Narcotics research, rehabilitation, and treatment. Hearings, Ninety ...

32We can, I think, most helpfully go back to the source, the opiumsource, and try to do more than we have done about the overproduction,especially the illicit production, of opium to reduce the availabilityof compounds for abuse.Chairman Pepper. Doctor, did I understand you to say tliat youthought we could now scientifically develop an antagonistic drug toheroin which would give, as Dr. Seevers indicated, a relative immunityof sensation to tlie addict in the taking of heroin ?Dr. Eddy. We already have such compounds.Chairman Pepper. If that could be put into mass use, then that wouldto a large degree remove the desire for the taking of heroin, I ])resume,from the addict ?Dr. Eddy. Well, the answer isn't quite as simple as that. We canantagonize the effects of heroin. We can prevent the individual fromgetting a response to his taking of heroin. We don't necessarily, bythe same token, remove his desire to take heroin. We can prevent theheroin from having any effect upon him, but we don't necessarily, atthe same time, prevent him from wanting to have that effect.Chairman Pepper. ]SIr. Wiggins wishes to ask a question.Mr, Wiggins. Doctor, I am confused. Why would a person take twodrugs that would have the net effect of taking none? I gather thatthere are antnironists that neutralize heroin?Dr. Eddy. That is right.Mr. WiGGixs. Which has the effect of not taking heroin.Dr. Eddy. That is right.IVIr. WiGGixs. So why not, just in terms of the logic of it, avoid takingheroin in the first instance?Dr. Eddy. Well, they generally do. If you can persuade them to takethe antagonist even though they want the subjective effects of thehei^oin or another opiate. The problem is to s:ei: them to take somethingv/hich they know is going to prevent them from getting the kick theywant. The people who have been put on the antagonists, they don'tnecessarily take your word for it that they are not going to get anykick out of their heroin, and they may go back and try heroin untilthey find that this is futile. If they have got any sense they are goingto say, "Well, I am throwing mj^ money away." And as long as you cankeep them on the antagonist they cannot get an effect out of heroin andhence have no reason to abuse heroin or to go out on the street andsteal televisions and cars and the rest of it to buy heroin.So you have improved the situation from that standpoint for themand yourself. But you have to persuade them to take the antagonist.Chairman Pepper. Excuse me. Could you add something to thatantag'onistic drug to cause the patient to get an unfavorable reactionif, after taking the antagonistic dnig, he took heroin ?Dr. Eddy. Well, you can do it the other way around. If he is takingheroin and you give him the antagonist you certainly give him an mipleasantreaction. I don't know any instance wheie he necessarily getsan unpleasant i-eaction from the heroin he attempts to take after hehas taken the antagonist. He may get an unpleasant reaction from theantagonist itself until you stabilize him on it.Mr. Wiggins. Does the antagonist have any effect ?Dr. Eddy. For a person dependent on an opiate, the antagonist pvecipitateswithdrawal symptoms, very markedly so. It is the same as if