Deep Brain Stimulation May Ease Addictions

WATCH – IT BETTER –

Sept. 29, 2021 – Fisher, 36, who lives in West Virginia, is the third patient enrolled in a clinical trial being conducted at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. To be included in the study, which uses a technique called deep brain stimulation, patients must have gone through numerous rehabilitation efforts that didn’t work and suffered multiple overdoses.

At first, Fisher, who had been using drugs since high school, easily found doctors willing to write prescriptions for his social anxiety. When that stopped working, he began buying from friends and eventually started stealing from strangers to get the money to pay for drugs. Initially it was just “benzos,” but later he moved on to prescription opioids and then heroin.

After four nearly fatal overdoses, he had jumped at the chance to participate in the trial.

“I don’t want to die,” Fisher told NBC News before the surgery. “I don’t want to live that miserable life of being sober and still wanting something and not being able to get it.”