Nutritional Treatment for Detoxification and Recovery from Alcoholism: The Functional/ Molecular Medicine Approach

Introduction Conventional treatment for alcoholism, or drug dependency, has been focused on mono-therapeutic approaches. The literature is inundated with treatment regimes that are based on medical, counseling, or spirituaily-based approaches, Unfortunately, rarely are these protocols used simultaneously and rarely is treatment successful when the holistic approach is ignored. At best, most treatment programs, even those claiming holistic treatment, are bimodal in their approach. And when they are utilized together, nutrition is often overlooked as a necessary component of detoxification and recovery. Certainly, one can find ample information, on the Internet and elsewhere, on the nutritional aspects of treatment of alcoholism. However, rarely do these nutritional protocols address the deeper issues. Fortunately, there are leaders in the field of integrative/ functional medicine who are changing the way we look at treating chronic disease nutritionally. Alcoholism is now recognized as a chronic disease. When treatment programs utilize body-mindspirit approaches with well-designed nutritional protocols, the successes are dynamic. In this monograph we will attempt to introduce the concepts of functional/molecular medicine for the treatment of alcoholism and suggest why studying the deeper issues of nutritional therapy is an absolute necessity for successful detoxification and subsequent successful recovery.