The latest Magic Drug to give up Drinking

Or is it?

In this week’s Telegraph, Annabel Fenwick Elliott reported she took a pill to help fix her drinking problem, “It’s the magic drug for hard drinkers that has an 80 per cent success rate – so why is this drug so under-prescribed?”

Boyd Brogan asked us to look into this latest claim, so we did. 

Annabel seems to be a travel writer, but at a minimum, we might expect her to check out her evidence for the magic 80% success rate. Annabel refers to success in clinical trials; however, the link for the trial result in the article takes us to the Sinclair Method website.

The Sinclair Method for Alcohol Use Disorders involves taking the FDA-approved prescription medication Naltrexone on an as-needed basis at least one hour before drinking alcohol.

The success rate of 78% can be found in the Cure for Alcoholism book—there is no mention of the trial. We did a little digging and found out a trial was done in 2001. The 78% appears on multiple websites and seems to have been documented in Dr. Roy Eskapa'…