Sobriety in a Bottle

"I gave up any serious interest in brain chemistry as a way of understanding addiction sometime in the early 1990s after exploring a string of heavily hyped earlier chemical theories," Alexander says. "I decided that this approach is doomed to failure."

---

Seeing Mike Briggs discuss his life after taking Prometa, it's hard to imagine the calm man in front of you as a raging drunk. But his wife, a slim, fit woman named Jody, says she lost more than 20 pounds during Mike's worst bouts with booze.

Briggs is typical of the patients in Boca. He first realized he had a drinking problem 30 years ago, when he woke up one Sunday with "the shakes." The only thing that could calm his hands was a beer.

He tried everything. He went to inpatient centers and outpatient centers. He tried stopping on his own, and he tried AA. He put together a few stretches of sobriety, but he'd inevitably end up drinking again.

For Briggs, life was a constant arithmetic problem. Based on the intensity of his shaking and urges, he had to calculate how much alcohol would be enough to function but not so much that people noticed he was drunk. He often miscalculated.

Jody knew never to speak of her husband's drinking. At parties, he could keep it to a drink or two, but only because he'd gone to the bar beforehand and pounded four or five. He'd even go to different liquor stores on different days so the employees behind the counter didn't realize how much he drank.

Briggs is what the recovery industry calls a "high-bottom drunk." He hasn't amassed a pile of DUIs or assault charges. He hasn't lost a job or a house because of his drinking. He says he just couldn't deal with feeling sick all the time.

At one point three years ago, Jody took their teenaged son and separated from Mike. They got back together after he put together a year of sobriety. Jody, who now works as director of sales at Canterbury, says that when they started treating patients, she never expected her husband would be one of them. But when he relapsed again in December, it was time for Prometa.

Briggs had his first injection January 11. He purposely scheduled the first day of treatment on a Friday so he wouldn't miss more than a day of work.

And sure enough, after becoming the seventh Prometa patient at Canterbury, he was back at work Monday morning.

After his first injection, he sat on one of the plush couches in the recovery room and gazed out the tall windows, where he could see the ocean in the distance.

"It's hard to explain," he says. "My brain just felt different."

Briggs returned the next two days for the same treatment. Each day, he felt better than the day before. He hasn't had a drink since. But if he did relapse, Jody explains, Canterbury would re-treat him for free. "We don't want people walking around saying this doesn't work."

For Briggs, Prometa ended his insane arithmetic. "All those times I was thinking about how I could drink and how much I had to drink to feel better without going over, I knew it wouldn't work," he says. "But I kept doing the math. I kept trying. That's the insanity of addiction — knowing what will happen but not being able to think rationally about what you're doing.

"But with this," he says, "I can actually think clearly."

Whether it's folded GABA receptors changing shape in his brain or something else, Briggs says he doesn't care.

"I'm a different person than I was before I had the shot," he says. "I can see the difference. "

Jody points to her husband with both hands. She watches him, still amazed at how much he's changed in the months since he began treatment.

"Look at him," she says. "It works."