BPB on your head

Damien Hirst: The Autonomy of an Angel. 2008.

I learnt a little bit about a drug called ‘baclofen’ recently. It’s a muscle relaxant, prescribed to those suffering from muscle spasms and the like. The drug is interesting because it has a potentially life-changing side-effect: it might be able to ‘cure’ your addiction.

What? How? I don’t know exactly. But I heard a story about this guy; let’s call him Al. Al was involved in dealing illegal drugs. One day, on the job, Al was shot in the neck; resulting in a complete paralysis from the neck down. Al was in recovery, but he was having muscle spasms. He was prescribed baclofen. Al was still doing quite a lot of cocaine. He found that when he took the baclofen, he didn’t get high from cocaine. Al used himself as a guinea pig: he played around with his baclofen dose until he found the perfect medium — no muscle spasms AND an achievable cocaine high. We can thank Al for helping us to learn something about baclofen.

Baclofen dampens your high by dulling the pleasure receptors in your brain. If you imagine the little cocaine or alcohol molecules bouncing along to ‘shake hands’ with your pleasure receptors; baclofen acts like a big fluffy blanket on top of your pleasure receptors, meaning that the all-important ‘hand shaking’ cannot take place. It gets muffled. The incredible thing is that this drug has actually helped some people to overcome alcohol or drug addictions. People who may have gone to AA for years; now thinking that wine just ‘doesn’t taste nice’ anymore.

I begin with this story because I think it gives us an important inkling as to where things are headed for head problems. Treating addiction with drugs: well that’s new! Problems that used to be considered as habits of the ‘soul’ or the ‘mind’ are now seen in a physical light, and this is probably because science keeps telling us we’re all made out of physical stuff, and physical stuff only.

Depression, anxiety, addiction… disorders of this nature are often treated with substances today because they are seen as physical issues. Opinions are gradually changing — once, you may have been told to ‘cheer up’ or ‘calm down’ — but I like to think that people’s attitudes are shifting. Charmless words have about as much impact as ‘kissing better’ a broken leg.

Not that I think drugs are the answer to everything. After all, we know pretty much nothing about brains. Hardly anything. So our medicines are not yet very sophisticated. I watched a TED Talk recently (you can find it here) that describes anti-depressants as a kind of ‘chemical brain bath’ — an explanation as to why many people experience unwanted side-effects from drugs like Prozac. We need to refine the medicines so they’re better at targeting specific problems rather than just dousing the whole brain: we’re not there yet, but science is working on it. I also think there are significant benefits born out of therapy, counselling, and even yoga and colouring books. Drugs, perhaps, are a part of a journey to optimum mental health.

Is it reassuring to think of problems like addiction as physical problems? I think it certainly helps to eliminate the associated stigma. One may no longer say of alcoholics that ‘they brought it on themselves’ or that people who suffer from panic attacks are weak. It’s just something a little awry with the wiring somewhere. Isn’t that a comfort?

I hope I am speaking sensitively enough about these issues. My wish is that one day we are as good at remedying mental illness as we are at fixing broken limbs.

Check out this podcast by Radiolab for more info and stories about baclofen.

Thoughts, questions, comments:

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