Dr. Andre Waismann joined AM Tampa Bay to discuss that hehas identified the biological roots of opioid dependencyand has treated more than 24,000 people with opioid dependency.

He process he pioneered is called ANR, which stands for (Accelerated Neuro-Regulation).

ANR is an anesthesia-based approach to help people with opioid addictions deal with the adverse effects of withdrawal

He believes several factors are explaining the magnitude of the crisis, including the one here in the Tampa region:

• Care Isn’t In The Hands of Anesthesiologists
• The Wrong Mindset
• Doctors are mistreating patients
• Government Failure
  
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SUBSTANCE ABUSE unquestionably is a major health concern in the U.S. and the world, with annual treatment costs in the billions of dollars. The social impact in relation to crime, family life, and lost productivity is immeasurable. Diseases such as hepatitis C and AIDS have become common in many communities. Heroin, one of many opiate drugs, is the key player in this rapidly growing dilemma. Opiate-dependent babies have become an everyday reality in many cities, and heroin use among eighth-, lOth-, and 12th-graders has significantly increased over the last decade. Based on the most recently published statistics by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 600,000 people in the U.S. are addicted to heroine.

Remedies in the past have included addictive opiate replacements and long-term isolation from society in centers outside general hospitals. Rehabilitation centers were developed to offer opiate dependents an array of alternatives, all of which involved suffering through long and tormenting withdrawal symptoms. Detoxification procedures often require lengthy and costly inpatient hospitalization, with dropout rates of 30 to 50% for inpatient and 70% for outpatient clinics. Despite these statistics, govemmental institutions continue to support centers for treatment of opiate-dependent patients outside general hospitals and outside the realm of mainstream medicine.

Methadone has become the treatment of choice and is widely endorsed by the scientific community as an effective remedy for heroin addiction. In fact, methadone masks the problem and simply replaces one dependency with another. Abstinence achieved by regular detoxification, psychotherapy, and methadone maintenance is not the solution.

Throughout the years, patients’ demands have been in direct opposition to the options for available treatment. Most patients desired freedom from the dependency, and tried abstinence without medical assistance. As a consequence, “cold turkey” became recognized as a valid treatment. When a no-treatment treatment became a workable idea, many experts were willing to apply therapeutic values to vomiting, pain, diarrhea, and other symptoms of withdrawal. Statements such as “no pain, no gain” became part of many physicians’ vocabularies. The scientific community continues to ignore the need to challenge the existing perceptions of opiate dependency and treatment.

Biotechnology has reached achievements in the clinical field of medicine unimaginable for a physician from the 1950s or 1960s. Yet, little has changed on the clinical level for an opiate-dependent patient. It is almost impossible to identify developments and improvements in the level of care, even in the most prestigious centers in the world, despite the incredible budgets for research invested in this subject. Opiate dependency seems to be perceived as an incurable condition. The scientific community has failed to challenge this concept, as well as the stereotypical view that dependent individuals have addictive or weak personalities.

For more than 30 years, opioid receptor management, through the use of agonists and antagonists, has become a standard technique used by anesthesiologists and other medical practitioners. However, all of the knowledge and techniques developed during those years in the medical field were not applied to the treatment of opiate dependency. The reason? Opiate dependency was not initially classified as a medical illness, but, rather, as a psychosocial condition. The scientific community has failed to challenge this classification.

Treatment today sees most opiate-dependent people being treated by ex-opiate-dependent individuals, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. The treatment options include rehabilitation and/or detoxification centers, methadone clinics, hotel rooms, religious entities, and a few other alternatives. Despite the range of treatments available, patients are not afforded the common option offered to any other patient suffering from an illness – to go to a hospital and have the illness assessed in a professional environment with respect and dignity.

Opiate dependency is a central nervous system disorder. The primary stage of the illness is withdrawal, and opiate craving is one of the secondary by-products. Therefore, detoxification procedures combined with any other counseling therapy caunot effectively access the Toot of the illness. Instead, neuroregulation should be the method of treatment, and this withdrawal management should be combined with craving relief. Without immediate and effective treatment, secondary social effects result. Social dysfunction and the need for social rehabilitation are often linked to the length of time and the severity of the illness endured by the dependent individual

A physician’s duty is to provide the patient at the onset of illness with an effective, safe, and humane treatment to reverse the condition.. I find that psychosocial side effects can be prevented at the first signs of the illness, when the patient has realized that he or she is hooked and needs to cope with the situation, going to a Methadone clinic or enduring a long and painful stay at a detoxification center is often not considered. The patient sees cold turkey as the only option. Most patients will try and try again, with no success. Throughot the Process, the patient may resort to lying, hiding, and hunting for self-healing. It becomes an everyday reality.

Each time a patient tries to overcome heroine dependency and fails, he or she becomes discouraged, often to the extent that dependency is more appealing than another attempt. This sequence of events cause the psychosocial side effects. Based on my professional experience, the psychosocial aspects of opiate dependency are not the cause of the illness, but, rather, the secondary effects of the untreated heroine dependency.

As with so many aspects of life, rules and regulations should follow the advancement of technology. The legal systems should adapt to a new paradigm where opiate craving is recognized as a biological condition. On this basis, punishment or imprisonment ate not adequate methods to prevent relapse. Instead. effective medical assessment and treatment should be utilized to achieve better outcomes.

If one were to measure, on a scale, the level of opiate cravings a patient has one month prior to the first withdrawal syndrome, it would be found to be very low. Immediately after the first withdrawal, the craving scale would rise to higher levels. Even if the patient were successfully to overcome the withdrawal, the cravings would be higher than they were prior to dependency. Additionally, the craving scale rises in direct proportion to the length of time of the dependency. In other words, the longer the patient remains dependent on heroine, the higher the craving scale would be, even after a successful withdrawal. For years, as with most aspects of opiate dependency, craving has been linked to the many psychosocial aspects associated with heroine dependency, with very few attempts to identify the neurological roots on the opioid receptor level.

In advanced medicine, doctors should recognize that any bodily dysfunction generates physical and psychological distress. On the clinical level, they cannot disregard either and, if possible, should intervene on both levels at once, taking into consideration the effects of one on the other. With the tools available today, it is necessary to take the focus off the methods that aren’t working and invest in altematives that do.

In the last decade, modern biotechnology has allowed physicians increasingly to understand the process of receptors within the brain that work to regulate opiates. Recognizing this opportunity, I developed a process called neuroregulation, which focuses on treating opiate dependency at the receptor level. This approach blocks the opiate receptors in the brain to precipitate the withdrawal syndrome, while, at the same time, controlling it. This is achieved through the use of medications, including anesthetic agents that allow opiate withdrawal to occur throughout the procedure while the patient is unconscious. Patients undergo a comprehensive psychological and medical examination prior to the commencement of the treatment conducted in a hospital intensive care unit. A patient can expect to be hospitalized for 24 to 36 hours, including the four-hour period allotted for the sedation process. Upon discharge, patients are prescribed a regimen of Naltrexone, a nonaddictive and non-mood-altering medication that ensures the patient will abstain from craving heroine.

Most patients will take a regular dose of Naltrexone for a year following the procedure. Naltrexone is FDA-approved, as are all the medications used in the procedure, and has been utilized for approximately 30 years in the medical field. No serious side effects have been associated with it. If properly prescribed, Naltrexone will effectively prevent and have a reversal effect on craving. The main reason for the maintenance dose is to keep the patient’s opiate receptors in the brain blocked against the impact of opiates in order to eliminate the cravings or the psychological need for them. Thereafter, the patient is able to resume a healthy and productive life.

In addition, this approach has opened the doors of pain-management treatment to patients who endure pain despite increased medication dosages. With increased dosages, patients can develop opiate dependency, leading to drug-tolerance levels so high no pain relief can be achieved. Remove the dependency, and patients can return to a more appropriate and effective, opiate-free, pain-management treatment program. Throughout the years, such treatments have effectively reversed opiate dependency in patients suffering from chronic pain caused by car accidents, war injuries, or illness and have assisted in improving their quality of life.

Patients with diabetes, chronic heart conditions, and AIDS, among other illnesses, are now able to receive safe treatment. Until recently, such individuals often were left to live with their dependency, due to the high risk involved in treating patients with these conditions or their inability to endure the pain associated with withdrawal symptoms. Neuroregulation offers these patients a safe and humane alternative to their suffering and a treatment enabling them to get beyond addiction.

In 1997, I reversed opiate dependency in a six-year-old child who was hooked on morphine for five years following surgery and a pain-management program that used opiates. It is time to shift the treatment of “heroin babies” and replace the long, painful, and sometimes damaging current approaches with a timely, humane, and effective technique.

Neuroregulation reduces the risks of anesthesia-related complications and has proven to ensure positive outcomes. Future practices must focus on giving patients precise and scientific information regarding opiate dependency. The goal is to offer an effective way of overcoming withdrawal and managing cravings with medicinal tools. The idea is to free patients from misguided theories and provide them with the knowledge and treatment they deserve.

The neuroregulation approach has changed the direction of opiate dependency treatment and brings about a new understanding of what was once perceived as addiction and is now recognized as neuroadaptation. The breakthroughs in changing the direction of treating opiate dependency assist in continually elevating the standard of care and research work necessary in meeting these ideologies in healing. Opiate addiction is a disorder of the central nervous system that can be reversed with appropriate medical treatment.

The challenge remains to release heroine-dependent patients from all the misguided theories they were made to believe for so long, providing them with the knowledge and treatment they deserve and the freedom of choice they are entitled to. Regardless of patients’ decisions and their overall outcome, the physician’s role is not to confront and judge them, but to treat them with all of the knowledge and technology available to assess their needs. This is part of a very old oath undertaken by the scientific community that has unfortunately been forgotten by many.

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Published: July 23, 2019

The opioid dependency epidemic is not a plague or virus from outer space. Rather, the crisis is a result of relying on theories that are built on ignorance and moral prejudice. For too long, this approach has left patients defined by their behavior, when their actions were dictated by a basic untreated medical condition.

And the biological roots of this dependency were totally disregarded, with all efforts and resources wrongly focused on the secondary effects of the untreated primary illness.

New findings  from the Commonwealth Fund show that deaths by drug overdose hit an all-time high in 2017, thanks to the rapid growth in opioid deaths. Still, there is hope. Modern biotechnology allows us to comprehend the chemical and morphological changes that serve as the source of the dependency itself. Consequently, we can now recognize the biological roots of the illness and develop effective therapeutic ways to reverse it.

Opioid dependency is a curable central nervous system disorder. It is not a chronic illness; it only became chronic due to the lack of useful remedies. Opioid-dependent patients can be cured and stabilized.

Policymakers should allow opioid-dependent patients to enjoy the benefits of modern medicine. If we fail to do so, we are simply feeding the existing, ineffective structure that has led us to our current chaotic situation.

Modern science indicates that opioid dependency is a direct consequence of the distortion of the natural endorphin receptor levels in our brains, triggered by heavy opioid abuse. We must address the fundamental neurophysiological derangement and provide addicts with sustaining relief. The goal should be to bring normal endorphin receptors back to equilibrium.

Today, we can eliminate the length of time and suffering associated with traditional treatment programs by transferring treatment back to general hospital care. We must correct the misjudgments of the past and welcome our patients back into the true halls of modern medicine. This will allow withdrawal to be managed in a critical care setting, where patients will be treated in a safe and humane way. Most importantly, post-detox cravings will no longer affect the recovery period.

We must usher the treatment of opioid addiction into a new era. This crisis can be resigned to the past, and we can move on to the new challenges ahead.

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WRITTEN ON: SEP 26 2019

“I am not a genius – just a doctor who is tired of seeing heroin addicts being tossed onto the sideline or fed methadone to keep them under control,” says Dr. Waismann, a doctor pushing for the treatment of drug addiction to be brought into mainstream medicine.

During a visit to Cyprus last week, Waismann, who is the chairman of Megama, Institute for Research of Opiate Dependency in Israel, spoke to the Weekly Review about his radical new method of making heroin addicts “clean” – work that has established his reputation in countries as far afield as Indonesia and Costa-Rica.

Born in Brazil, Waismann trained in surgery and ISU medicine – expertise he has taken into his work treating addiction. His method focuses on treating opiate dependency at the receptor level by blocking opiate receptors in the brain to precipitate withdrawal symptoms, while at the same time controlling those symptoms. The technique, which is carried out while patients are unconscious, takes addicts through the withdrawal process in a short time-span, surrounded by medical staff to manage the symptoms.

Waismann explains that heroin addiction is a medical condition, “a central nervous system disorder that is reversible. These people are not mad nor are there people with addictive personalities. They are trapped by body and mind that constantly craves opiates, and can be healed without methadone, without psychological counseling and without being locked away in rehabilitation centers.” He adds that the treatment has a good future if it is introduced at a level where addicts get the same level of care as any other patient.

But Waismann emphasizes that he is not looking for more patients to treat – he simply wants to ensure that a technique that he believes to be far more widely employed. “I do not want you to send me your addicts. Send me your doctors instead, so that I can teach them the treatment. Then they can return to Cyprus and help the addicts here responsibly”

Waismann says it also imperative that politicians put the treatment of addiction where it belong – in the hands of medical doctors – and takes steps to regulate procedure of treating drug addiction here.

It was during his military service in the Israeli army in the 1985 that Waismann got an early taste of just how pervasive drug addiction is, when he saw that drugs administered to wounded soldiers, even war heroes, gave rise to narcotic addiction. Later, working in neo-natal clinics, he bore witness to the newborn babies of heroin users suffering severe addiction problems. At the time, the only treatment, a long and painful process that weans the patient off heroin and onto methadone. Although bearable and sometimes successful in adults, in babies the treatment can cause brain damage. And, as Waismann points out, methadone is equally difficult and painful.

Waismann became increasingly determined to find the common denominator between babies born addicted to a substance, the addict on the street and war heroes. He concluded that the link was that they all suffered from a physical illness that needed a medical approach, rather than being psychiatric cases.

Psychiatrists and psychologists have had limited success in treating addictions, he says, as the psychological aspects of the secondary side effects of the untreated primary condition.

Waismann’s method, which has been successfully implemented since the mid-1995, relies on the skills of anaesthetists and ICU doctors to reverse the illness of addiction. Under the revolutionary treatment, an antinarcotic drug or narcotic antagonist called Naltrexone is administrated to the patient in a four-hour process, during which the patient is under anaesthetic, suppressing the unbearable pain that would otherwise accompany the treatment. Naltrexon tablets are then taken for the following 10 months, by the end of which the body’s receptors will have changed and shrunk, thus reversing permanently the effects of narcotic craving.

Waismann describes addiction or opiate dependency as neuron adaptation.The continuous intake of external narcotics, he explains, damages the very basic and delicate natural balance of narcotic-like substances produced by the human brain – substances that regulate our sense of pain, fluid levels, sleeping patterns, blood pressure and other important functions. External narcotics lead to a new regulation. Their abrupt interruption causes sever distress to the body, including vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach and bone pain, sweating and sleeplessness which can last for 10 days. This sustained pain and discomfort is why most addicts fail to make it to the end of the detox process, which requires that the heroin stored in the bone and fat tissue is used up. When the stored up heroin is exhausted, the body starts the process of neuro-regulation. Waismann’s treatment blocks the opioid receptors in the brain to which the active components to heroin – as well as naturally-produced endorphins – bind, so that regardless of how much heroin there is in the body, it can no longer reach the brain. The patient therefore becomes immediately “clean”, sleeping through an extremely powerful process of withdrawal. Waismann refers to his technique as ANR, or accelerated neuro-regulation, which reverses both physical and psychological dependency. To him, addiction, or opiate dependency, is neuro-adaptation. Whenever a new element is introduced into the body’s biological cycle the brain adapts to it. If the element is taken away, the body will suffer. “Methadone replaces one dependency with another. It is a medication for society not for the patient,” he underlines.

Initially, Waismann treated all patients seeking the treatment himself. But today he says he is more interested in teaching and training at academic and governmental institutions and foundations worldwide, giving freely of his knowledge and experience.

“In the last 50 years, nothing has changed with regard to treating opiate dependency, because it was taken out of mainstream medicine,” he says. Waismann concludes that today, his name is mentioned in any discussion of ANR treatment. But his greatest wish, he says, is for the treatment to become so widely available that he will be just another doctor. At that stage, he says, he will feel he has finally succeeded.

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Aired: March 3rd, 2009

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Published: February 2013

ENTREVISTA ANDRÉ WAISMANN

Morando em Israel desde 1982, o médico carioca André Waismann, de 54 anos, desenvolveu um tratamento de desintoxicação rápida, à base de naltrexona, que promete curar o vício em opiáceos em 36 horas e suprimir ânsias.

Por que a desintoxicação de opiáceos é tão difícil?

Por muitos anos o vício em drogas foi atribuído a questões psicossociais, mas a ânsia pela droga está no cérebro. O corpo humano produz endorfina, que regula uma série de funções no corpo e faz com que a gente se sinta bem. Produzimos microgramas por dia e é o suficiente. Mas, quando um médico prescreve miligramas de morfina para um doente com dor ou quando alguém se vicia em gramas de heroína diárias, acontece um processo de supressão da produção natural pelo organismo e a dependência é criada, a pessoa fica dependendo de opiáceos (substâncias derivadas do ópio, como heroína, metadona e analgésicos à base de codeína, morfina e tebaína) externos.

E não adianta ter força de vontade para parar?

Se uma pessoa tiver uma força de vontade extrema, poderá vencer a abstinência. Mas, no tratamento de heroína, por exemplo, a crise pode durar duas semanas. No caso da metadona, uma substância sintética, dura quase um mês. Muita gente nem busca ajuda porque o tratamento é difícil, doloroso, há vômitos, diarreia. Muitos dos que tentam se desintoxicar não conseguem passar pela crise abstinência. Ou, quando passam, acabam voltando ao antigo vício. l Por quê? Nosso cérebro tem receptores específicos de opiáceos de acordo com a produção de endorfina. Quando a pessoa está produzindo, a quantidade é uma. Mas, se passa a usar miligramas ou até gramas de opiáceos, o cérebro produz novos receptores, que não somem nunca mais, mesmo depois de uma desintoxicação do organismo.

Qual é a diferença do tratamento que o senhor desenvolveu?

Meu tratamento é baseado na raiz médica da dependência, não na psicológica. O objetivo é restabelecer a produção de endorfina a bons níveis em menos de dois dias e não em duas semanas. Além disso, bloqueio os receptores extras que foram criados no cérebro com os meses ou anos de dependência. Assim, eu restabeleço uma relação normal entre receptores e endorfina e consigo mudar o status psicológico do doente. É efetivo, humano, rápido e acessível.

Quanto tempo o paciente tem que ficar no hospital?

A hospitalização dura 36 horas. Durante este período o paciente fica sob anestesia geral por cerca de quatro horas. É neste momento que eu ministro a naltrexona, que antagoniza os opiáceos, limpa o corpo e bloqueia os receptores que não são mais necessários. O paciente não sente a crise de abstinência. Quando acorda, já está limpo.

Não é muito invasivo e drástico?

Já passei por diversas ondas de ataques, em geral assistentes sociais, psicólogos e psiquiatras. A base do trabalho deles não é a medicina, então eles não sabem exatamente o que estão criticando. No início, enfrentei discussões acaloradas em vários lugares do mundo. Mas hoje chefio um departamento importante de um hospital público de Israel (o Centro de ANR do Hospital Barzilai, em Ashkelon, no Sul do país, que já tratou mais de 18 mil viciados do mundo todo).

Qual o percentual de sucesso do tratamento?

Todos os doentes internados recebem alta sem a dependência em opiáceos. Ficam limpos e sem ânsia. Um ou dois anos depois, entre 75% e 80% continuam sem nenhuma dependência de opiáceos. É um percentual alto.

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WRITTEN ON: OCT 03 2008

Dr Andre Waismann offers a controversial solution for drug addicts.

Dr Andre Waismann is rewriting the rulebook for rehab, with incredible success. So why is the medical establishment ignoring his work? 

Dr Andre Waismann looks out of the window towards the Gaza Strip. Speaking in a medical centre in the Israeli town of Ashkelon, a few miles north of the heavily fortified border and constantly under threat from Kassam rocket attack, he explains his vision. “My goal,” he says, “is that any drug addict in the world will one day be able to turn up at their local general hospital and say, ‘good evening, I am hooked on opiates’. They will then lie down on a treatment table and be cured quickly before going home healthy. It will be as simple as taking a trip to the dentist.”

Waismann’s clinic, based in Barzilai Medical Centre in the south of Israel, offers a controversial solution for drug addicts dependent on opiates such as heroin and morphine, as well as people hooked on painkillers containing the opiate codeine, such as Vicodin. Waismann and his team “clean” them of their addiction. The vomiting, nausea, stomach cramps and fever associated with opiate withdrawal are bypassed and the patient, who is sedated during the process, awakes with no cravings, having gone through detoxification. For the next 10 months to a year they take regular pills to counteract the effects of any heroin or opiate they may take and, according to Waismann, become fully functioning members of society again. He says he has successfully treated 11,000 patients over 14 years, and refers to his technique as ANR, or accelerated neuro-regulation. He says it reverses both the physical and the psychological dependency on the drug.

His goal, to have his techniques taken up globally, is driven by a singular philosophy that has made him unpopular with many involved in conventional drug misuse treatment programmes. He believes addiction is a medical problem, not a psychological one and that, on the whole, humans have an innate desire to be healthy, even those who inject heroin.

Unconventional

He argues that psychological problems arise because of addiction, so if you can beat the addiction, it is easier to overcome the mental health problems associated with it. Conventional wisdom dictates the opposite, that psychological problems are primarily a catalyst for drug misuse, and that you must treat these in tandem with the dependency, often, in the case of methadone, simply switching the addiction from one substance to another.

Waismann believes his methods offer the most humane form of treatment for all opiate addicts and he accuses drug treatment policymakers who favour counselling-based treatment and methadone substitution, of backward thinking.

He states: “It doesn’t matter whether it is a heroin addict who has been using for 20 years or a businessman who started taking codeine for a back problem and got hooked, they develop the same medical illness, which is dependency. You can try the drug once or twice, maybe three or four times, and initially you can chose to use or not to use, but at some point you develop dependency and from that point on if you do not use you will feel terribly ill. As a consequence, users develop severe psychological problems.

“Convention says addicts have psychological problems to begin with and because of those they become drug addicts. It is not the case. Dependency is a central nervous system disorder that is reversible. Addicts are not mad nor are they people with addictive personalities. They are trapped by a body and mind that constantly craves opiates, and can be healed without methadone, without psychological counselling and without being locked away in rehabilitation centres.

“I do not claim to be a genius — I am just a doctor who is tired of seeing addicts being tossed onto the sidelines or fed methadone to keep them under control.”

Born in Brazil, Waismann trained as an anaesthesiologist. But it was in 1985, during his military service in the Israeli army, that he realised the pervasive nature of drug addiction, after witnessing how drugs administered to wounded soldiers could turn into narcotic addiction.

“In a war zone, when someone is badly injured, you cannot do much, so you give them strong

painkillers,” he says. “They become dependent. They go home and they develop psychiatric problems, are given psychiatric drugs and then they become zombies, there are thousands of ex-servicemen in situations like that.”

Opiates create their alluring effects by hooking on to specific areas on brain cells called opiate receptors. This process produces an effect like pleasure, or reward, and pain relief. Waismann explains: “Our bodies produce natural opiates — endorphins. But when you start using heroin, your endorphin levels go down because your brain doesn’t need to produce it any more. The system collapses. Your dependency on heroin increases until the day you no longer produce endorphins and you become totally dependent on heroin. The more you put in your brain, the more receptors your brain produces and the more receptors you have, the more heroin you need. Eventually you reach the point where the amount of heroin that you need to feel high is the amount that kills you.”

At his ANR clinic, Waismann and his team administer drugs commonly used by anaesthetists to clear the patient’s receptors of opiates and then block them with other drugs that render them impervious to opiates. Each patient is screened to ascertain their level of dependency and is then sedated. The drugs are administered and constantly monitored. The patient is blissfully unaware of the withdrawal process, symptoms that are usually so uncomfortable for addicts. After the treatment, they continue taking a regular dose of the “blocking” medication Naltrexone for up to year, ensuring that any subsequent opiate use will have no effect.

“The procedure takes less than 36 hours and afterwards the patient is no longer dependent and does not have cravings,” says Waismann. “This is what modern medicine can achieve.”

The anecdotal evidence and glowing reports of the treatment’s effects are compelling. But if Waismann’s method, and other similar rapid detoxification programmes are the wonder cures they claim to be, then why are they not being offered routinely to all opiate addicts?

Crusade

Israel has been at the forefront of rapid detox under anaesthesia, and, since he first developed the treatment, Waismann has travelled the globe to raise awareness. His crusade started in Australia 12 years ago when a magazine, The Australian Women’s Weekly, flew a 25-year-old heroin addict, Joanne Frare, and her brother, Peter, to be cured at Waismann’s clinic in Tel Aviv. There was so much interest in the story that Waismann agreed to fly to Australia to share his groundbreaking medical procedure with public health authorities there. When he arrived, the magazine reported: “He had just discharged four more Australians from his clinic and since Joanne Frare’s treatment, more than 25 other Australians have followed suit. All are healthy, most are home, and to a man — and woman — they are no longer addicted to the curse that is heroin.” In Lismore, Frare’s home town, more than 300 people, including addicts, families of users, doctors, politicians and business leaders, crammed in to the local workers’ club to hear Waismann.

Since then he has visited India, Cyprus, Indonesia, Brussels, Italy, Croatia and Kazakhstan and his methods have been adopted in several clinics across the world. He says his crusade is moral, not financial. His rallying cry in the countries he visits is: “Don’t send me your patients, they are already coming. Send me your doctors and I will teach them.”

And, amazingly, he refuses to cash in on his impressive results. “I will never open a private clinic anywhere,” he says, “I work in a government hospital, I will teach my technique anywhere in the world for free. People from developed Western countries fly to me in the Middle East, [where they are ] under threat of rocket attack, to have proper medical care. It sounds strange, but that is the situation. Elsewhere, millions has been spent on research into drug addiction over the years but nothing has changed in the level of care for patients. Medicine however, has changed. So how come, with the biotechnology we have now that allows us to know what is happening in the brain and how dependency works, we cannot help those patients to have better more humane treatment?”

Yet, despite repeated efforts to expound his philosophy, his main claim to fame so far is as the man who nearly treated Amy Winehouse. Waismann made headlines in May when it was reported he had been approached by the singer’s family (though Winehouse’s management denied this).

Waismann is typically discreet. “I do not comment on specifics, but was in touch with the family of a particular celebrity. I was told, ‘We are doing fine, we are controlling it, we don’t need your help.’ If they are trying to control this person’s dependency with methadone or any other heroin substitute they are not helping, they are prolonging the illness. I have treated many famous people and many politicians and businessmen. For every one of them you have hundreds of other people who are not famous.

“The media concentrates on the celebrities, but there are many people dying because they are not being given proper treatment.”

Adam Catalove is a 31-year-old morphine addict. He was prescribed the painkiller at the age of 20 after radical surgery to repair his collapsed lungs resulted in nerve damage that left him in excruciating pain. If Catalove was in a car that drove over a stone, waves of pain would rip through his body. He became dependent on his medication, and after eight years did not know whether he needed the morphine to control the pain or whether he needed the morphine just because he needed the morphine.

He became a zombie, sitting in a chair in his parent’s home watching his life slip away through the glazed eyes of an addict. Unlike Winehouse, Catalove did not have the luxury of choice when he first took the narcotic he became dependent on, but he became an addict just the same. His father, Simon Catalove, a 69-year-old businessman who emigrated to Israel before Adam was born, cared for his son.

Simon Catalove says, “Adam ended up on 165mg of morphine a day. He hadn’t slept in a bed for eight years, it was too painful for him. Instead, he spent his days in a reclining armchair. Eventually he was partly paralysed and in a wheelchair. Three years ago we started reducing his medication and got him moving again on walking sticks but he still needed 100mg of morphine a day and he was dependent. If he went a day without his dose he would start withdrawal symptoms. After all these years you can’t suddenly give that up.”

Detoxification

If Adam Catalove hadn’t been living in Israel, the next step would have possibly been a detoxification programme, maybe as an in-patient, or with methadone. Instead, earlier this month, his father took him to Waismann’s clinic.

“If someone told me two weeks ago that there was a treatment that would render him morphine-free in less than two days I wouldn’t have believed them,” says Simon Catalove now.

“Since the treatment his eyes have changed. He is a different guy. The main difference is his attitude. He is positive about life again. He’s even started driving.”

Such life-affirming plaudits are impressive, but they hold little credence with drug policymakers in Europe where accelerated opiate detoxification programmes like Waismann’s are often treated with disdain. Waismann argues this is because “the subject of drug-dependency treatment is not in the hands of proper doctor, it is decided by psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers”. Medical research counters that the process is at best highly selective in the people it works for and, at worst, dangerous.

Independent charity Drugscope acknowledges that there are some benefits to the method, but warns that a cautious, measured approach is needed. Spokesman Harry Shapiro says: “The principle of treatments like the Waismann technique is that they are a way of getting through the very unpleasant withdrawal symptoms without being conscious of what is going on. But to tout this as a cure for heroin addiction is extremely misleading because coming off heroin is a long process. Getting the drug out of your body is the easy bit; the difficult bit is staying off it.”

The charity advocates a wide range of treatment options, but warns that heroin addicts who undergo rapid detox need their Naltrexone use monitored closely as they are at high risk of overdose if they misuse subsequently because they lose their tolerance to heroin. Shapiro continues: “These treatments get people through the obstacle of withdrawal, but have not got much claim beyond that. After that, it is down to the user and the support network they have around them, so in that sense it is no different from any other method. Different methods work for different people, Narcotics Anonymous works for certain people, as does methadone. You can’t treat all people with drug problems as one group. Everyone is different.”

And therein lies the crux of Waismann’s struggle — there is no consensus to his belief that dependency is an illness and can be removed from a patient in the same way an infected appendix. He remains unperturbed but he knows he has a battle on his hands.

“I fought in Israel for over 10 years to be allowed to use my techniques in a government hospital,” he said. “People couldn’t believe someone could quit 20 years of heroin addiction in 36 hours without the withdrawal pains and cravings. It sounds too good to be true, but it is not. It is a huge historical change and it will take time, all I am asking is to get the debate started.”

The post Meet the man who can cure addiction ‘overnight’ appeared first on Clínica ANR Brasil - Dr. Hélio Henrique Vilaça.

WRITTEN ON: SEP 25 2019

What is drug addiction associated with in our minds? Who do we see as a victim – the addict or the society? Most of us have never experienced the tragedy of addiction personally, but we know about its social consequences. We see only the exterior, it is hard for us to understand what is behind it. It seems to us that the people addicted to drugs have a distorted state of mind that causes actions that violate the rules of the society, and we figure that something must be wrong with the person’s character. This conclusion seems very logical and we act on it. But is it true? It is known that the addicted person is ready to do anything to obtain the necessary dose of the drug.

From the outside, the dependency seems to have psychological cause – the person likes “getting high” and simply wants to do it more and more. What most people don’t see, and therefore don’t understand, is that the addict’s brain has undergone certain changes and physically requires the drug. It is the nature of drugs to lead the body into believing that they are vital to it, and accordingly the body begins to demand the substance on a constant basis.

The problem with this is that the substance is extremely dangerous to the body and if is continuously being taken the result can be tragic. It seems that such a condition would cause interest in the medical field, but surprisingly few doctors have researched the physical origins of addiction and abide by the methods of detoxification that have been around for decades. This approach, long and extremely painful for the patient, has proved to be ineffective, but is still being widely practiced. Could it be because we are more comfortable when we can lock the “dangerous” person out of our society? That way we don’t have to deal with the addict and can blame them and not the treatment if they return to drugs.

There are people, however, that dare to look deeper that the outward sings of addiction, but when they speak up, all of a sudden we feel uncomfortable. People are not comfortable with change, and beginning to see addiction as a physical problem that needs direct medical attention requires a complete transformation of our way of thinking.

Why don’t we try to put ourselves in the addict’s place. Wouldn’t it make us hope for a miracle that deceives our body? If we understand the real cause of drug addiction, it will seem that such a process can only be dreamt of. However, it exists in the modern medical field, although not many people know about it.

Dr. Andre Waismann, an intensive care physician, is one of those people that know about the reversal process. Furthermore, he has developed one himself, after years of witnessing the tragedy of addiction. Claming that drug dependency is a disorder of the central nervous system, he has developed a unique treatment that addresses the actual root of the illness. The so-called Waismann method employs an antinarcotic drug in conjunction with anesthesia and a follow-up treatment with medication that leads to a complete reversal of the addiction process.

The initial treatment is only four hours long and the following hospitalization takes only a day or two. The patient is spared the suffering and the pain and the treatment is truly effective, allowing full recovery from addiction. Having developed this rapid detoxfication approach, Dr. Waismann, who has treated thousands of patients, says that his current challenge is to ” release patients from all the misguided theories they were made to believe so long, and to provide them with the knowledge and treatment they deserve, and the freedom of choice where they can make good or bad decisions and take full responsibility of the outcome.” He also understands that he alone cannot cure everyone in the world. For this reason, he has started sharing his findings with other doctors around the world.

In May of this year Dr. Waismann came to Kazahstan, where he has been invited by the Sezon magazine that was organizing a charitable action at the time. In Almaty he has treated five teenagers addicted to heroin. A week has passed since the initial treatment, and the patients have not experienced any craving for the drug.

The post Long Awaited Victory Over Heroin Addiction appeared first on Clínica ANR Brasil - Dr. Hélio Henrique Vilaça.

WRITTEN ON: SEP 25 2019

A heartbreaking plea on the internet led an international team of doctors, including one from Australia, to rescue a child from hell.

When Israeli doctor Andre Waismann turned on his computer and saw a desperate plea for help from a Costa Rican doctor, little did he know that history was in the making. With the help of an Australian doctor, Dr Waismann cured six-and-a-half-year-old Endriss Guzman of morphine addiction, saving him from almost certain death.

Now Australian doctors are introducing the miracle treatment – rapid detoxification – here in the hope that it will end the suffering of thousands of heroin addicts.

Endriss was a patient of Dr Julia Matamoros at her tiny hospital just two hours north of San Jose. For the past five years of his life, the youngster had been a junkie, his mother forced to inject her only son four times a day to stave off relentless cravings and withdrawal.

As a toddler, he was given up for dead following a brain tumour operation. Given repeated and massive doses of morphine and left to die, he confounded doctors by beating the cancer. But he became a slave to the same opiates that destroy the lives of heroin addicts.

After years of injections, Endriss was hospitalised two months ago after his mother, Mercedes, 30, could no longer find viable veins in which to inject the prescribed six-hourly shots of morphine.

“Endriss was in terrible condition”, Dr Matamoros told Woman’s Day. “He weighed just 13 kilos – about half of what he should have. The original brain operation and the years of constant drug use had exacted a devastating toll.

“Endriss couldn’t talk. He couldn’t walk. His limbs were wasted and contorted. He hadn’t tasted food since he was operated on as a 14-month-old baby. Instead, he was fed by a nasal-gastric tube.

“We slowly attempted to wean him off the morphine, but he had been given so much initially that his addiction was just overwhelming and beyond us to reverse.

“It was not the brain surgeons’ fault. They truly believed he would die despite the tumour’s removal, so addicting him to morphine to stop the pain was of little consequence as he would die anyway.”

But Endriss survived.

“And we were left with the result,” says Dr Matamoros. “A boy who spent most of his time lying semi-conscious in his bed, racked with the pain associated with opiate withdrawal. A mother who had no choice but to keep injecting her son with the very drug that was stupefying and wasting him.”

Several weeks ago, Dr Matamoros sent out a “message in a bottle” via the Internet, pleading for someone to help save Endriss’s life. She contacted doctors around the world working in the drug treatment field, desperately seeking advice;

“The only one to answer was Dr Andre Waismann,” she says. “He not only offered advice, but asked me to send him the boy’s case history. He then rang back and offered to come here, assemble a medical team who could assist and learn from him, and to operate on Endriss free of charge.

“I cried a lot that day. Endriss finally had a chance. I knew little about Dr Waisman and his work, but I knew we had to take a chance.”

In fact, Endriss would become the first child addict in the world to be cured by Israeli doctor Andre Waismann’s rapid detoxification treatment. Often controversial, his treatment centres on the patient being detoxified under light anaesthesia while the so-called opiate antagonist drug, naltrexone, is administered.

The treatment effectively blocks the cravings which normally undermine traditional detox procedures, causing up to 95 percent of addicts to go back on drugs.

Brazilian-born Waismann, 39, plays down the significance of the procedure he carried out in Costa Rica with the help of Sydney doctor Yugan Mudaliar.

“This was by far the most complex and delicate case I have ever undertaken,” he said after the successful five-hour procedure in the San Carlos Public Hospital.

“But there is no magic involved. I am telling anyone willing to listen or prepared to take the time to understand – heroin addiction, morphine addiction, methadone addiction are all identical central nervous system disorders that are reversible. Totally! Almost instantly!

“Endriss will never use again. He is cured. Anyone can be cured.

“If you want proof, look into his eyes and into his mother’s – the woman who has had to hit him up four times a day for five years to stave off his screams for the drug.

“Now, because of this case, I can confidently proceed to where the greatest challenge awaits – treating heroin-addicted babies with something other than the methadone doctors shoot into them. I know it can be done – Endriss has proved that.”

Endriss Guzman’s story is all the more incredible because of the bizarre and unlikely circumstances that led an Israeli, an Australian and a small dedicated team of Costa Rican doctors to attempt such a difficult procedure. Had it failed, they would have been instantly condemned in the eyes of, the medical world and, more particularly, provided vital ammunition to Dr Waismann’s outspoken detractors.

Dr Mudaliar, the head of intensive care at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital, was bowled over by the operation he assisted in and by what he saw on previous visits to the Tel Aviv clinic.

“We have all witnessed a wonderful event that must now be reported through the medical journals of the world,” he says. “There is no doubt in my mind this boy is cured – and it is not a word I use lightly.”

Dr Mudaliar was one of four Sydney doctors who journeyed to Tel Aviv several months ago to investigate the Israeli doctor’s treatment. The team observed 14 Australian heroin and methadone addicts undergo Dr Waismann’s accelerated opiate detoxification treatment in Tel Aviv’s Megama Centre.

“All went to sleep as addicts and woke up the next morning no longer addicted,” said Dr Mudaliar. “We know this because we meticulously and scientifically followed the patients through every step. We are so convinced that we will clinically trial this treatment on Australian addicts within a matter of months.”

For Dr Matamoros, a palliative care and pain management expert attached to the San Carlos Hospital, Endriss’s treatment and cure was a revelation.

“We saw the future of medicine. And we surely saw the beginning of the end of incurable opiate addiction.”

But the greatest relief and joy was felt by Endriss’s parents and his two sisters. They visited the youngster the morning after his treatment, and shed many tears, but for the first time in five long years, they were tears of joy. “We have him back,” dad Lidier says. “Our baby boy is back.” No-one knows if Endriss will ever walk or talk again, due to the brain damage caused by the tumour and the operation to remove it. His limbs are withered, his hands twisted and contorted. His general physical condition is poor due to the years of drug intake and lack of adequate’ nutrition. But his progress in just the first 72 hours alone suggests that anything is possible for this brave little boy. Within a day, he was eating food for the first time: He was smiling, his eyes alert and sparkling. And there were no screams of withdrawal.

Mercedes Guzman, tears rolling down her face, embraced Andre Waismann. As she did so, she gently placed something in the doctor’s hand before returning to the bedside to be with her son. Dr Waismann stared back and smiled knowingly. In his hand were the syringe and vials of morphine that Mercedes had kept with her every hour of every day since 1992. Dr Waismann threw them into the  bin – no-one needs them any more!

The post Miracle Cure for Heroin Baby appeared first on Clínica ANR Brasil - Dr. Hélio Henrique Vilaça.