Alternative Treatments for Alcoholism and Addiction

Written by Lisa Marshall

Alcoholics and addicts are turning to alternative and complementary treatments as an adjunct to traditional addiction treatment programs.

Bill Beilhartz had run out of options. In fact, he was close to death.

At age 44, the Denver father-of-two had just spent two weeks in the hospital for alcohol-induced ulcers in his esophagus and stomach. He'd registered a nearly lethal blood alcohol level of .675. He'd been through two failed marriages, and his tall, once-handsome frame was withered from years of drinking a half-gallon of vodka a day. Yet, his first stop after leaving the hospital? Incredibly, the liquor store.

Three days later, after being rushed to the hospital again—this time for internal bleeding—he began desperately flipping through the Yellow Pages looking for something beyond what his three previous treatment centers had offered—something that might actually work.

"They all had the same approach," says Beilhartz, an international casino consultant who had checked himself in each time before, paying as much as $10,000 per stay. "They tell you, 'Don't drink,' and that is pretty much the education they give you."

An ad for InnerBalance Health Center, a Colorado treatment program that takes a comprehensive holistic approach to addiction, jumped out at him. The clinic prescribed such treatments as nutritional counseling, intravenous vitamin therapy, yoga, and exercise programs. "It was different than anything I'd ever heard of. And it all just made sense to me," says Beilhartz, who checked in to the 35-day program in January 2006.

Months later, he's healthy, hopeful, and boasting more days of sobriety than in all the past 15 years combined. "Within a week of arriving, my mind was completely clear, and I felt energized and motivated to get on with life. I hadn't felt like that since my early 20s," he says.

Battling brain chemistry

Beilhartz is among a growing number of addicts and alcoholics turning toward complementary and alternative therapies to address the physiological underpinnings of addiction. The programs are rooted in the theory that addiction is largely the result of skewed levels of certain chemical messengers in the brain.

With too much of some messengers and not enough of others, researchers believe, addicts are caught—often from childhood—in a state of chronic imbalance and turn to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate in an attempt to feel "normal."

Most addiction experts agree that talk therapy and 12-step programs—considered the gold standard for addiction treatment for decades—are a necessary component of a successful recovery. But in and of themselves, such methods have not proven terribly effective. Between 70 and 85 percent of addicts completing such programs will relapse within six to 12 months, studies show. Meanwhile, some alternative clinics that incorporate both physiological and psychological approaches boast six-month sobriety rates as high as 85 percent.

"If you have a broken leg and your bone is sticking out, you aren't going to want to sit around and talk about it. You are going to want to go to the emergency room, fix the physical problem, and stop the pain first," explains Joe Eisele, clinical director of InnerBalance and a recovering alcoholic. "Then you can sit down and talk."

Reward deficiency syndrome

The notion that addiction is a biochemical disease dates back to the late 1980s when Texas brain researcher Kenneth Blum coined the phrase "reward deficiency syndrome." Blum theorized that for most people, the stimulus of everyday things like good food, sex, or a funny movie set off a cascade of feel-good neurotransmitters in the brain. But some people are born with either an inability to produce enough of these chemicals or a kink in the line that delivers them. For such individuals, the cascade of reward is hindered and pleasure muted, if it comes at all.

"Addicts are always looking for a way to feel better, and when they discover certain mood-altering substances—those things that fit into the same receptors in the brain that the deficient 'feel-good' chemicals do—they feel like they are getting what they have been looking for but have never been able to find," says Merlene Miller, an addictions specialist and coauthor of the book Staying Clean and Sober: Complementary and Natural Strategies for Healing the Addicted Brain (Woodland, 2005).

Today, experts readily accept the notion that faulty brain chemistry plays a role in setting people up for addiction, but for the most part, addiction researchers have focused on correcting that brain chemistry with pharmaceuticals, rather than addressing it more holistically. Meanwhile, more and more clinics around the country use that same information to take a different, more holistic approach.

Vitamins through a tube

Step into InnerBalance Health Center on any given Wednesday and you'll find a room full of resident patients, from grandmothers trying to quit binge drinking to musicians who want to kick cocaine. They're watching videos and chatting as orange liquid drips into their veins through intravenous tubes.

Alcoholism and drug abuse can ravage the gastrointestinal system, limiting its ability to absorb nutrients, so pumping vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and B vitamins directly into the blood has a more immediate effect than administering them orally, says Eisele. And because underlying nutritional problems, such as hypoglycemia or B-vitamin deficiencies, often prompt cravings, IV therapy can often quell the withdrawal that leads addicts to relapse early on.