Help Alcoholics From Drinking With Monthly Shots

A monthly shot can help keep holiday drinkers on the black Maria.

David Rosenbloom, a specialist in drug abuse at Boston University School of Public Health, said for people battling alcoholism, holidays pose a strong danger of backsliding.

"Because a few it's the stress of being lonesome, for other people it's the stress of being with folks," he said.

The pressure level can be overmuch for some teetotallers, especially during Christmas and New Years when swarming pressure and chances to drink are especially high.

Many convalescing alcoholics take tablets containing naltrexone, a content that reduces the desire to drink by blocking the receptors in the brain responsible for the high that drinking brings.

“On the vacation season, pressures often beat back alcoholics to stop taking the tablets,“ said Sandra Lapham at the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Now there's afresh slow-release formulation of naltrexone, where the drug is came in into muscle once a month and researchers believe it could be a saving grace for recovering alcoholics who give into holiday pressures and stop taking their pills.

The Journal of drug abuse Treatment published a small study of 28 patients who received full-dose naltrexone shots, compared with another 28 given placebos. For heavy drinkers (five or more drinks a day for men, and four for women) the shots reduced the frequency of drinking days, the number of drinks and the percentage of days classed as heavy drinking sessions.

And researchers say the drug was just as effective during the holidays as it was for the rest of the year.

Rosenbloom said the injections could be hugely significant for public health, especially during the hectic holiday season when 40 percent of road deaths over Christmas and the New Year involve at least one driver impaired by alcohol. He said he would like to see courts offer naltrexone shots to repeat drunk-driving offenders.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the naltrexone injections in 2006. However, naltrexone injections must be given with care, because they can cause abscesses if the drug is deposited into fatty tissue, Lapham warned.