The Ameisen Method For Baclofen

Olivier Ameisen was a French-American cardiologist, author, Cornell professor, and self-diagnosed ‘hopeless alcoholic’. As a doctor and scholar, Ameisen knew that the cause of his addiction was chemical, not the incurable lifelong condition that treatment programs of the time claimed it to be. After 8 stints in rehab and over 5,000 AA meetings — all to no avail — he began researching an evidence-based, medicinal approach to his affliction.

Dr. Olivier Ameisen was anything but the stereotypical image of an alcoholic: he was the official physician to the French Prime Minister Raymond Barre, a professor of medicine at Cornell University, the recipient of numerous major honors and awards, and ran his own successful cardiology practice in Manhattan. Through all of these demanding positions, Ameisen used alcohol to alleviate his anxiety, panic, and insomnia — conditions he’d struggled with his whole life — but found himself drinking more and more for the same effect. By the time Ameisen recognized the addictive pattern of self-harm that he’d fallen into, he was regularly being admitted to the hospital for alcohol-related incidents. Ameisen stopped treating patients and was given five years to live “at best” by his own doctor. Unfortunately, seeking help was only the beginning of Ameisen’s journey to find an effective treatment for his problem.

Ameisen was desperate for a treatment, and he tried every mainstream option for excessive drinkers: he ended up attending Alcoholics Anonymous for up to three meetings a day, tried Valium and Xanax to take alcohol’s place in easing his anxiety, traditional alcohol treatment medications like Antabuse and Acamprosate, and started doing acupuncture, yoga, and even hypnosis! Despite being an acclaimed doctor and rising expert in addiction treatment, Ameisen just couldn’t manage to kick his problematic drinking. Dr. Ameisen isn’t alone; only about 10% of people who try traditional treatment methods like AA for excessive drinking are actually successful. Seeing how ineffective the current treatments were, Ameisen switched gears, countering the AA-supported doctrine that alcoholism is an incurable lifelong condition whose solution is spiritual, Ameisen treated his addiction like the treatable chemical illness he suspected it to be. He started looking to alternative methods to ease his problem.

In 2002, Ameisen wrote himself a prescription for baclofen. It was known to be safe even at high doses as it had already been in use for decades as an antispasmodic, and studies were starting to show its promise off-label as a medicine for anxiety, panic attacks, and all different kinds of addictions, from cocaine to alcohol to binge-eating. Ameisen started at a low dose, and noticed an almost immediate effect in reducing his anxiety and starting to suppress his constant cravings for alcohol. He titrated aggressively, increasing until he began to feel drowsy, then waiting for the drowsiness to subside before taking another jump. Eventually, Ameisen discovered his effective dose — the dose of baclofen at which he was “completely and effortlessly indifferent” to alcohol — he no longer had any desire to drink! On top of that, his urges to shop and eat compulsively, as well as his lifelong anxiety, had virtually disappeared alongside his cravings.

After finding his effective dose, Ameisen continued testing on himself. He slowly titrated down from his effective dose, pausing or going back up when he felt his anxiety or cravings return. He reduced from his peak of 270mg — a very high dose of baclofen — to 120mg daily without relapsing. If he felt particularly anxious or noticed alcohol cravings, he could easily suppress them by taking an extra 20mg that day. He continued this maintenance dose for the remainder of his life and, contrary to what he’d been taught by groups like AA, Ameisen returned to moderate, social drinking without relapsing into excess.

This first experiment is the foundation of the Ameisen Method, the first ever highly effective baclofen titration plan for alcohol treatment. We have further refined this method into LifeBac’s own custom titration system, which balances side effect management with titration speed to ensure fast, comfortable, and efficient treatment.