Heal Thyself: A Doctor at the Peak of His Medical Career, Destroyed by Alcohol—and the Personal Miracle That Brought Him Back

Olivier Ameisen

jun 2010 · Macmillan + ORM

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Heal Thyself is the paperback edition of The End of My Addiction—a memoir of Ameisen's struggle and a call to action.

"[This book is] the story of the dazzling discovery of a cure that could soon be within reach of all . . . you must read this book." —David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD, author of Healing Without Freud or Prozac and Anticancer

When Olivier Ameisen's book was first published, Barbara Fisher noted in The Boston Globe that "this is not your usual memoir of addiction, degradation, and redemption." His story is indeed unusual—not because he was a brilliant cardiologist who developed a profound addiction to alcohol, or because he tried numerous treatment options and none helped. His story was the story of millions of alcoholics—until he decided to take his treatment into his own hands.

Searching for a cure for his deadly disease, he happened upon baclofen, a safe muscle relaxant that had recently shown promising results in studies with laboratory animals addicted to a wide variety of substances. Ameisen experimented with increasingly higher dosages until he reached a level that left him free of any craving for alcohol. That was more than six years ago.

In the past year, a growing number of researchers and doctors have been inspired by Ameisen and begun prescribing baclofen and lobbying for wide-scale studies into how the drug works. Last spring, no less an authority than the leading medical journal Alcoholand Alcoholism endorsed the book. Hailing Dr. Ameisen as "a remarkable medical researcher," it summed up its assessment strongly and directly: "This book is to be recommended."

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Olivier Ameisen, MD, inaugurated the position of official physician to the prime minister of France. He came to the United States in 1983 to join the prestigious cardiology team at New York Hospital and Cornell University Medical Center, where he became an associate professor of clinical medicine and an associate attending physician. He is currently Visiting Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center.