder and medical director of The Center for Addiction Medicine is has provided PROMETA treatment protocols, which have shown significant clinical successes. Offered in a private setting, providers are reporting unheard of abstinence rates of between 60 percent and 80 percent.
PROMETA is an innovative treatment protocol for methamphetamine dependence. The treatment protocol involves prescription medications and nutritional supplements that are administered in a proprietary manner.
PROMETA protocols are administered intravenously in an outpatient medical setting and help alleviate the symptoms of withdrawal of methamphetamine addiction.
When addicts use meth over and over again, the drug actually changes their brain chemistry, destroying the wiring in the brain's pleasure centers and making it increasingly impossible to experience any pleasure at all. Although studies have shown that these tissues can regrow over time, the process can take years, and the repair may never be complete.
The treatment protocols are medically supervised and designed to address neurochemical imbalances in the brain and nutritional deficiencies caused or worsened by addiction. These changes in the brain are highly responsible for withdrawal, craving and relapse.
It is hypothesized that PROMETA repairs the damage to neurotransmitters in the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor complex — the part of the brain that inhibits or calms — caused by extended drug abuse. The effect, they believe, is to halt cravings for the drug and allow addicts to think clearly enough to concentrate on changing their lifestyles.
An innovative approach to treating addiction, PROMETA addresses the physiological, nutritional and psychosocial aspects of addiction. When used as part of a physician-established recovery plan, this treatment is an enormous aid in sustained recovery.