title: Electrostimulation: addiction treatment for the coming millennium.
abstract: At a period of fundamental review of the health care system, it is timely to re-assess one of medicine's most intractable problems--the treatment of addictions. The apparently insoluble dilemmas posed by the acute and chronic withdrawal syndromes underlie universally high drop-out and relapse rates. In a decade of HIV and AIDS infection, poly-substance addiction, potent street drugs, and ossified treatment strategies, it is urgent that policy formulators investigate seriously a flexible system of non-pharmacological transcranial electrostimulation treatment, based on its record of rapid, safe, and cost-effective detoxification in several countries, as one innovative contribution to the challenges presented by addiction in the 1990s. This is a brief report of the introduction of NeuroElectric Therapy (NET) into Germany, describing the responses of the first 22 cases. The daily progress of a heroin addict and a methadone addict are detailed: both were treated as outpatients for 8 hours daily, for 7 and 10 days respectively.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, USA.
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.forename: S I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Patterson
mesh_terms: D004599:Electric Stimulation Therapy; D006556:Heroin Dependence / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D008691:Methadone; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D016896:Treatment Outcome
chemical_list: D008691:Methadone