Antabuse

February 7, 2008 10:43 AM

Does anyone here have experience with any of the alcoholism meds such as Antabuse? I'm considering going on it and would like to know more about what people's experience with it was in terms of side effects. Also would be interested to hear about Naltrexone.
posted by josher71 to Health & Fitness (5 answers total)

The one person I knew who tried them never could stay on them long enough to see if there were any side effects. They didn't "help" him stop drinking, because he knew that all he had to do was stop taking the Anabuse, and lie about it when asked. Sorry that's not more helpful.
posted by Melismata at 12:26 PM on February 7, 2008

More interesting than useful, but reddit happened to have a link today about the use of LSD to treat alcoholism.
posted by zazerr at 2:13 PM on February 7, 2008

Yeah, Antabuse just makes you really sick when you drink. It doesn't have any other curative effects. It is probably most helpful with someone who is committed to sobriety, but is concerned about having moments of weakness.
posted by gjc at 7:17 PM on February 7, 2008

I wholeheartedly agree with the above comment, Antabuse and the other anti-drinking meds are only effective if the person is already committed to sobriety. I've tried the three major meds (Antabuse, Campral, and naltrexone) and didn't recieve any benefit from them since I wasn't really committed to sobriety at the time. As for Antabuse, the unpleasent effects of the alcohol-disulfiram reaction were not a strong enough deterrant for me to keep from drinking. I drank several times while taking Antabuse, in spite of my skin turning beet read and feeling like I was on fire, actually I think the unpleasent effects made me just want to drink more in order to numb the pain. To reiterate, before you put too much faith in the anti-alcohol meds, make sure first that your committment and resolve to not drink is there. Good luck!
posted by buzzbash at 8:22 PM on February 7, 2008

Here's a recent article from The Observer about alcohol abuse in which the journalist mentions some personal experience with using Antabuse.
posted by hydatius at 2:37 AM on February 8, 2008