Alcohol: Making It Safer with Nutrients

I understand that the effects of whiskey are many and
varied. In my own experience, however, the effects of the
absence of whiskey, rather than its presence, have been
most startling.

—W. C. Fields, W. ©. Fields by Himself (1974)

Alcohol, the world’s most popular recreational and social drug. can be
used with a great deal of safety if you know how. This section is about you, your enjoyment of alcohol, and your good health. We tell you how you can continue to enjoy alcohol and yet greatly improve your health with simple nutrients and, optionally, certain prescription drugs. This section will
tell you how to get the benefits of alcohol while avoiding much of alcohol’s health hazards. We explain how alcohol acts in the brain and body and how simple nutrients provide considerable protection against undesirable alcohol effects.

We even explain recent findings about the underlying causes of alcoholism—how it is inherited like gout and diabetes and is not, therefore, some sort of moral weakness—and how simple nutrients offer substantial protection against the age-accelerating effects of too much alcohol and may even offer hope of a cure for alcoholism. In fact, the techniques we tell
you about will prove beneficial to both social drinkers and alcoholics.

This chapter isn’t merely a theoretical treatise. It is filled with practical information that you can use right now! How to prevent hangovers—without drinking less; how to cure a hangover—without drinking more; how to greatly reduce your chances of alcohol-induced cardiovascular disease and cancer by adding a few simple vitamins, minerals, and other
nutrients to your diet; how to slow alcohol-caused premature skin wrinkling. You can enjoy your alcohol without embalming yourself.

If you are an alcoholic, we have some amazing new scientific discoveries to tell you about—information that may lift a big load of guilt from your shoulders. We explain how we now know that alcoholism is due to an inherited metabolic defect and how the right nutrients may change an individual’s biochemistry from that of an alcoholic (inherited) to that
closely resembling an ordinary social drinker.

Alcohol has been a favorite recreational drug of a large portion of the human race since prehistoric times. Mesopotamian pottery depicting scenes of fermentation have been found that date back to 4200 B.c. A small wooden model of a brewery dating circa 2000 B.C. is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Brooklyn Museum of Natural History has an ancient Egyptian stone bas-relief of a priest holding a special flask for distilling wine into brandy. And the people who make and use alcohol have always seen special qualities in alcohol. For example, the
word “whiskey” comes from the Gaelic uisge beatha or usquebaugh, meaning the “water of life.” Many Native American tribes had their favorite fermented drinks which provided them with B vitamins as well as alcohol. According to US government records of 1810, some 6.5 million gallons of distilled spirits were produced in Pennsylvania alone that year. In fact, alcohol drinking was even more popular in America during
the early 1800s than it is now. This prompted the English naval officer Frederic Marrvat to write in A Diary in America,
“They say that the English cannot settle anything without a
dinner. I am sure the Americans can fix nothing without a
drink. If you meet you drink, if you part you drink, if you
make an acquisition you drink. They quarrel in the drink, and
they make up with a drink.”

People have different reasons for drinking alcohol, the most popular recreational drug in the world. Sometimes people use it to forget something. Alcohol is good for that since it impairs memory (more on that later). Yet other people use alcohol to disinhibit their higher brain centers to allow boisterous or playful activities. Some people use alcohol as a stimulus barrier. A stimulus barrier is a drug or meditation technique which helps a person filter out unwanted stimulation from the environment. For example, a person who works or lives in a noisy area might use a stimulus barrier like alcohol or nicotine to help handle the stimuli, You can measure
the effect of a stimulus barrier by measuring the ECG electrical brain wave output) of a person’s brain while you spring unexpected stimuli (like bright lights or loud noises). The stimulus barrier will cause a person’s brain to show less response to these surprise stimuli. Common stimulus barriers,
beside alcohol and nicotine, include most tranquilizers and sedatives. One of the problems of using stimulus barriers is that withdrawal results in the opposite of the stimulus-barrier effect, an increase in sensitivity to outside stimuli. For a person withdrawing from alcohol, excessive stimuli come pouring in!

All healthy mammals, including people, make a small amount of alcohol in their bodies as part of normal metabolism. The average person makes about one ounce of alcohol every day by normal metabolism. In order to metabolize this internally created alcohol, man and the other mammals have special enzymes, particularly in their livers. These enzymes
handle both the internally made alcohol and also alcohol drunk in beverages. In the first step, the enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase converts alcohol to acetaldehyde, a chemical which can damage the body in several ways. It can create abnormal chemical bonds in important large molecules like proteins (resulting in skin wrinkling and artery hardening and loss of elasticity), and damage DNA (resulting in abnormal cell
function, birth defects, and even cancer). This abnormal chemical bonding process is called cross-linking and is the same process that causes your car’s rubber windshield wipers to harden and become brittle and that converts (tans) soft, moist cattle skin into hard, dry, stiff leather. {t is also the same
process used to embalm cadavers, which employs close chemical relatives of acetaldehyde such as formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde. When cross-linking takes place in the lungs, we call the result emphysema. Another way acetaldehyde causes damage is when it is nonenzymatically oxidized in the body, creating dangerous and reactive chemical fragments called free radicals. These free radicals can cause cancer, birth defects, cross-linking, artherosclerosis, and are implicated as major causative factors in aging.

Our bodies don’t just leave this dangerous acetaldehyde hanging around, though. We have another enzyme (called aldehyde dehydrogenase) which enzymatically oxidizes the toxic acetaldehyde into essentially harmless acetate (a form of acetic acid, common vinegar). Unfortunately, long-term
heavy use of alcohol leads to free radical liver damage which impairs the performance of this enzyme system. This results in less acetaldehyde being harmlessly destroyed enzymatically and more acetaldehyde self-oxidizing to free radicals which do further damage, and so forth, in a destructive chain reaction.

Normal people who do not drink excess alcohol have no trouble converting all the internally created alcohol into acetate via the alcohol-handling enzyme system. When we drink alcohol, though, we can overload the enzyme system. If we drink alcohol fast enough, acetaldehyde may be made by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase faster than can be eliminated
by the aldehyde oxidizing enzyme. That’s when the trouble begins. Alcohol itself is much less harmful than acetaldehyde. Acetuldehyde and its free radical autoxidation products cause nearly all the damage to brain and body that we blame on alcohol—the increased risk drinkers have of developing cancer or cardiovascular disease, premature skin wrinkling, atherosclerosis, liver damage, brain damage, cataracts, decreased resistance to disease (due to suppression of our body’s police force, the immune system), alcoho! addiction itself, and even hangovers.

Scientists recently discovered that alcoholics have a metabolic defect that results in their having twice as much of the harmful acetaldehyde in their bloodstream after a drink as normal people. Even some nondrinking relatives of alcoholics muke more acetaldehyde from alcohol than normal people; they have inherited this tendency. The tragedy of alcoholism
has emerged not as a lack of morality or willpower but as an inherited condition which makes alcoholics either create too much acetaldehyde too rapidly from the alcohol they drink ordestroy the acetaldehyde slower. In one study, adopted boys whose natural parents were alcoholics tended to become alcoholics themselves.

Alcohol itself provides a degree of protection against the unpleasant effects of the acetaldehyde by scavenging some of the dangerous reactive free radicals created when the acetaldehyde is abnormally oxidized in the body. This alormal oxidation occurs when the acetaldehyde produced from the
alcohol piles up and overwhelns the supply of the acetaldehyde-destroying enzyme called acetaldchyde dehydrogenase.

The vicious cycle of alcoholism is now revealed: Acetaldehyde is made from alcohol mostly in the liver by our enzymes; the acetaldehyde and its free radicals make the drinker feel lousy so he drinks more alcohol, which not only makes him feel better but actually helps protect him against acctaldehyde poison and dangerous free radicals—unti! the liver makes more acetaldehyde out of the additional alcohol, so the drinker drinks
more alcohol. And on and on. Before we understood this metabolic pathway in alcoholics, alcoholism seemed a nearly hopeless problem, with complete abstinence the only solution.

Alcohol addiction is not due to weak will or moral depravity; it is a genetic metabolic defect, just as many families have a genetic metabolic defect resulting in gout. For centuries it was thought that gout was the result of “immoderate living,” “weak will,” or “moral depravity.” Sound familiar? We now know that gout can be caused by at least 85 different inheritable metabolic defects. A proclivity to alcohol addiction is genetic, not moral. If you have a high ratio of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (which turns alcohol into nasty acetaldehyde) to the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (which turns nasty acetaldehyde into harmless acetate), you will find it hard to stop drinking if you ever start.

It is interesting to note that there are racial differences in the average levels of these two enzymes. (Note that we are speaking of group averages, not individuals, There arc far greater differences between individuals within a race than there are differences between racial averages.) For example,
the incidence of alcoholism is higher than average among the Irish and among American Indians (and several other groups as well). These groups have a higher average ratio of acetaldehyde-producing to acetaldehyde-destroying enzymes.

New knowledge brings new solutions. A scientist named Dr. Herbert Sprince has found a combination of nutrients which provide remarkable protection against acetaldehyde and its free radicals. He gave a group of rats a dose of acetaldehyde large enough to kill 90 percent of them. He gave another group of rats the same dose of acetaldehyde, but he also gave this group vitarnins B-1 and C and the amino acid cysteine found in eggs and sold in some health food stores).

None of the rats receiving the supplemental nutrients died! For many years, interns have given themselves B-1 shots for hangovers. You may remember the old wives remedy for hangover: a raw egg stirred into a large glass of orange juice. This is really a good idea. The egg contains about 250 milligrams of cysteine, and the orange juice contains about 250 milligrams of vitamin C. Larger doses of the nutrients provide even more protection. A reasonable dose for a hangover might be a gram each of vitamin B-1 and cysteine and 5 grams of vitamin C. Regular heavy drinkers should consider
using these nutrients on a regular basis. They offer alcohol drinkers considerable protection against the major source of drinking damage—acetaldehyde and its free radicals made in the body from alcohol. We suspect, too, that it might be possible for these nutrients to enable alcoholics to control or even cure their alcohol problem by blocking the effects of the excessive amounts of acetaldehyde that they have in their blood after drinking alcohol. Behavioral therapy might be required to teach alcoholics to reach for the nutrient bottle, not the booze bottle, when feeling hung over. Further research on this possibility would be very desirable.

Hydergine® (Sandoz), a prescription drug, is currently the fifth best-selling prescription drug in the free world outside the United States. In France, where alcoholic drinks such as wine are consumed in large quantities, Hydergine® is the number one prescription drug. There is a remarkably low rate of alcohol-associated complications (such as cirrhosis of the liver} in France compared to Italy and similarly large difference in Hydergine® usage. We have investigated Hydergine® because of its potential life extending properties and have been interested in the significant degree of protection Hydergine® offers against alcohol damage in both the brain
and the liver in experimental animals, Its clinical properties strongly suggested to us that it should be an extremely potent antioxidant—that is, a powerful free radical scavenger. We arranged for Sandoz to supply a sample of pure Hydergine * Qvithout tablet fillers or binder) to Dr. Harry Demopoulos, a free radical pathology expert, for testing. His laboratory bio-
chemical tests showed that Hydergine® is a powerful antioxidant, probably the most potent antioxidant yet tested.

In chronic alcoholics, a serious condition may develop in which there is severe loss of recent memory and confusion. This is called Korsakoff’s psychosis (alcoholism-induced brain damage). The ability of Hydergine® to protect the brains of experimental animals from alcohol damage suggests that regular Hydergine® use by alcoholics may prevent some of the
damage causing this condition. Very recently, another prescription drug, clonidine (Catapres®), improved the mental function of Korsakoff’s psychosis patients. Memory improved and some patients became more alert and had improved learning ability, Catapres® is FDA approved to control high blood pressure but not to treat Korsakoff’s psychosis. However, your physician can prescribe it for any condition he wishes. You will probably want to provide a copy of the scientific paper because the FDA has made it a crime for the manufacturer of an approved drug to tell physicians about new scientifically sound but non-FDA approved uses.

Most of the damage to the brain resulting from strokes and insufficient brain circulation is caused by the dangerous free radicals mentioned earlier. These free radicals, you see, are not just formed when acetaldehyde is nonenzymatically self-oxidized. They are necessary in certain normal metabolic reactions. And although we have enzymes to keep the free
radicals under control, the controls are not perfect, so some of the free radicals escape and do damage. Free radical also formed when fats in the body are nonenzymatically self- oxidized and then broken down. In recent
have found that antioxidant nutrients (including vitamins A, B-1, B-5, B-6, C, and E, the amino acid cysteine, and the minerals zine and selenium) are an important part of our natural control system for free radicals. Without the control enzymes and antioxidants, we would quickly die. These nutrients and Hydergine® are useful in protecting both the brain and the
liver from the damaging free radicals.

The nutrients choline and lecithin and the prescription drug Deaner® (Riker) are used by our brains to make the important chemical acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is used by certain nerve cells in the brain to communicate with each other, and it is required for memory, appetite, and sexual behavior. It is also important in controlling how responsive we are to both external and internal stimuli. For example, acetylcholine
is what turns down our responsiveness to our environment so. that we can sleep. Many hyperkinetic children respond to choline, lecithin, or Deaner® with improved mental focus. These materials may be of value to drinkers who use alcohol as a stimulus barrier by helping to control response to stimuli in our environments. Three grams of choline per day is a reasonable adult dose. Since vitamin B-5 is required to convert choline to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, at least a few hundred milligrams to a gram of B-5 should also be taken per day. Choline, vitamin B-5, and Deaner® are also free radical scavengers.

One of the reasons that alcohol remains a problem is that its manufacturers are not allowed to add nutrients to it that would help protect drinkers against its hazards. Half a century or so ago, an alcoholic vitamin tonic called Hadacol was quite popular in the United States, especially in the South.

Hadacol contained enough nutrient additives to be a genuinely safer form of alcohol than simple distilled liquor. What happened to Hadacol? The FDA killed it. They called this action “protecting the consumer.” Recently, a major distiller, who realized that vitamin B-1 could help prevent cirrhosis of the liver and brain damage, proposed adding vitamin B-1 to his alcohol products, but he discovered that if he did so the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol Tax, which controls alcohol, would either consider it illegally adulterated alcohol or a drug that should be controlled by the FDA. The FDA, however, wouldn’t touch it; (it doesn’t handle recreational drugs).
The FDA approves only drugs which prevent, ameliorate, or cure diseases. It won’t approve a recreational drug no matter how safe it is or how much of an improvement it is over another recreational drug. So long as our distiller did not add nutrients to his booze, he could continue to market his preducts without complications. It is no wonder that nothing was
ever done.

An ideal solution to the aleohol problem would be to develop new recreational drugs which provide the desired alcohol high without the damaging side effects. There is, in fact such a drug. It was invented by Alexander Shulgin, synthesized, and tested in humans (test subjects couldn’t distinguish between the drug and a few martinis). However, this drug is not FDA approved, and it is not likely to be approved in the
foreseeable future.

Dr. Harry Demopoulos and others discovered that free radicals can be partially controlled by oxygen in our blood. When there is either too much or too little oxygen, these free radicals get out of hand and do a lot of damage. When the brain does not get enough oxygen, as when arteries are
atherosclerotic and narrowed, the free radicals run wild and cause brain damage. Tobacco smoking makes this problem worse because nicotine narrows the brain’s blood vessels even further and the carbon monoxide destroys oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in red blood cells.

Alcohol drinkers can have a lot of these free radicals in their brains as a result of the abnormal nonenzymatic self-oxidation of acetaldehyde made from the alcohol they drink. But Hydergine® (Sandoz) can provide a
great deal of protection against these free radicals. Experiments have been done in cats in which their brains did not receive adequate oxygen to function normally. Irreversible brain damage occurred in fifteen minutes. But in cats whose brains were equally deprived of oxygen but who also received Hydergine® {in a dose properly scaled down from the usual
amounts a person uses in this country), there was no brain damage for forty-five minutes. Because of this protective property, Hydergine® is administered in many countries in Europe just before an operation so that if anything goes wrong, doctors will have more time to correct the situation
before brain damage occurs.

Experiments in rats have shown that Hydergine? helps protect the liver, as well as the brain, from alcoho! damage too. Hydergine® is used in an oral (swallowed) and a sublingual (dissolved in the mouth) form. The sublingual form delivers a higher percentage of the dose to the brain (it passes
directly through the mucous membranes of the mouth into the blood vessels going te the brain), while 40 percent of the oral form is taken up by the liver. So, an alcohol drinker would get protection to both liver and brain, particularly if both forms were used.

Hydergine® does even more. The acetaldehyde-created free radicals are particularly apt to do damage to delicate fibers which connect nerve cells in the brain and enable these cells to communicate with each other, These delicate fibers, called neurites, are absolutely essential to learn, see, feel emotions, or do any other brain activity. One reason you can’t teach old dogs new tricks is that their ability to grow neurites is badly impaired. People have a natural hormone, nerve growth factor, which stimulates the growth of these neurites.

But we have less and less of this hormone as we grow older— in fact, we have the most neurites we’re going to have at the age of about 2! It was recently found that Hydergine® acts like the nerve growth factor which stimulates the growth of neurites. So it is actually possible to recover from some alcohol damage which has already taken place in the brain! Some
Korsakoff’s psychosis patients may also be able to recover some brain function by using Hydergine®,

In a short-term study, Hydergine® at a dose of 12 milligrams per day for two weeks improved the memory and intelligence of normal persons. It even improved the ability to do abstract thinking (finding and logically relating patterns in sets of line drawings). Hydergine® benefits have been tested in senile older persons and in normal young and middle-aged
persons and provided startling benefits to both. The recommended dose in this country is 3 milligrams per day. In Europe, 9 milligrams per day is typically used, and there is a move to go to 12 milligrams per day. We both use about 20milligrams of Hydergine® per day. We would be surprised to
see any vivid benefits at the low dose (3 milligrams per day recommended in the USA. (Start out by taking I mill gram per day and slowly increase the dose to avoid possible upset stomach, diarrhea or headache.) Hydergine® is particularly likely to produce these annoying but harmless side effects, and insomnia as well, if it is used with large doses of the stimulants caffeine (in coffee or cola soft drinks) or theophylline (in tea).

Another prescription drug which can benefit alcohol users is Diapid® (Sandoz). This is a synthetic version of a natural hormone, vasopressin. Diapid® has been tested in men in their 50s and 60s with amazing results: their memories and intelligence improved (in tasks requiring focus and concentration), their sensory discrimination and alertness improved,
and it caused faster sensory-motor reactions. Since the use of alcohol often results in a poorer memory (alcohol inhibits thebrain’s release of vasopressin), in reduced alertness and sensory discrimination, and in slowed reactions, Diapid® can be of value if you have to perform a task while under the influence of alcohol. While it would be much better not to drink and then drive, we would far prefer that drinking drivers also
use Diapid®, Diapid® does not interfere with the relaxing, euphoric, and social disinhibiting effects of alcohol. If you drink for fun, you will probably like it. But if you drink to forget, don’t use Diapid®—it will help you remember!

Withdrawal from alcohol addiction is extremely hazardous. Even in the finest hospitals, with the best of care, about 5 percent of advanced alcoholics die in withdrawal. This is far worse than heroin withdrawal! Diphenylhydantoin is a drug which has been used safely for many years by epileptics to control their seizures, It can also be used to help control the
convulsions which can be experienced during alcohol withdrawal. Diphenylhydantoin has also been used to help cigarette smokers withdraw from smoking without withdrawal symptoms (see Part II, Chapter 10,

Alcohol withdrawal in advanced alcoholism must be handled by a physician experienced in this field,Another nutrient which can help counteract the foggy mental effects of alcohol is vitamin B-12. This vitamin has, in animal experiments, improved learning ability. It increases
the brain’s manufacture of RNA, which is necessary for memory and learning.

Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to one of alcohol’s most tragic consequences: the fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). FAS refers to a collection of birth defeets which occur together, including impaired brain development, growth deficiencies, and abnormal facial appearance. The blood level of
alcohol in the unborn child is the same as that in the drinking mother. In studies where alcohol was included in the diet of newborn rats (fed through a tube into their stomachs), brainweight was 19 percent below that of normal littermates.

Their body growths were comparable. We do not know to what extent the nutrients and drugs we’ve discussed here can reduce the risks of FAS. These experiments have not yet been done, though free radical pathology theory suggests that antioxidant nutrients may be quite useful. Until this information becomes available, however, we can only very strongly suggest that you keep away from alcohol if you are pregnant!

This is the sort of high-priority research which we believe the FDA should pursue, instead of wasting our tax money and their personnel on attempts to make high-potency vitamins into prescription drugs and to prevent people from making and selling thymosin.

Among alcoholics, there is a high incidence of depression. Vitamins C and B-6, destroyed by the acetaldehyde produced in the liver from the alcohol, are absolutely necessary in order for the brain to make special chemicals called neurotransmnitters which allow brain cells to send messages to each other.

Decreased vitamin C and B-6 serum levels in heavy alcohol users means that the brain may not make large enough quantities of the neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (NE). Too little NE causes depression. This depression can usually be remedied by taking supplemental phenylalanine (an amino acid the brain uses to make NE) and vitamins B-6 and C (so that the phenylalanine can be converted into the NE). In one study, 100 to 500 milligrams of phenylalanine per day for two weeks eliminated depression in most people with a depression from a number of causes, including amphetamine abuse, schizophrenic, endogenous, and other types.

In addition, the acetaldehyde can chemically react with certain neurotransmitters in the brain to form addictive, consciousness-impairing substances known as isoquinoline alkaloids, which are related to morphinelike compounds.

It is a well-known fact that smokers tend to have very low vitamin C serum levels (about half that of nonsmokers), which is thought to be a predisposing factor for lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. Most people realize that smokers have a greatly increased risk of cancer. However, few know that users of alcohol are also at a greatly increased risk of cancer.

For several years it has been known that the cancer-inducing effects of both smoking and alcohol together are far worse than additive. A person who is both a heavy drinker and heavy smoker is much more likely to get cancer than one who is either a heavy drinker alone or a heavy smoker alone.
Part of this effect is undoubtedly due to the fact that both drinking and smoking destroy antioxidant, free radical-scavenging nutrients such as vitamins A, B-1, B-5, B-6, C, and E, and cysteine. The cancers that are most strongly promoted by this combination of smoking and drinking—cancers of the lungs, mouth, larynx, esophagus, liver, and urinary bladder—
are principally caused by polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons

(PAH, found in tobacco combustion lar), which are metabolically activated to PAH epoxides, the actual active carcinogens. People who both drink and smoke can form PAH epoxides by another abnormal route: Excess ingestion of alcohol leads to the formation of more acetaldehyde than the body can enzymatically destroy. This acetaldehyde autoxidizes via a free radical route to peracetic acid, an organic peroxide which is so efficient at converting unsaturated compounds (such as PAI) to epoxides that it is used industrially to make epoxy resins. This peracetic acid can rapidly and
efficiently convert the tobacco tar PAH to its carcinogenic PAH epoxide, thereby causing a multiplicative risk when tobacco smoking is mixed with heavy alcohol use. If you both smoke and drink, the use of antioxidant free radical-seavenging nutrients may save your life. The requirement for some
of these supplemental nutrients is made even greater by acetaldchyde damage impairing the liver’s ability to metabolically process and activate some of these nutrients.

Additional problems are caused by the high caloric content of alcohol, about 20 calories per teaspoon. A pint of 86-proof liquor supplies half the normal daily adult caloric requirement, but these alcoholic calories are utterly empty of nutrients. The heavy drinker who eats less food worsens an already severe vitamin deficiency; if food intake is not reduced,
many of the extra alcohol calories are converted to fat, result-ing in high serum triglyceride and cholesterol levels and obesity. These fats are subject to further free radical autoxidation.

Three grams of niacin (vitamin B-3) per day (one gram with each meal) can lower these serum lipids in many people by about 25 percent within two weeks.

When acetaldehyde autoxidizes in one’s body in the presence of unsaturated fats and oils, there ensues a literal chain reaction of destruction involving acetaldehyde, acyl radicals, peracetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, superoxide radicals (which are destroyed by the enzyme SOD, superoxide dismutase), hydroxyl radicals, alky] radicals, peroxyl radicals, epoxides, organic peroxides and hydroperoxides, hypochlorite, chlor-
ohydrins, singlet oxygen, and others. This results in DNA
damaging mutations, cross-linking, suppression of formation of the natural hormone PGI, (which prevents abnormal! blood clots), and damage to the brain, liver, heart, and other muscles, damage to your immune system, frequently resulting in cancer, birth defects, and cardiovascular disease.

Fortunately for us, the same promiscuous high-energy chemical reactivity that makes these free radicals so dangerous also makes them susceptible to reactions with certain free radical-controlling molecules called free radical scavengers.

Vitamins A and B-1, the B-2-dependent enzyme glutathione reductase, the B-3-dependent biochemical NADPH, B-5, B-6, C, E, and the cysteine-dependent biochemical glutathione are all free radical scavengers, as is the zinc-dependent enzyme SOD, and the selenium- and cysteine-dependent en-
zyme glutathione peroxidase. The dangerously reactive organic peroxides formed by the free radical autoxidation of fats and oils are destroyed by some of these compounds too, particularly by glutathione peroxidase. Your biochemistry is quite complex and involves many protective mechanisms,
which is why there are so many different nutrients in our suggested protective nutrient formula.

A GOOD NUTRIENT FORMULA
FOR PEOPLE WHO ENJOY ALCOHOL

Total dose per day, to be divided into three doses and taken with meals

Vitamin A	10,000 to 20,000 IU. (in- ternational units)
Vitamin B-1	1 gram
Vitamin B-2	100 to 200 milligrams
Vitamin B-3 (niacin)	600 milligrams to 3 grams
Vitamin B-5	2 grams
Vitamin B-6	500 milligrams
Vitamin B-12	500 micrograms
Vitamin C	3 to 10 grams
Vitamin E	1000 to 2000 1.U. (international units)
Choline	3 grams
Cysteine (not cystine)	2 grams
Zine (chelated)	50 milligrams
Selenium	250 micrograms

Do not start out taking these high doses. Do not start to take this formula on an empty stomach, either. Start at about one eighth of these amounts per day and slowly increase your doses. Be sure to divide the total daily dose into three parts and take it with meals to slow its absorption and to minimize the gastric effects of acidic vitamins such as C and niacin. This
allows your body time to adjust to all these extra nutrients. If you take too much initially, annoying (but not hazardous) side effects may occur, such as upset stomach, diarrhea, and brief skin flushing and itching. It is a good idea to consult your doctor before you start to take these substances.

OPTIONAL PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FOR ALCOHOL DRINKERS

Hydergine®	9 to 12 milligrams per day
Diapid® (Sandoz)	16 L.U. (international units per day)

A well-known hazard of aleohol use is the many interactions which occur between alcohol and other drugs. Some of the most common of these interacting drugs follow:

1. Barbiturates: The result of interaction is enhanced effeet of both alcohol and barbiturates during alcohol intoxication. Chronic alcohol use reduces the barbiturate effect when there is no alcohol present and increases the effect when there is. At high enough dosages of these two drugs in combination, respiratory collapse can occur, resulting in death. In fact, several thousand people every year die in just this way. Worse yet, when a person dies of barbiturate/alcohol-induced respiratory collapse, their insurance company often is reluctant to pay off, alleging that these deaths are suicide. In fact,
   this is often the case, since this form of suicide is one of the
   easiest and least unpleasant.

Antihistamines: In combination with alcohol there is enhanced depression of the central nervous system (reduced responsiveness, reaction, etc.)

Tranquilizers (such as Valium® and Librium®): With alcohol, there is enhancement of effects of the tranquilizer. Recently, Valium® and Librium® were discovered to act in the brain by fitting into brain receptors called the benzodiazepine receptor (like keys into locks}, Valium® and Librium® cause tranquilization only because they fit into these special receptors. But we also have natural brain chemicals which fit into these receptors and induce calm and tranquility. The
form of vitamin B-3 called niacinamide seems to be one such compound. The B vitamin inositol and the amino acid gamma
aminobutyric acid (GABA) enhance niacinamide binding to the benzodiazepine receptors. Aleohol promptly increases the effectiveness of both GABA and Valium®-like compounds at their active sites in the brain, increasing their anti-anxiety effects in the short run. In the long run, however, heavy alcohol use decreases the number of these anti-anxiety receptor sites and damages them, reducing their sensitivity. This is why addiction to alcohol plus Valium® or Librium® often develops more rapidly than addiction to alcohol alone. Moreover, this alcohol-induced anti-anxiety nerve receptor damage is likely to play an important part in the chronic anxiety found in most alcoholics. Users of Valium® and Librium®
may find that nutrients are able to substitute satisfactorily, in
whole or in part, for these tranquilizers. If you use these drugs, we suggest you try a combination of niacin or niacinamide, inositol, and GABA in place of part or all of the prescription tranquilizers. Using the nutrients, you can avoid the Valium® and Librium® side effects, which unfortunately include inducing higher levels of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which results in a greater liver production of toxic acetaldehyde after drinking alcohol. A reasonable dose might
be 1 gram of niacin or niacinamide, 3 grams of inositol orally,
and 500 milligrams of GABA sublingually. Nofe: Many people flush and itch after they take niacin because this vitamin causes the release of histamines. (The release of histaminesalso causes blushing and the Masters and Johnson sexual flush and is required for orgasm.) Usually this effect lasts only a short time (twenty minutes or so) and is not harmful. To avoid this, you can use niacinamide, which causes less of the flushing and itching than niacin but does not reduce blood lipids (fats) as niacin does. The flushing is greatly reduced if you take the niacin on a full stomach, starting at a very low dose (100 milligrams after meals) and increasing it slowly. If you use the niacin regularly, you will quickly develop tolerance to the flushing effect—the flushing lessens or disappears and doesn’t reappear at its original strength as long as you take the vitamin regularly.

1. Oral anticoagulants: There is an enhanced effect during alcohol intoxication, reduced effects with chronic alcohol use.
2. Phenothiazines (Thorazine®, Mellaril®, Compazine®):
   These have an additive effect with alcohol,

There are many other alcohol-drug interactions. For a longer list, see Drug Interactions published by Medical Fconomics, Oradell, NJ 07649