Pubdate: Wed, 05 Jan 2005
Source: Los Angeles City Beat (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Southland Publishing
Contact:  http://www.lacitybeat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2972
Note: Also prints Los Angeles Valley Beat, often with similar content, and 
the same contact information.
Author: Dennis Romero
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

WEIRD SCIENCE?

The world of medicine seems to be getting quackier and quackier as rapidly 
advancing cures and medicines meet myth and marketing. Diet pills, hangover 
cures, and sexual dysfunction treatments spew from the medical-industrial 
complex, graying the lines between science and selling. It is against this 
backdrop that the Orange County-based Waismann Institute's "rapid detox" 
for heroin addicts has inspired awe and doubt.

Its proponents claim the core of the Waismann Method takes only 20 minutes 
and involves putting an opiate or pain-killer addict under anesthesia, and 
using a combination of drugs to cleanse the patient's body. The method 
compresses the painful withdrawal period into a matter of minutes and 
spares addicts from the pain usually associated with the experience because 
they are unconscious for about an hour. Patients can be discharged after 
about a day, but must continue taking a drug called naltrexone to, 
according to an account in Wired magazine, block the effects of illicit 
narcotic use should a patient relapse.

Proponents of the method claim a 65 percent success rate after just one 
year, far greater than the 30 to 40 percent success rates of methadone 
treatment and 12-step programs. Waismann's believers say it's all in how 
addiction is viewed. They say the traditional way of treating addiction -- 
12-step programs -- involves a belief in spiritual and mental change, but 
has little to do with science. Waismann, they say, is a medical treatment 
that looks directly at the biology and chemistry of addiction and does 
something about it. "Physical opiate dependency is a central nervous system 
disorder that can be reversed with appropriate, physician-administered 
medical treatment," states the official Waismann philosophy. "Patients 
deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and compassion, rather than 
contempt and alienation."

Some critics say the method amounts to a money-making Band-Aid, but the 
American Society of Addiction Medicine reportedly supports the treatment. 
Waismann's principals are Clifford A. Bernstein, an assistant clinical 
professor of anesthesiology at UC Irvine, and Michael H. Lowenstein, also 
an anesthesiologist.

"The 12-step program is an outdated 20th-century concept," Bernstein told 
Wired. "For 70 years, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous, addicts have been 
told they're suffering from a spiritual problem. AA assumes that you can 
talk someone out of their addiction -- which is ridiculous. Addiction is a 
medical problem. If somebody has cancer, you don't try to talk them out of 
their disease."
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