Drier and drier

Domenic Ciraulo, psychiatry chair and psychiatrist-in-chief at Boston Medical Center,
believes that both alcohol dependence and independence are associated with the brain's frontal lobe -- the region that governs self control.

He aims to prove that medications targeting this area can help alcoholics in their battle with the bottle, especially when combined with short-term therapy. Ciraulo's facility is currently recruiting for a study examining the efficacy of two antiseizure drugs, zonisamide and levetiracetam.

Ciraulo's program and its research are described in the current issue of Bostonia magazine.

If you live in or around Boston and would like to participate in the study, click here.

A melatonin link?

In a decades-old study (1981) of light-deprived hamsters and ethanol, those given daily injections of melatonin consumed less alcohol than those not receiving the injections. Hamsters treated with melatonin also drank less liquid overall. The reason, researchers speculated, was that the pineal gland may influence liquid consumption and thus, indirectly, alcohol consumption.

The yoga cure

Can yoga squelch the urge to drink? Considering its potential for significant physical, mental, and emotional transformation, one would imagine so.

Because there's yoga and there's yoga -- the few little stretches we do to stay limber versus total immersion in its practices.

It's the latter that's emphasized in Yoga Blog – Yogam Sharanam. Here, Swami Muktananda Saraswati offers the yogic solution to alcoholism. It includes, among other things, the purging of mental constipation.

While this post (based on a 1981 talk in Switzerland) might initially baffle the uninitiated, you can piece it all together by clicking around the site.

If you're unfamiliar with yoga and want an easier place to start, here's a good site for beginners.