A new pharmaceutical drug combination has shown promise as a new potential drug treatment to fight cocaine addiction. The Scripps Research Institute’s laboratory researchers have found that low doses of naltrexone with buprenorphine has shown great promise in the lab rats in which they were tested on. This combination made the lab rats much less likely to want to ingest the cocaine, showing this drug treatment combination could curve withdrawal cravings in humans.
While naltrexone and buprenorphine are already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the new drug combination still needs to adhere to human testing before it can be approved. Studying how these drugs work together could pave the way for how researchers look at drug treatment therapy, as drug combinations have not been extensively utilized.
While many drugs have been tried in clinical trials as potential cocaine and drug treatments, all have failed to show efficiency in treating human cocaine addictions. For this reason, there are currently no FDA approved medications for the sole purpose of treating a cocaine addiction.
What many people overlook is that cocaine abuse and addiction is a serious problem in the United States alone. One study by the Office of National Drug Control Policy states that in the mid 1990s, it was estimated that Americans spent more on cocaine than all other illegal drugs combined. Additionally, while most other drugs have more developed rehab and detox programs, cocaine addiction treatment leaves much to be desired.
Where once treatment programs consisted entirely of social support such as one on one therapy, group therapy, and other forms of counseling, treatment today shows much promise in the continual development of medicine based treatments. With the help of modern medicine, people who suffer from addictions can be helped to reverse stress and physiological effects of the drug, as well as assist in overcoming painful withdrawal symptoms and cravings.
Understanding how these drug combinations can benefit a cocaine addiction, first requires a basic understanding of how cocaine effects the brain.
Cocaine is a chemical salt in which can be snorted, injected or smoked. Upon consuming the drug, the cocaine chemical will enter the bloodstream, and into the brains “reward system”, or the circuits in which controls motivation and pleasure. By interfering with the normal regulation of dopamine in the brain, a dopamine build-up occurs, and creates an artificial feeling of euphoria in the user. This rush of euphoria can peak within seconds of consuming the drug, and typically lasts for several minutes.
Over time, the user will find that it takes more of the substance to achieve the same feelings of euphoria, and without the substance an opposing reaction occurs, the brain will produce an overload of stress/aversive like effects.
Treating a cocaine addiction with combination medicines will help restore the brains reward and stress/aversive systems to normal, making it much easier for the user to cope with withdrawal and cravings.
