Cocaine Addiction Treatment

Have you been chasing cocaine or ‘crack-cocaine’? Do you continue to fight cocaine cravings even though you have attended several treatment centers? You ‘pray and attend meetings’, but you just can’t stop thinking about cocaine. At Florida Detox, we have successfully treated cocaine addiction in hundreds of patients. Our biochemical model of addiction treatment will stop your physiological and psychological craving for cocaine!

Within two to four days of starting the Florida Detox cocaine treatment program, you will say, “wow, how did you do it, my cocaine craving is gone?” How can we stop your cocaine craving when other addiction treatment has always failed? Because we will analyze, diagnose and adjust your individual brain chemistry! Consider this as a similar approach to your internist utilizing medication to treat your diabetes through adjustment of your insulin levels. Cocaine addiction is not about bad character or lack of willpower. It is all about self-medication.

Recent advances in brain science have proven that some patients inherit lower than normal levels of dopamine, our primary ‘happy chemical’. This sounds logical! We know that diabetic patients don’t make enough insulin and we say, “Diabetes runs in my family!” Cocaine addicted patients state, “addiction runs in my family”. Well, we don’t suggest that diabetic patients go to ‘meetings’ five nights a week, and that if they do, their pancreas will produce more insulin. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Then why do old fashioned and outdated addiction doctors attempt to treat addiction with 12 step counseling alone while ignoring and resisting exciting advances in brain science?

Medical and scientific knowledge doubles every 3.5 years. Brain science has grown exponentially over the last five years. The majority of America’s ‘addiction specialists’ are recovering doctors who became addictionologists by simply imitating the 12 step model they experienced as addicted patients. They resist treating patients with a more scientific biochemical model of addiction treatment. Why? Because the recent scientific discoveries invalidate what they believe about their personal recovery and treatment modalities they have professed for years. Multiple University studies have clearly proven that 12 step treatment alone, without integration of modern brain science fails, producing 80-90 percent relapse rates in the first year of treatment.

Cocaine – Biochemical Mechanism

Cocaine produces a temporary surge in brain dopamine activity as it releases dopamine from brain storage units. Dopamine is a major excitatory chemical which activates electrical energy in brain cells. If certain regions of your brain experience lower than normal dopamine activity, your brain will crave dopamine to feel normal. Cocaine actually has a similar chemical structure to dopamine.

ADHD

ADHD patients have an under active frontal brain. A genetic trait produces dopamine deficiency, but only in small areas of the prefrontal cortex (frontal lobes). Dopamine activates brain cell electricity. ADHD patients “feel more normal” when using any drug that increases frontal lobe activity. Drugs which release dopamine from brain cell storage units are cocaine, opiate pain pills (Vicodin, Oxycontin), alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine and nicotine.

Last year while interviewing Robert Shapiro, a famous Hollywood attorney, Larry King alluded to the abysmal (80-90 percent) relapse rates associated with historical addiction treatment – primarily the AA twelve step model. Robert Shapiro’s son, Brent, had just suffered a drug related death in spite of attending several $30,000-$50,000 ‘treatment programs’ on Malibu Beach.

Discussed in the interview, was the fact that Mr. Shapiro’s brilliant, law school bound son had ADHD. Larry King asked, “Is there any correlation?” Is there? Absolutely! Fifty-two percent of patients who are untreated for their ADHD become ‘drug addicts’ or ‘alcoholics’ by early adulthood. Amazingly, at Florida Detox, we see patients every week who have completed five to ten nationally renowned treatment programs, all of which have failed to make the correct diagnosis. These patients were diagnosed ‘drug addict’ or ‘alcoholic’. These patients and their families had paid dearly ( on average, $30,000 per treatment) to be misdiagnosed!! They feel more hopeless after each failed treatment. The truth is the patient did not fail. Addiction medicine failed them!

Depression

Depression afflicted patients feel more “normal” on cocaine. Why? One of the specific regions of our brain which is dopamine sensitive is our natural ‘pleasure center’ (nucleus accumbens). Located within our emotional mid-brain, it is dopamine driven! Some patients inherit decreased dopamine activity in their pleasure center, suffer borderline depression and are then diagnosed dysthymic. They have difficulty getting excited about normally exciting events -for example on graduation day, wedding day, birthdays… Their inherited dopamine deficiency prevents them from experiencing the normal dopamine surge in their pleasure center.

In 2005, studies from our National Institute of Drug Addiction demonstrated that some patients inherit as much as 50 percent less (half) the normally expected dopamine activity in their pleasure center. Should we be surprised that these patients feel more “normal” on cocaine? They feel “whole” for the first time in their life! They are not attempting to get high, but high-er to reach a normal pleasure center activity.

Dr. Johnson, Chairman of Psychiatry at University of Virginia, and his colleagues, in May 2006 released a brilliant study comparing the ‘dopamine effect’ on the human pleasure center derived from three ‘drugs’ - food, sex, and cocaine! With the utility of PET brain imaging, patients were scanned before and after eating, experiencing orgasm and cocaine ingestion. Measuring the D2 dopamine happy receptor activity in the pleasure center (nucleus accumbens), the scientists discovered that eating elevated the D2 activity three times normal, sex raised it ten times normal and cocaine raised the D2 activity one hundred times normal. Wow! Dysthymic and depressed patients are a set up for food, sex, and cocaine addiction. They are simply trying to feel as good as the rest of us do normally!

In another study from NIDA, patients were divided into two groups; those with normal dopamine D2 activity in their pleasure center and those with half normal. Both groups were given IV Ritalin. Ritalin has a dopamine effect (dopaminergic) similar to cocaine. How do you think the two different groups responded?

The patients whose PET scan demonstrated normal D2 activity in their pleasure centers stated “I’m not really sure I need or like this.” However, the group of patients with severely low (half normal) dopamine activity stated, “Wow, I feel normal and whole inside for the first time in my life!” This 2005 study supports the statistics that suggest eleven percent of patients who “try cocaine” the first time say, “Hey, I want (need) that stuff everyday!” – clearly the people with low D2 activity. Eighty nine percent of patients who use cocaine for the first time state, “It’s okay, I might play with it on Saturday night, but I don’t really need it everyday.”

At Florida Detox, we will measure your brain chemicals - dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, and many others – and design an individual treatment program for you. We can normally stop cocaine craving in nine of ten cocaine patients. Our inpatient program does not require that you necessarily leave your family or work for an extended period of time. You will stay in our inpatient unit for five days. And then we will follow-up your initial detox for three more months as an outpatient, as we continue to measure and optimize your brain chemistry through our biochemical makeover program, designed just for you.

To read patient testimonials regarding cocaine and their success at Florida Detox, please click here