Bankole A. Johnson, a paid pharmaceutical consultant, does in his Aug. 10 column (“Why rehab doesn’t work”) what hundreds of experts have done before him.
He trashes current clinical trends in alcohol and drug treatment and slams Alcoholics Anonymous.
As with other experts, he offers not a single word of evidence that his “new medications that conquer alcoholism” will have any effect.
What will happen is that he will find his pharmaceutical approach to treating alcoholics offers lower remission results than those he deplores in his column.
There continues to be no magic pill for alcoholism, even though these guys, including Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, have been searching for it for nearly a century. Until that pill is discovered, AA, which just turned 75 years old, shall continue to restore life to millions of suffering alcoholics, worldwide, in its own quiet, nonscientific approach.
And we clinicians will continue to seek to improve treatment outcomes until the fine doctor finds his pills and potions.
This is not a fatal illness that is effectively treated by science. And we’ve known this for 50 years.
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