<\/p>\n
The winds were wild that day. They whipped round the farmhouse and thrashed the lowland conifers this way and that, bending them to near breaking point. It was like some grim metaphor for what had been going on all week inside the building.<\/p>\n
Lower Johnshill Farm stands up a farm track well back from the road in the dour countryside somewhere to the south of Glasgow. Nearby lies a golf course and an old people\u2019s home as big as a small town. To the side huge pylons carrying thick electricity cables bisect the length of the small valley. Only a Glaswegian could have dubbed it \u201cbeautiful Lanarkshire countryside\u201d.<\/p>\n
This unlikely setting had more to commend it, however, than a dubious rural idyll. Inside the house, not far from the town of Lesmahagow, two trials have just been held into a revolutionary new treatment which claims, astonishingly, to be able to remove the cravings of heroin addicts in a matter of mere days.<\/p>\n
If it works as billed, it could, at last, be a cure for the epidemic of drug addiction \u2013 cocaine addiction has tripled in the last ten years and heroin has quadrupled in the last fifteen \u2013 which is spreading with alarming speed throughout the developed world. And Scotland was the place to try it out because it now has more drug addicts per head of population than anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n
The farmhouse interior was unremarkable. Inside the living room were three large sofas, set\u00a0 around an unlit open fire. \u201cNo admittance. Closed session,\u201d said a note on the glass of the door to the room, inside which a group of women sat in animated conversation.<\/p>\n
On the walls were stuck notes, in varying sizes, which gave a clue to what was going on. \u201cThe harder we suffer, the better we recover,\u201d one said. \u201cI will live through this day only and not tackle my whole life\u2019s problems at once,\u201d said another. \u201cLife is 2 good to waste.\u201d \u201cIf you\u2019re going through hell, keep on going \u2013 Winston Churchill\u201d. \u201cDon\u2019t feed into negative thoughts\u201d. \u201cThe best is yet to come \ud83d\ude42 .\u201d<\/p>\n
It looked like pretty standard rehab stuff. But the largest, by the fireplace, was more intriguing. \u201cMethadone is a crutch to the vulnerable,\u201d it said. For this pilot trial is turning upside down much of the conventional wisdom about the chemistry of addiction.<\/p>\n
They broke for lunch and invited me in. I glanced surreptitiously around the group. It was clear enough who was being treated and who were the therapists. The women, most of whom had taken their final fix just five days before, were gaunt. They appeared tired and weak. Yet they were not the focus of attention. Their eyes, like the clinicians, nurses and drug rehab experts, were on a tall broad-shouldered 24-year-old young man with spiky hair and a broad grin who was serving the soup.<\/p>\n
Barry Phillips underwent the same treatment that the six women were experiencing exactly a year ago to the day. After five years on heroin, and four previous attempts to kick the devil\u2019s dandruff, as he called it, he is now free of the habit \u2013 and of all cravings to return to it.<\/p>\n
His unsuccessful attempts included the standard detox treatments of methadone, dyhydracodeine, valium plus the \u201ccold turkey\u201d of stopping the drug without taking anything at all to cushion his withdrawal symptoms. His successful attempt involved the little black box which the six recovering addicts were wearing, from which two leads projected, running to two electrodes taped behind the women\u2019s ears.\u00a0 To the unsuspecting eye it looked only as if a they were using ipods.<\/p>\n
In fact they were wearing the latest version of a device pioneered by a Scottish surgeon, Dr Meg Patterson. Working in a leading hospital in Hong Kong in the early Seventies, she discovered that low pulses of electricity used by Chinese surgeons, as a form of electro-acupuncture to control pain during surgery, had an extraordinary side-effect. They removed all cravings for drugs from the opium addicts who constituted around one in six of the hospital\u2019s patients.<\/p>\n
Over the 30 years that followed she, and later her family, worked on a succession of prototypes of the device which was now on trial in the sequestered Lanarkshire farmhouse. NeuroElectric Therapy, she hypothesised, stimulates the brain to resume production of the natural endorphins which drug-use kills off . In the early years she used it treat rock stars including Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend and Boy George all of whom kicked their heroin habit with her help.<\/p>\n
But the treatment has never met with the approval of the scientific establishment. The Lesmahagow trial, run by Dr Patterson\u2019s children, and funded by a Scottish drugs charity, could change all that.<\/p>\n
What NET claims is that, by using the pocket-sized stimulator continuously for six to 10 days the acute pains suffered by addicts during cold turkey are drastically reduced. NET\u2019s chief clinician, the inventor\u2019s son Lorne Patterson, a psychiatric nurse, says it provides withdrawal relief of between 50-75 per cent for most patients. A minority experience between 75-95 per cent relief as the current passes through self-adhesive electrodes applied behind each ear and the brain heals itself.<\/p>\n
More than that, he says, 95 per cent of patients finish the treatment with no craving for the drug.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was sceptical,\u201d Barry told the six women, \u201cbut I knew that rock stars had tried it so I decided to give it a go. I wouldn\u2019t say it was easy, but it was easier than any detox I\u2019d tried before.\u201d Barry signed up to try out the new treatment with every hour being chronicled for a fly-on-the-wall TV programme, Coming Clean,<\/em> made by the BAFTA-winning director Norman Stone. \u201cOn cold turkey I\u2019d lasted no more than 24 hours. In the first few days I could still see clearly in front of me a spoon, a needle and a bag of heroin and that\u2019s all I wanted to do. But as the days went on, that picture faded. By the end the cravings had gone. And they have never returned.\u201d<\/p>\n It was exactly a year to the day that he had had his last fix. The six women had baked him a cake to celebrate his re-birthday. \u201cI\u2019m strong now,\u201d he said simply. \u201cBut without NET I\u2019d be a member of the living dead.\u201d<\/p>\n But would the Lesmahagow trial back his claims?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Things were already looking mixed. The week before six male addicts had been subjected to the programme. Two were kicked out for bringing drugs into the farmhouse and using them while on the NET machine. Two had walked out before the end of the trial, though there was to be an intriguing development with both of them. And two had completed the course and left saying that they were free of cravings and intended to stay clean.<\/p>\n The second week of the trial was already looking better. A tougher regime had been imposed upon the women. They were searched as they entered the house and their money, lighters and mobile phones were all confiscated. \u201cThis isn\u2019t a pain-free-ticket out of addiction,\u201d said Lorne Patterson , \u201cthough it does help cushion the more acute symptoms of cold turkey \u2013 the sweats, twitches and cramps; the restlessness, anxiety and mood swings; and the lack of sleep. Most people have tried other ways before they come to us. They have the yardstick of cold turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n So it was with the six women. Margaret, 22, from Ayr, had been on heroin since she was 15 when she went to visit a friend and the girl\u2019s mother \u2013 a dealer \u2013 gave her daughter and Margaret free heroin for a week, until they were hooked and became customers. She had been on the drug for seven years, and had tried various ways of coming off, in vain. She had even had two Notrexone implants \u2013 at \u00a32,000 each \u2013 implanted by the doctor who treated the Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty. Five days earlier she had her last hit \u2013 0.5gm of heroin \u2013 and the next day she had put on Lorne Patterson\u2019s NET machine.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first day was quite easy,\u201d she recalled, \u201cbut in the night vomiting and sweating set in along with shaking, twitching, runny nose and eyes and mind running wild. It was a pretty grim night. Every night has been grim until last night when I slept a bit.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it has got better day by day. On Day 2 the rattle [addicts slang for withdrawal symptoms] set in for one hour and then I was fine for two hours. Slowly things got better. Now I\u2019ve had no cramps for two days.\u00a0 I got unplugged from the machine yesterday. I felt fine. I\u2019ve thought about heroin but not craved it. I\u2019d say it\u2019s worked for me.\u201d<\/p>\n The others all, with varying degrees of conviction, agree. \u201cI\u2019ve had all the symptoms of cold turkey,\u201d said Laura, 27, a law student, \u201c but it\u2019s a lot quicker. I haven\u2019t had any cravings for two days. I haven\u2019t even thought about heroin.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that it has been easy. \u201cI got a bit of sleep the first night,\u201d says Liz, also 27, a mother of three children, who had been on heroin for 10 years, \u201cbut on the second night I started hallucinating. I was so distressed that I packed my case to leave but there was no transport. They\u2019d taken my mobile off me so I couldn\u2019t get hold of my family. But by the next morning I felt better. I\u2019ve had six previous detoxes and I knew that by that point cold turkey would have had me wrapped round in a ball on the floor. And I was feeling better. Jack McConnell saw me on my worst day. I\u2019d like him to see me now.\u201d<\/p>\n Jack McConnell is Scotland\u2019s First Minister. Disturbed at the apparent failure of the nation\u2019s anti-heroin strategy \u2013 which relied on replacing heroin with methadone, which can be taken orally, thus avoiding the problems associated with needle-use \u2013 Scotland\u2019s premier visited the farmhouse pilot on its second day. He has asked his officials to review the methadone programme and investigate the electro therapy.<\/p>\n He is not the only one intrigued by the possibility that a cure has been found for heroin addiction. The Inspector of Prisons in Scotland, Andrew McLelland, visited the farmhouse in person and the Governor of Edinburgh Prison sent tow observers to the pilot. So did Phoenix Futures, the largest provider of rehab services in the UK.\u00a0 So did a team from the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University led by Professor Neil McKeganey. NeuroElectric Therapy is beginning to look like an idea whose time has come.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It has been a long time arriving. It was in the 1970s that Meg Paterson and her anti-addiction machine was used to treat its first celebrity patient, Eric Clapton. Pete Townshend, Keith Richards and Boy George all followed. Given such high profile clients, several of whom publicly endorsed NET over the years, how was it that the world did not beat a path to Dr Patterson\u2019s door?<\/p>\n A number of factors combined to keep NeuroElectric Therapy in relative obscurity. The first was medical suspicion of the exotic Chinese business of acupuncture, a practice which Western science has only relatively recently accepted as effective, struggling, as it does, to explain how it can work. The second was that NET\u2019s inventor, though a distinguished surgeon, was not a psychiatrist; she was operating outside her accepted field of expertise.<\/p>\n Moreover, the work she was pioneering was enormously complex. In seven years of work with 186 patients she used the machine to successfully treat a wide range of addictive drugs: heroin, opium, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, cocaine, crack cocaine, methadone, nicotine and alcohol \u2013 all of them requiring the machine to operate on different frequencies and wave shapes.<\/p>\n And though the success rates she reported were phenomenal \u2013 with 95 per cent of patients claiming they were free of craving, 75 per cent that they were free of anxiety and a drop-out rate of just 1.6 per cent over a period of seven years \u2013 she was unable to explain exactly how the treatment worked. Her theory that the pulses stimulated the production of endorphins which repeated use of drugs had suppressed was only a hypothesis.<\/p>\n She was also battling against a scientific and medical culture whose paradigm is essentially pharmacological. Though physicians used aspirin for over a hundred years before they knew about prostaglandins, they were not to be that easily persuaded to allow electricity to be pulsed into a patient\u2019s head \u2013 even if it was the barely-perceptible pulse from a 9 volt battery which is a thousand times more gentle than the current used in electro-convulsive shock therapy, which remains medically approved.<\/p>\n \u201cElectro-therapy is voodoo,\u201d says Lorne Patterson and drug companies, teaching hospitals, and universities all share that assumption. Suggestions from his mother\u2019s initial studies that NET was considerably less effective if it was used in conjunction with heroin-substitutes like methadone doubly alarmed them \u2013 and the large pharmaceutical companies, in whose gift were so many research grants and who stood to lose billions of dollars a year if daily doses of methadone were to be replaced by a one-off treatment powered by a \u00a33 battery.<\/p>\n When Dr Patterson applied for official funding she was refused it, though the medical research council told her it would be interested to see the results if she could finance proper clinical trials herself.<\/p>\n She did try. Celebrities like The Who guitarist Pete Townshend put up some cash for her to open a drug treatment clinic London.\u00a0 But the amounts needed were too large. And things were not helped when Meg Paterson \u2013 no businesswoman \u2013 struck up partnerships with dubious characters whose shady\u00a0 business practises and legal wranglings inflicted a substantial amount of damage to her work. Dr Patterson died in 2002 without seeing her discovery applied more widely to treat addicts, though her obituary in the British Medical Journal <\/em>decided that her contribution to curative addiction treatments was so significant that she ought to have been awarded the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n Her family persisted, raising $3m for yet another generation of prototypes.\u00a0 They tried, too, to organise the kind of clinical trials the scientific community would find convincing. In 1992 they set up a randomised double blind trial at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, with two groups of patients, one receiving NET, the other receiving a dummy box, and with neither the individuals nor the researchers knowing who got which to rule out the possibility of NET\u2019s efficacy being caused by a placebo effect.<\/p>\n It did not succeed. If one group had had a box that made the skin tingle, and the other a box that produced no sensation, then it would have been apparent to everyone who was getting the placebo. So the dummy group was given a box set at the wrong frequency but whose low 0.2mA of current appeared to be enough to provide a degree of active treatment. In both groups 88 per cent of the detoxes were successful.<\/p>\n This latest pilot study at Lesmahagow was funded by a small Glasgow charity, The Third Step, in an attempt to break the scientific deadlock. There has been another key development. The new push is being masterminded not by Dr Patterson\u2019s medic children \u2013 Lorne, the psychiatric nurse, Sean, a professor of neurophysiology, or Myrrh, a nursing student \u2013 but by Myrrh\u2019s husband, Joe Winston, who is an American businessman.<\/p>\n Winston has digitised the old NET machine with its 40,000 possible combinations of currents, frequencies and wave patterns \u2013 which required six months supervised clinical training to use. The digitised box \u2013 the size of a pack of playing cards \u2013 has a computer coded key for each of the main drugs. It is far simpler to use clinically. Pilot projects like the one at Lesmahagow are now underway with the 50 prototype boxes now in existence in Australia, Romania, the Ukraine and the United States where a trial with 108 patients has just finished in Kentucky.<\/p>\n There are sceptics to be convinced. Dr Laurence Gruer is the director of public health<\/p>\n science for the NHS in Scotland. Until recently he was the drugs co-ordinator for Greater Glasgow and a member of the UK\u2019s government\u2019s key advisory body on drug misuse. Drug addiction works on two levels, he says. It affects the chemistry of the brain, influencing motivation, memory and the sense of well-being. But it also creates a mass of powerful memories and cues to learned behaviour.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we have got used to coping with stress by using a certain drug then stress will prompt us to reach for that drug again,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a fairly profound programming of the brain in addition to the chemical process. Because the brain runs on electrical impulses it is possible, even plausible, that NET might be capable of operating at that level in the short term. (That would tie in with the whole idea of how acupuncture works, by stimulating the production and release of endorphins that overcome the pain, though it is still a bit vague exactly how that would work.) But can it help deal with the deeper alterations in brain chemistry and psychological conditioning?\u201d<\/p>\n The experience of at least two of the women on the trial suggests that the answer to that question might be Yes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n There were two people missing from the group as lunch began.\u00a0 They returned soon after, a woman with lank black hair, hollow cheeks and a drained air who looked a deal older than her 35 years, and a lithe man with a crew cut and an air of jaunty self-confidence. He was Joe Winston, Dr Meg Patterson\u2019s son-in-law and the man responsible for the resurgence of NeuroElectric Therapy. They had spent the morning in court.<\/p>\n \u201cCecilia did it,\u201d he announced cheerily. The woman smiled wanly. A hubbub of congratulation suddenly surrounded her.<\/p>\n Winston had that morning offered to accompany one of the six women on the NET trial to court where she was to fight a custody battle. Her opponent was her own father who had been caring for her five-year-old son for the latter part of the 15 years during which she had been enslaved by heroin. \u201cI was going to tell the court that Cecilia was doing well on the treatment, that her cravings had disappeared, and that she was now on the way to recovery,\u201d he said privately afterwards. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t quite go as I\u2019d anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the hearing began Cecilia had approached her father outside the court and appealed for him to drop the case. Her father\u2019s response set out the long strained history of failed parenting and broken promises of his daughter. \u201cI got up to all kinds of dodges and dishonesty; you don\u2019t want to know,\u201d Cecilia later told me.<\/p>\n The encounter had made the buoyant American pause. \u201cI told her: \u2018Your Dad has a point. You have let him and your son down too many times before\u2019,\u201d Winston said. \u201c \u2018Even if NET has removed your cravings you still have those relationships to rebuild, which is a much longer, slower business. You have to go round and cook tea every night and put your son to bed; you have to earn your way back into you Dad\u2019s trust and your son\u2019s. You have to show that you have become reliable\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then I persuaded her Dad to postpone his custody application to give Cecilia chance to do that. He was reluctant at first, but I suggested that he just gave her a few weeks, knowing that if she relapsed he could go back to court then. And he agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n Cecilia\u2019s case was doubly interesting. She and one of the other women, Sharon \u2013 who, at 39, was also one of the older addicts in the trial \u2013 had been off heroin for some weeks already. Both had come off cold turkey and had been heroin free for two months. But in that time the cravings had continued.<\/p>\n \u201cI came off in August. But I\u2019ve been struggling with the cravings.\u00a0 So much so that I\u2019ve had a couple of slips \u2013 I last used before Christmas. I came back off it but the cravings are always there at the back of your mind,\u201d Cecilia said. \u201cBut I put this NET box on and within 3 days the cravings went. They have gone so completely that I took the box off yesterday and got them to reprogramme it to a frequency aimed at cannabis, because I have cravings for that too.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharon told a similar story. A mother with three children she only started using heroin five years ago. \u201cI took two drags and I was hooked,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to get off it ever since. I\u2019ve had 12 cold turkeys. I remember them all: hospital detox, home detox, methadone. I\u2019ve had no heroin since December but I\u2019ve been on Valium since then. The cravings have been chronic.\u201d<\/p>\n But then she was put on the NET machine. \u201cNow I\u2019m not having any cravings at all. It\u2019s remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n Such a result was routinely claimed by NET\u2019s inventor, Dr Meg Paterson, who in 1984 published a study suggesting that 80 per cent of addicts (and 78 per cent of alcoholics) were completely free of cravings drug-free up to eight years after treatment. Her explanation was that once NET stimulates the normal production of endorphins, and the brain achieves a normal healthy balance, the cravings also disappear. And because the sleep pattern returns to normal far more rapidly with NET than is usual in the withdrawal of narcotics \u2013 4 to 6 days compared with 40 to 60 days \u2013 the consequent risk of addiction to sedatives is reduced. There is also a consistent increase in optimism, in contrast to the depression which normally characterises those struggling to stay off opiates.<\/p>\n Many scientists are sceptical of the idea that NET reduces cravings permanently. \u201cIt sounds a bit unlikely,\u201d says\u00a0 Dr Laurence Gruer is the director of public health science for the NHS in Scotland.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been a fair amount of progress in recent years,\u201d he adds, \u201cin examining what goes on inside the brain through the use of new imaging techniques which allow us to see what kind of activity is going on in particular parts of the brain and how that responds to certain drugs or treatments. It shows, for example, that the brains of people addicted to cocaine are not back to normal even several months later. So it\u2019s fairly implausible that, just by applying a low electrical current, NET could have a long-term impact. That\u2019s not to say that it couldn\u2019t conceivably happen. But at present the evidence seems fairly anecdotal.\u201d<\/p>\n At the Centre for Drug Misuse Research in Glasgow a broader response is given by Professor Neil McKeganey who is widely acknowledged as Scotland\u2019s foremost authority on drug abuse. \u201cWe don\u2019t fully understand the nature of cravings, or the process by which they may be reduced,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cPsychologically, heroin addicts frequently describe their separation from the drug as resembling, but being more agonizing than, losing a husband or wife. But physiologically craving is like the feeling that you get when you need to urinate. It builds to become so strong that you focus almost entirely on the need to release the pressure. Your whole body focuses on it. It becomes a deep physical urge. For addicts the only was to resolve that is to use. Addiction is a huge magnet locking these individuals to use drugs in the face of their own witness to the damage that drugs are doing to them and to those around them.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof McKeganey is already convinced of one huge advantage which NET has over drug-substitution strategies, like replacing heroin with methadone. \u201cWhat the Lesmahagow pilot studies have done is bring to the forefront of many people\u2019s minds the business of recovery.\u201d That is a significant shift.<\/p>\n Over the past two decades the dangers of HIV\/Aids shifted the emphasis of drug strategies away from getting users off drugs and towards minimising the risks they pose to public health more widely. \u201cFears of an Aids epidemic gave way to a rising concern about drug-related criminality,\u201d says Prof McKeganey. \u201cBoth led to an approach which moved away from an emphasis on recovery to one of minimising drug users risk behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n So methadone was offered as an alternative to heroin because it removes the risks associated with needle use. Today around 20,000 of the 51,000 heroin addicts in Scotland are on methadone. But Prof McKeganey\u2019s research \u2013 he has contact with more than 1,000 heroin addicts across Scotland whom he regularly surveys \u2013 has prompted increasing disillusion with the methadone-substitution programme which has been the backbone of the UK\u2019s anti-heroin strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe received wisdom is that you get them off heroin and onto methadone, on which they can stay more safely for the rest of their lives. Methadone will be a lifelong response, like prescribing insulin for a diabetic,\u201d he says. Studies from the United States suggest that Generation Grey is still on methadone they were prescribed in their 20s. We could end up with old people\u2019s homes handing out methadone as happens in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n Since individuals on methadone cannot drive, operate machinery and will not be given a job by most employers this is a demoralising life sentence. Drug companies, naturally, do not object. Nor do the police who think that methadone \u2013 or legalised heroin on prescription \u2013 will reduce addicts\u2019 need to commit crime.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is that after three years of methadone use only 3 per cent of addicts had given up drugs,\u201d Prof McKeganey says. Worse still almost all of those on methadone also use heroin, because though methadone may reduce cravings it doesn\u2019t provide the high that heroin does.<\/p>\n The cost of all this, in Scotland alone, is \u00a3100m a year. \u201cFor that we should expect more than stabilising the existing addict population,\u201d he says. Worse than that, between 10,000 and 20,000 new addicts are becoming hooked each year. So the population of users could double or even treble within a decade. \u201cThe idea of condemning people to stay on methadone for the rest of their lives is as indefensible as it is reprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n What NeuroElectric Therapy has already done is challenge that orthodoxy. \u201cEven the small pilot studies have crystallised the idea that there may be ways to get them off drug use entirely,\u201d says Prof McKeganey. \u201cJust as we see that containment is failing, here is something that can start an addict on the road to recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The atmosphere in the farmhouse had become intense and claustrophobic.\u00a0 The women needed an outing, Joe Winston decided. We piled into cars and headed for New Lanark, a model village on the upper reaches of the River Clyde where the 19th century philanthropist textile mill-owner Robert Owen had, in a previous age, tried to combine a successful business with a social utopia.<\/p>\n With the six women, half of whom were still wearing their NET machines, was a formidable phalanx of people determined to offer them support in their first re-encounter with the outside world.<\/p>\n The quietest, but it emerged perhaps the most formidable, was a diminutive white haired lady named Maxie Richards. This retired primary school teacher became involved with drug addiction by making tea in a rehab centre 20 years ago. Since then she has become one of Scotland\u2019s most experienced drug counsellors who has taken more than 1,000 addicts to live in her own home.<\/p>\n Next came a burly recovering alcoholic, John Mullen, whose Third Step charity had raised the \u00a340,000 for the Lesmahagow pilots. Then there was Scott Walker, one of two workers from Phoenix Futures, the largest provider of rehab services in the UK. With them came NET\u2019s most high-profile guinea pig, Barry Phillips, and its current driving force, the New Jersey businessman Joe Winston.<\/p>\n As the group toured the New Lanark village, which includes the world\u2019s first nursery school, the talk was all of coping strategies. Barry and Scott were offering tips on how to re-establish normal sleeping patterns and how addicts needed help out of chaotic lifestyles with skills most people take for granted, such as how to keep control of a household budget.<\/p>\n It was not hard to see why sceptics like Dr Laurence Gruer wonder whether it is such intensive support systems that really lie behind the success of NeuroElectric Therapy rather than any physiological changes produced by electro-stimulation. \u201cRelationships are important,\u201d he says. Recovering addicts need a fair degree of psychological support to help them understand what their addiction has been about. \u201cIt is interesting that those better able to recover are those who, before they got addicted, had a job, were educated or had a strong relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n It might be that those for whom NET works are those who were ready to come off heroin anyway \u2013 and that any alternative strategy \u2013 hypnosis, meditation, yoga, prayer or whatever \u2013 might be effective if\u00a0 combined with strong support from others. \u201cIt would be pretty unusual for the person to come off if they didn\u2019t have a high degree of motivation or were still in love with the drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof Neil McKeganey is open to that possibility. \u201cIf you surround someone with concerned professionals, giving affirmation, in an emotionally rich and supportive environment, that might be enough to wean them off anyway,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t get answers to questions like that from this pilot. But what is impressive is how hardened addicts have become more reflective on their drug use and on where their life is going.\u201d NET practitioners suggest that the therapy also makes addicts significantly more receptive to the\u00a0 counselling or psychotherapy they need.<\/p>\n \u201cBut getting off drugs is not the same as staying off drugs. The hard part for any addict is re-engineering their life after detox to change the environment \u2013 maybe going out in the day and staying in at night, instead of the other way round \u2013 that is part of the magnet\u00a0 effect. They need to build a non-addictive framework to their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n That much became clear from a private conversation between the youngest two of the women, Rona and Margaret, as they sat down to rest while the others in the party toured the Victorian nursery school. Rona \u00a0is a middle class addict with a private school background who was first offered cocaine at an ice rink at the age of 15. When her husband left her she became a heavy user and then, ironically, was taught how to \u201cjag\u201d (inject) the drug by someone she met at a meeting of Cocaine Addicts Anonymous. She moved onto heroin two years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cI keep trying to come off. I\u2019ve had 20 attempts at Cold Turkey and been off it for 3 weeks, 8 weeks, 20 weeks,\u201d the 20-year-old said. \u201cI\u2019ve been clean more than I\u2019ve been dirty but the cravings don\u2019t go away.\u00a0 Being on the box has speeded up my detox.\u201d<\/p>\n Two days earlier, during the trial, she had been hospitalised suddenly with liver problems. \u201cWhile I was in,\u201d she said, \u201cI was lying in bed and I saw two canulars on a tray. As I looked at them I suddenly realized that I wasn\u2019t thinking of stealing them. Heroin wasn\u2019t at the front of my mind any more.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the craving is still a wee bit in my head. The prospect of being completely drug-free frightens me. I just want to go back to the person I was five years ago. I\u2019d like to go back to having a few drinks and a few spliffs and just using drugs recreationally.\u201d<\/p>\n Margaret nodded in agreement. \u201cA wee bit of cannabis or drink won\u2019t hurt you. It\u2019s just a wee giggle. I\u2019m pretty confident I can keep to that and stay off the heroin. I know people who have been clean for five years and yet smoke a joint and drink a pint. At our age [she\u2019s 22] we need to have a wee bit of partying.\u201d<\/p>\n Rona was pleased at the affirmation. \u201cI want to go out deejaying again and have a couple of drinks and get back to how I was instead being a stay-at-home junkie.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott Walker of Phoenix Futures listened, and kept his counsel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n It was the last day of the trial. But before their \u201cgraduation\u201d ceremony there was one final session, chaired by Myrrh Winston.<\/p>\n \u201cYou six are going to be your own core support group,\u201d she began. \u201cYou\u2019ll be here for each other when we have gone back to the States. But there is one issue I want to get out right at the start. Two of you,\u201d she said, nodding at Rona and Margaret, \u201care talking about going out partying. It\u2019s important to get this out in the open so the group knows, so the group can hold you both up.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause you need to know: Pot is a drug, Eckie (ecstasy) is a drug, alcohol is a drug. And all drugs are dangerous for you, even Valium \u2013 if a doctor tries to prescribe it for you it\u2019s up to you to tell the doctor.<\/p>\n \u201cRona, you are the least strong of the ladies here.\u201d Rona tossed her long blonde hair and shrugged. \u201cYour commitment isn\u2019t as strong. You have a sick liver \u2013 you cannot drink. Margaret, if you take Rona partying you need to know that you\u2019re going to bear some responsibility for her downfall. You\u2019ll help her hurt herself.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a wee spliff,\u201d riposted Margaret.<\/p>\n \u201cDrum that idea right out of your head,\u201d Liz told the others. \u201cI started on cannabis. You can\u2019t go back to it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first joint will change your mindset,\u201d said Cecilia. \u201cIt\u2019s a slippery slope.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI used to smoke a joint on my way to work,\u201d shrugged Rona. Margaret pursed her lips and stayed silent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou think I\u2019m picking on you,\u201d Myrrh told her. \u201cWell, I am. Because I see danger signs. If in this group you\u2019re not picking on each other you\u2019re not doing the best for each other<\/p>\n \u201cIf people are giving you yak yak yak,\u201d said Rona, a touch petulantly, \u201cyou\u2019ll just stop coming. My mum doesn\u2019t want me totally abstinent. Don\u2019t be saying to her: \u2018she canna have a joint or she\u2019ll turn back in to a smackhead\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t smoke a joint,\u201d said Myrrh. \u201cYou\u2019re making excuses. That\u2019s bad. You are drug-free now. You have a choice. It is your choice.\u201d<\/p>\n And so it went. At the end of the meeting Maxie dished out a 2007 diary to everyone. \u201cLet\u2019s get the first meeting in your diaries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Down the road, at the local hotel, Joe Winston was addressing the families of the \u00a0six women before bringing the six women into the room to be re-united with their parents, partners and children. He had discarded the casual clothes he had been wearing all week and put on a suit.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter cold turkey it takes 4 to 6 months for the body to adapt and that gives families the time to adjust, too, to the fact that the person they love is changing. We\u2019ve accelerated that to 4 to 6 days. You haven\u2019t had time to adjust.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of you have been put through the wringer; heroin has an amazingly destructive impact on relatives. But I need to tell you that the woman who will walk in here in a few minutes is not an addict. She is drug-free now. All six of them are. Many of you will be afraid to hope that this can be true; you have had so many hopes dashed in the past. But unless you hope and trust them they won\u2019t be able to hope and trust in their new selves.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a new person we\u2019re going to hand to you. Of course, there are going to be issues.<\/p>\n Physical ailments are masked by heroin, so are emotional and psychological ones. It will be as if they had a broken arm which is now set, but still not strong. Trust them. One more time. Lift them up. Greet them eye to eye. So please welcome, drug-free, clean, Liz Wilson . . .\u201d<\/p>\n It was an immensely emotionally-charged moment. Each of the six entered the room to music they had chosen. (Cecelia\u2019s was Stayin\u2019 Alive<\/em>.)\u00a0 As they were presented with a certificate and hugged each therapist and fellow former-user in turn, their families stood and applauded with tear-stained ferocity.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel quite emotional,\u201d said Laura\u2019s mother. \u201cWhen I brought her last week I hoped it was going to work but I had my doubts. The transformation is amazing. She looks much happier and healthier. She\u2019s interacting, she\u2019s more confident. It\u2019s amazing, in a week.\u201d<\/p>\n Behind her Cecilia\u2019s father was hugging Joe Winston, the man with whom he had had the showdown outside court just a few days before.<\/p>\n \u201cI have hope. I didn\u2019t have any when I came here,\u201d said Liz\u2019s aunt. \u201cThis is the first day of the rest of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s quite remarkable how quickly it has happened. There should now be properly clinically controlled trials,\u201d said Laura\u2019s father, a microbiologist. \u201cIt seems very successful.\u201d<\/p>\n They could now come. \u00a0Initial reports suggested that all six women were cleaned by the process, as were two of the men, and that \u2013 amazingly \u2013 the two men who had quit the trial early had made contact to say that even the incomplete treatment had curbed their cravings. All of that will be taken with a pinch of salt by the scientists. Heroin addicts are notorious liars. (\u201cThere is something about opiate addiction, more than any other, which seems to turn lying into a game,\u201d says Joe Winston). And relapse rates are always high with heroin. But even allowing for all that the initial Lesmahagow results were impressive.<\/p>\n Even the sceptic Dr Laurence Gruer seemed upbeat. \u201cThe next step is that we need to see the data from the Lesmahagow trials, with at least three months follow-up, to see what the relapse rate has been. \u00a0If it suggests that the results are better than you would expect from doing nothing you could then move to a bigger trial with a statistically valid sample. If such a well-designed study was put together then one would be unwise to reject it out of hand. We shouldn\u2019t discount it at this point in time and I hope that something positive will come out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Scottish Prison Service has now asked the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University to come up with a proposal for a study involving the entire population of one Scottish prison.<\/p>\n \u201cThe prison system is the appropriate location to try this out,\u201d said Professor Neil McKeganey. \u201cAt least 70 per cent of prisoners in Scottish jails are drug dependent; in one women\u2019s prison the figure was recently 100 per cent of inmates. People become addicts in prison, or low-level uses find their use escalates there. It is a real crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n His plan is to take a prison of 700 inmates in Scotland, monitor the drug use of individuals, along with their current treatments, and rates of improvement they bring over, say a six month period. He will then introduce NeuroElectric Therapy to the whole prison population and monitor the outcomes over a similar period.<\/p>\n \u201cPoliticians must now provide the resources necessary for such a trial,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Royal College of Psychiatrists estimate that only a quarter of one per cent of the budget to fight drugs misuse is spent on research. We spend \u00a312m a year on methadone. This study could be done for \u00a3200,000. Not to do it would be a scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n End<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The winds were wild that day. They whipped round the farmhouse and thrashed the lowland conifers this way and that, bending them to near breaking point. It was like some grim metaphor for what had been going on all week inside the building. Lower Johnshill Farm stands up a farm track well back from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[254,251],"class_list":["post-2880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","tag-addiction","tag-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7670,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions\/7670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}