After years of addiction to opioids, an American decided to take a radical step: He believed that only a brain operation could put an end to his addiction. He is said to have been clean for two years now.
There is a real opioid epidemic in the USA. Approximately 19 million Americans are addicted to drugs, 128 people in the country lose their lives every day due to the abuse of pain medication. According to his own statements, a young man from Dilliner, Pennsylvania, struggled with addiction for 18 years before he decided to take a radical step: He had a brain operation.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical procedure into the brain that is approved for the treatment of certain neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s, tremor, and epilepsy. In the early 1990s, a similar operation was performed on actor Michael J. Fox for Parkinson’s disease. As a help against an addictive disease, however, the procedure is still a novelty.
Deep brain stimulation reconfigures the brain
The American was the first to undergo this operation because of his drug addiction – and only because, according to his statements, he had tried everything to get rid of it. Previously, he tried to get rid of his addiction through therapies, self-help groups and substitution drugs. But he never managed to quit drugs for more than a few months.
The man’s addiction to pain medication began shortly after a shoulder injury sustained while training in high school football. A short time later, he had used a monthly pack of opioids within five days – until he lost his job and switched to the cheaper heroin.
After the doctors at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University inserted and switched on a kind of “brain pacemaker”, his cravings for the intoxication are said to have actually been satisfied. But how is that supposed to work?
Electrodes control desire
Ali Rezai, the operating neurosurgeon, began showing the man pictures of various drugs and documenting the signals his brain had responded with. Two holes were then drilled in the back of the patient’s head and electrodes connected to a type of pacemaker under his collarbone were inserted. This sends signals to his brain.
“We are able to stimulate and block the desire from his brain,” Rezai told Business Insider shortly before the operation. The patient was awake during the procedure.
Clean for almost two years
Today the man is said to have been clean for almost two years. He has thus become a pioneer for an experimental treatment that could be used in the fight against the opioid epidemic. Another device was recently inserted into the patient that records electrical signals in their brain and provides neuroscientists with live data from the pacemaker.
“We are positively surprised by this result ourselves,” Ali Rezai told The Times. “It even exceeds our original expectations.”
