World Medical Tourism & Global Health Congress in San Francisco
In September 2008, the delegation of the specialists of the Rehabilitation Clinic Dr Vorobiev attended the World Medical Tourism & Global Health Congress in San Francisco. There was given a presentation on the subject of the clinic’s methods of addiction treatments. Important network meetings took place and good business contacts with the future partners were made. Please find the text of the presentation below:
The Treatment of Addiction and Medical Tourism
Ladies, Gentlemen, respected Colleagues.
Today I would like to speak to you about an area of medicine that will soon become one of the fastest developing branches of medical tourism – the treatment of addiction. Or to be more exact - the treatment of drug addiction, alcoholism, and gambling.
A few figures, very few indeed, will suffice to show you just why the treatment of addiction has, if you will forgive the expression, a bright future.
Firstly, we find an enormous number of patients suffering from addiction, a number that increases annually.
Secondly, the fact that a large number of patients are financially capable of seeking medical help.
According to various official sources in the United States, no less than 1 million Americans regularly use so called ‘heavy’ drugs. They consume over 13 tonnes of heroin a year, which can cost between 500 – 800 US dollars for a single gram. A heroin addict spends an average of 150 – 200 dollars a day for his drugs.
Roughly 14 million Americans have a drinking problem. Approximately 100 000 people die each year as a result of alcohol consumption. Students alone spend 5.5 billion dollars on alcohol annually. The amount of money lost to gambling addiction is almost impossible to estimate.
And then there is motivation, which includes a depressing admission of one’s own impotence, of one’s inability to break free from a substance on his own. An understanding of the deadly risk of an overdose, of the many accompanying diseases affecting the liver, heart, nervous system, and so on and so forth. Finally, a growing sense of physical, social, and spiritual individuality. Many of our patients are respectable citizens, businessmen, politicians – people who were trying to relieve the emotional stress of difficult professions in a dangerous way. And these people are prepared to pay for high quality, confidential medical treatment.
Thirdly, there is the desire of many patients to seek qualified treatment far away from the prying eyes
of neighbours. This can be found in foreign country. A foreign country can also offer new types of treatment for those who have become disappointed with doctors in their own country.
And a new type of treatment is exactly what we are here to bring to your attention today. For over 16 years a team of doctors under the leadership and guidance of Dr. Nikolay Vorobyov has been applying, practising, and constantly refining a method of treatment which has met with great success in the country of its origin, Russia, and neighbouring Serbia. In the Russian and Serbian clinics were/are being treated people from USA, Norway, Greece, South African Republic, Germany, Sweden etc.
The key to Dr. Vorobyov’s methodology lies within the examination and treatment of the patient’s mind, bringing the patient to a feeling of indifference towards the addictive substance, ultimately leading to a complete aversion or loathing.
Let’s take a look at what this means in relation to a heroin addiction. An initial examination allows us to choose from a wide variety of methods the method of detox most suited to the given patient. At this stage the main goal of treatment is met, namely, the patient is freed from his addiction without pain, without depression – without the terrifying withdrawal syndrome that usually accompany a break from such addiction. Neither appetite nor sleep, nor mood in general are affected due to the treatment. A fact which cannot fail to draw attention to itself and attract those seeking treatment.
As soon as tests show that the patient’s organism is completely free of substances, work begins on the brain. Especially as at this point in treatment the substance craving intensifies.
The question of how to eliminate, or in the very least minimize, the obsessive thoughts and memories of the drug and the unbearable desires to use it is one that doctors all over the world come up against. Unfortunately, more often than not, not finding a real solution to the problem they either block the patient’s opioid receptors with Naltrexsone and send him home or sign him up for a rehabilitation program without touching on the emotional problems. And the patient is left with two options, the first being to bear and grin it, battling with himself each and every day to remain sober, or to return to drugs. Experience from across the globe shows that only 10 -15 % of all Heroin addicts stay clean for more than 12 months. The rest, unfortunately, relapse.
Those who finish our program pass the one year mark in more than 80% of cases, and with the help of supporting therapy carry on to live a life free from their former addiction. These startling results occur thanks to special psychiatric models that influence the brain through the use of medication, special equipment and information.
Each patient’s psychological constitution and actual syndrome is taken into account when forming a model for his individual dynamic treatment, which allows for the easing and, ultimately, avoiding of depression and other emotional problems, for quality, unaffected sleep, and for the harmonizing of such mental processes as stimulation and inhibition.
The influence of the special equipment on the right and left sides of the brain is aimed at reducing the imbalance we find between them in addicts. By alternately stimulating and inhibiting impulses variously on the left and right sides of the brain we achieve a levelling-out of the asymmetry of the two sides and a considerable improvement in the mental condition of the patient. This allows for the decreasing of doses of various medications. Basically, we alleviate the tension caused by cravings for the drug in the right side of the brain and create a focal point of responsibility and criticality in the left side.
Informational-suggestive messages, aimed at the patient’s consciousness and subconsciousness, serve in varying capacities and continue for the length of the treatment. On the one hand, these are images of horror, suffering and death which are associated with narcotics. They lead to a firm aversion to and fear of addiction. On the other hand, they are beautiful, life-affirming pictures of a healthy future. Family values, socially healthy forms of enjoyment. A new life plan is gradually formed to take over and push out the painful memories and feelings of guilt over the past.
Moreover, by consent the patient undergoes aversion therapy – namely, the modeling of unpleasant physiological reactions like nausea, vomiting, sweating and shortness of breath, increased heart rate and so on – in response to thoughts and memories related to the substance, or the taste and smell of alcohol, or the sounds and pictures of a casino, variously.
As a result the person becomes not only indifferent but quite averse to what had previously been the object of his desire. For the heroin addict the thought of drugs becomes disgusting. He seeks to avoid the company of other addicts. He seeks to change his outward appearance, clothing, habits and even changes the set up in his home, desiring to eliminate anything that might remind him of the past.
And so, let me briefly sum up what has been said.
1. Our method is unique, and has not been practiced anywhere in the world other than in Dr. Vorobyov’s clinics.
2. Our method works. This has been proven over and over again in the course of 16 years. Over 80% of drug addicts stay clean beyond a year.
3. Our method differs from other methods offered by modern psychiatry for the treatment of addiction and makes it possible to say that addiction is treatable. Complex treatment of the brain through medication, equipment and information free a person from the obsessive need that ensnares them and holds them prisoner and gives them the chance to build positive dreams and plans for the future and to realize them.
They say there is no real hope for drug addicts. Talk to some of the guys that have undergone the therapy and lived the last 15 years without drugs. Many of them have their own families, are raising children, have made careers, and started their own businesses. Here are the words of one of them:
‘Now it’s hard for me to believe that I was ever a drug addict: a dirty, offensive, self-satisfied psychopath. That I would steal and lie to meet my own ends, and mock my own mother. My friends were dangerous people, the sort who were capable of doing just about anything. A few times I could have ended up in prison, died from an overdose, or killed myself. When I understood that my choice was between giving up heroin and dying I came to Dr. Vorobyov’s clinic. It was there that I was given another chance. My whole way of thinking changed. I came to a feeling of real disgust and fear before drugs, and before everything that could have been. I ran from the past without looking back and knowing that there was nothing worse than drug addiction. I can’t believe that that was me. I had an education. And now I have a good position in a large corporation. My bosses appreciate me and hold me up as an example for others. I love my work and derive pleasure from it. I built my own home. I live happily with my wife and two daughters. They are healthy and happy and don’t even suspect what their father was in his previous life. I will do everything to keep my children from the tragedy that addiction causes. I thank the clinic, Dr. Vorobyov and all the doctors from all my heart for everything they did for me, for giving me so much of their time and attention and so much of their hearts. Thank you. It is a wonderful thing to be alive and sober.’