Can Old Prescription Drugs Provide New Treatments for Alcoholism?
By scouring thousands of medications created for other conditions, a researcher wants to find pills that can help overcome addiction.
In The Drinkers, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1890, three men and a child huddle around a table as they glug down whatever’s in the pitcher in front of them. Their faces are focused, stern. Standing together, they still seem lonely, lost in the blues and greens the Dutch artist used to color them.
“They’re drinking because they’re unhappy,” says Adron Harris, the director of the at the University of Texas at Austin. Perhaps they’ve crossed over to what he and other neuroscientists call “the dark side,” a reference to how chronic alcohol-abuse changes the circuitry of the brain. The more a person
