Dr Rick Sponaugle with Debbie’s brain scan – explains cause of Methadone addiction | ABC News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkdaxPkjO78 | Dr Rick Sponaugle demonstrates the cause of Debbie’s Methadone addiction on her brain scan | Debbie was addicted to Xanax and Methadone for 20 years, she came to Florida Detox for Dr Sponaugle’s brain chemistry expertise and the Sponaugle protocol for Rapid Detox. She says on TV that her detox was painless. Five months later she is still drug free.
Deborah Wade says, “I’d take 100 milligrams of Methadone a day.”
Deborah says she spent most of her life as an addict. Her love affair with pain killers and opiates started when she was seven after a doctor gave her pain meds after a surgery. “I can remember just absolutely begging for those shots, pain shots, and I was only seven.”
She says she used heroin, spent twenty years on Methadone and most recently relied on 11 Xanax pills a day.
She came to Doctor Rick Sponaugle, of Florida Detox, when all other treatments failed. Doctor Sponaugle has detoxed and treated more than 5,000 people here at Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital. He says people come from all over the country. Debbie came from North Carolina.
She was put under general anesthesia so she basically slept while her body went thorough accelerated detox under the doctor’s supervision. She says, “They put me under and when I got the tubes out from me I started walking the halls, going outside and smelling the roses, watching little lizards and I felt wonderful.”
But the doctor says, in order to keep a patient from relapsing you have to treat the cause of the addiction. That’s where the brain scan comes in. Doctor Sponaugle says the cerebellum should be red. It should be more overactive than any other parts of your brain. But the doctor says Debra has red areas in other areas of her brain, including the brain’s emotional center. He says her scan shows her brain makes too little serotonin but too much dopamine. He says, “Patients who make to much dopamine have an edge. They idle at two thousand rpm’s instead of 1,000.”
That, he says, caused Debra to feel anxiety, worry and even panic. And that, he believes, is the root cause of her addiction, making her predisposed to drug addiction. “She chased opiates because they turned down the electricity.”
With the brain chemistry scan backing up his diagnosis, Dr. Sponaugle prescribed Deborah Lexapro, an anti-depressant, to enhance her serotonin levels and a dopamine blocker to turn down the electricity in her brain.
Five months later, back for a check up, Debra says she remains drug and alcohol free. “I have not had any craving what so ever, none.”