Scientists have been searching for drag addiction anti-dote for years. Drug withdrawal often involves great deal of pains and suffering, both physiological and psychological. Studies show that Cocaine addiction can occur very quickly and be very difficult to break. Addicts will do anything to get cocaine. Cocaine withdrawal symptoms include but are not limited to: agitation, depression. Intense craving for the drug, extreme fatigue, anxiety, angry outbursts, lack of motivation, nausea/vomiting, shaking, irritability and muscle pain. The difficulties of quitting and the fact that ex users show tendency to return to the drug, makes finding a Cocaine addiction cure a holy grail.
Researchers in the faculty of Life Sciences and The Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, may have found an important weapon in the fight for easy cocaine withdrawal.
They used rats to test the effects of DHEA on cocaine withdrawal.
DHEA is known as the "fountain of youth hormone." Its full name is Dehydroepiandrosterone. It is a steroid hormone, a chemical cousin of testosterone and estrogen. It is made from cholesterol by the adrenal glands, which sit atop each kidney. For the first few years of life, the adrenals make very little DHEA. Around age six or seven, they begin churning it out. Production peaks in the mid-20s, when DHEA is the most abundant hormone in circulation. From one's early '30s on, there's a steady decline in DHEA production, so the average 75-year-old has only 20% of the DHEA in circulation that he or she had 50 years earlier. At all ages, men tend to have higher DHEA levels than women. (source- quackwatch) DHEA is sold in the US as an anti-aging food supplement.
The research shows that neurosteroids such as DHEA, play a role in modulation of substance-seeking behavior. DHEA, which can act as a potential antidepressant in both animals and humans, appears to lower distress involved with cocaine withdrawal.
"After being subjected to extinction conditions in the presence of DHEA, rats demonstrated a minimal response to acute exposure to cocaine (10 mg/kg), which indicated a protective effect of DHEA on relapse to cocaine usage."
Since DHEA in its anti-aging form is approved for human use. It may be possible in the not-so–far future to help addicts get off the drug and regain their freedom and quality of life without the suffering involved. It may also provide a vaccine against returning to consumption after rehabilitation.
