By Bill Radford, The Gazette

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - It was after her divorce that Kerry Smith-Walton began hitting the bottle.

She drank just on weekends at first, but before long her drinking spiraled out of control. "After a couple of years, I was just gone, drinking in the morning to recover from the shakes and stuff."

After bouncing from one treatment program to another, the 34-year-old woman now has hope. After two weeks at the Courage to Change Ranch, an addiction-treatment center in Simla, Colo., she has renewed energy and a new attitude.

"I feel really good and positive," she said. "For me, that's a big difference."

A key part of the treatment at the ranch is neurotransmitter rebalancing - the use of nutritional supplements containing amino acids, vitamins and minerals to restore balance to the chemical messengers in the brain.

"It's been very effective," said Judith Ann Miller, founder and president of the ranch. Encouraged by the results, she recently opened an outpatient service in the office of Dr. John Kucera, a family physician in Colorado Springs.

Neurotransmitters play a major role in addiction. Drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine, for example, stimulate the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that leads to feelings of pleasure.

Books such as "End Your Addiction Now" and "Seven Weeks to Sobriety: The Proven Program to Fight Alcoholism With Nutrition" tout the use of dietary supplements, or nutraceuticals, to correct neurotransmitter imbalances and battle addiction.

But it's an approach that remains outside the mainstream. Representatives from the Penrose-St. Francis Riegel Center and the drug and alcohol prevention program at the El Paso County (Colo.) Department of Health and Environment were not familiar with the therapy.

Nor is Dr. Thomas Crowley, a professor of psychiatry and director of the division of substance abuse at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.

"That's a new one to me," he said. While there is limited research indicating some foods can influence the flow of neurotransmitters in the brain, "I know of no evidence at all that using dietary supplements changes drug-abuse behavior," he said.

Kucera, who embraces a natural, holistic view in his practice, sees promise for such an approach in tackling addiction. While "just throwing nutrients at people" isn't the answer, he said, "maybe it can help them in those initial stages when it's so difficult to transition from drugs to a normal brain function."

The addiction treatment isn't part of Kucera's practice, but he's providing a home for Miller's program and may provide medical oversight in some cases.

"I don't have years of experience with doing an approach like this that I can say there's a track record for this," he said. "But I'm open to letting someone who has been working with these people get at least a foot in the door."

Miller, a human-development and family-relationship specialist, says she has been working with addicts for 40 years.

It was an area she fell into after marrying an alcoholic and now feels it was the field she was meant to be in.

"Everyone needs to find a purpose in life," she said, "and I just think this is my purpose."

The neurotransmitter therapy is not a quick fix, Miller said. It can take up to a year, at a cost of $3,000 to $10,000. And though she claims a success rate of about 80 percent - a much higher rate than standard programs - the therapy is not a cure for addiction, she cautioned.

"There is never a cure. They are always an addict."

The therapy, though, "helps them get their brains working so they can actually think. A person like this can't even fathom a 12-step program until they can get their brain working," she said, pointing to a photo of a clearly strung-out client.

Clients undergo urine and saliva testing to determine which supplements they need. The nutraceuticals - which, unlike pharmaceuticals, are not strictly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration - are produced by a Wisconsin company.

Some treatment centers around the country that tout neurotransmitter rebalancing administer the amino acids and vitamins intravenously, promising results in as little as 10 days.

Miller uses oral supplements that take longer to take effect, but they're much cheaper and just as helpful, she said.

"We can do the IVs if people need them, if someone is really detoxing and has the DTs (delerium tremens) or is really in bad shape," she said.

Her Courage to Change Ranch combines the neurotransmitter therapy with a structured environment - putting people to work at the ranch - along with individual and group therapy and an emphasis on proper nutrition.

Stays, which may be court-ordered for those whose addictions have put them on the wrong side of the law, range from 30 days to a year.

Corena Bales has battled various addictions, most recently methamphetamine.

At the Courage to Change Ranch, she has found a safe, caring environment, she said.

"I think the nutraceuticals are helping me balance," Bales, 40, said.

In addition to fighting her meth addiction, she has ended her use of Paxil, which she had long taken for anxiety.

"That just became another chemical on top of other chemicals. Now I'm clean of all chemicals."

The outpatient program, Miller said, is for people battling addictions who don't need the ranch's intense, structured program. The neurotransmitter therapy is key to the outpatient program but isn't the only tool.

Counseling is provided on an individual, as-needed basis to address psychological triggers and the need for lifestyle changes, Miller said, and clients are encouraged to join support groups such as AA.

Smith-Walton acknowledges that she can't know how much the nutraceuticals have helped versus the other elements of the program at the Courage to Change Ranch. And after only two weeks, there still are old habits to change and cravings to subdue, she said. But she thinks the neurotransmitter therapy gives her "a huge edge" in her battle with booze.

"I'm excited about my life again."

Source: KansasCity.com