09 February 2025
When I was a first year student on Cherry Ward in 1967 several female patients from the community were admitted to beds on the veranda for aversion therapy. They were all alcoholics and I believe some had been admitted for this previously.
The regime was that after a meal every patient was given a measure of their chosen alcoholic drink followed shortly afterwards by an injection of apomorphine* which was used as an emetic and had the appropriate effect shortly afterwards.
Patients were allowed up for the toilet accompanied by a nurse, otherwise they were kept in bed, full observations were done regularly and everything was recorded on charts. The drug also had anti-anxiety effects so patients were able to sleep.
I can't remember how much food and drink was allowed without being followed by the emetic, but it seemed a barbaric form of therapy which apparently had little/no effect on their addiction. It certainly affected me, I couldn't bear the smell of alcohol or drink Spirits for several years!
When I returned to the Ward in my third year that form of treatment was never mentioned and the veranda was used for St A's patients needing to be barrier nursed or for the post-surgical care of dental patients.
*The first use of apomorphine to reduce alcoholic craving predated Pavlov's discovery of the conditioned reflex in 1903. The drug was used for aversion into the 1970s, for alcohol and narcotic addictions and for homosexuality. Currently, its use is largely in Parkinson's disease, where a low dosage can allow the dose of L-dopa to be reduced, reducing the incidence of side effects. Apomorphine was probably the drug employed in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange to induce an aversion to violence (and, coincidentally, Beethoven).
09 February 2025