The BBC says a man in France has documented how a drug can suppress the urge to drink:
Dr Olivier Ameisen, 55, one of France’s top heart specialists, says he overcame his own addiction to alcohol by self-administering doses of a muscle-relaxant called baclofen.
He has now written a book about his experience – Le Dernier Verre (The Last Glass) – in which he calls for clinical trials to test his theory that baclofen suppresses the craving for drink.
I can’t help but notice a phrase offered by Dr. Pascal Garche in Geneva, as quoted by the BBC: “the book is going to set the cat among the pigeons”. Nice marketing.
Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears – but pr’ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me – and upraise
Thy gentle mew – and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists –
For all thy wheezy asthma – and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nick’d off – and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft, as when the lists
In youth thou enter’dest on glass bottled wall.
Cuando estuve en el mar era marino
este dolor sin prisas.
Dame ahora tu boca:
me la quiero comer con tu sonrisa.
Cuando estuve en el cielo era celeste
este dolor urgente.
Dame ahora tu alma:
quiero clavarle el diente.
No me des nada, amor, no me des nada:
yo te tomo en el viento,
te tomo del arroyo de la sombra,
del giro de la luz y del silencio,
de la piel de las cosas
y de la sangre con que subo al tiempo.
Tú eres un surtidor aunque no quieras
y yo soy el sediento.
No me hables, si quieres, no me toques,
no me conozcas más, yo ya no existo.
Yo soy sólo la vida que te acosa
y tú eres la muerte que resisto.
WHEN I WAS AT SEA IT WAS MARINE…
When I was at sea it was marine
this pain without haste.
Give me your mouth now:
I want to eat it with your smile.
When I was in the sky it was celestial
this urgent pain.
Give me your soul now:
I want to sink my teeth in it.
Give me nothing love, give me nothing:
I drink you up in the wind,
I drink you from the stream of shadow,
from the turn of light and silence,
from the skin of things
and from the blood with which I raise time.
You are the source although you deny it
And I am the thirsty one
Don’t talk to me, if you want, don’t touch me,
cease to know me, I no longer exist.
I am only the life that haunts you
And you are the death that I resist.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995