About Alcoholism - Alcoholism Information, Research and Treatment

Tranquilizers and Antidepressant Drugs in the Treatment of Alcoholics

Using over 1,500 alcoholics as guinea pigs, doctors at the State University Alcohol Clinic in Brooklyn, N. Y., recently completed a six-year set of experiments using nine different mood-changing drugs, to find out if alcoholics get better with such drugs--or without them.

Three "clinical" tests and four "double blind" studies were performed. In the latter, neither the patients nor the doctors knew which patients were getting drugs, and which were getting placebos. The drugs tested were meprobamate, hydroxyzine, chlorpromazine, meprobamate-benactyzine, meprobamate-promazine, isocarboxazid, chlordiazepoxide, emylcamate, and amitriptyline. Some are tranquilizers, others are antidepressants.

-- Kissin, Benjamin, and Stanley M. Ch

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