Andrew Lawrence: Alcohol and its true cost

No2

I have always been fascinated by the brain. When I was seven or eight years old, I said to my mum I wanted to take a brain to showand-tell. I think that stopped her in her tracks momentarily but then she said, “Righto”. She marched me to the butcher’s shop, bought a sheep’s brain, put it in the fridge overnight and I took it into show-and-tell the next morning. I think my teacher was surprised.

No5

No4

I do drink. I consume alcohol socially and I like to have a glass of wine with dinner. I feel like I’m in control of my alcohol intake and it’s not problematic. If I thought that I was losing control or it was becoming a health problem or a relationship problem, I would seek immediate assistance.

Back in 2006, I demonstrated that the endogenous orexin system was critically involved in relapse to alcohol seeking in rodents. We’re about to run a proof-of-concept clinical study at St Vincent’s Hospital with alcohol dependent in-patients, targeting the orexin system with a drug made by Merck and a placebo in a double-blind trial. Hopefully we can target multiple facets of addiction, including reducing the unpleasant experience of acute withdrawal, help normalise sleep patterns and also reduce cravings and therefore reduce the propensity to relapse. But it’s not a magic bullet. A range of treatments, pharmaceutical and behavioural, will always be required.