Addictions Can Be Cured: The Treatment of Drug Addiction by Neuro-Electric Stimulation
Margaret A. Patterson, MBE, MBChB, FRCSE
Publisher: Lion Publishing, Great Britain (1975)
Getting Off the Hook: Addictions Can Be Cured by NET (NeuroElectric Therapy)
Dr. Meg Patterson
Keith Richards, world-famous music star of the Rolling Stones, who had a notoriously heavy drug-addiction problem, says “It’s so simple…It’s a little metal box with leads that clip onto your ears and in two or three days - which is the worst period for kicking junk - in these 72 hours it leaves your system. Actually you should be incredibly sick, but for some reason you’re not. Why? I don’t know, because all it is is a very simple, nine-volt, battery-run operation.”
This “little black box” (really far from “simple”), which is called a MEGNET Stimulator, generates an almost imperceptible current with a frequency fine-tuned to each patient’s particular addiction (heroin, alcohol, cocaine, barbiturates, nicotine, tranquilizers, etc.). This treatment stimulates the release of endorphins, natural body chemicals that relieve pain and restore a healthy balance to the brain functions of a former addict. After ten days the addict is detoxified with minimal discomfort and without developing any dependence to the MEGNET Stimulator.
The developer of the MEGNET Stimulator, which offers the promise of a radically improved way of life to millions of drug addicts worldwide, is Dr. Meg Patterson, a Scottish surgeon who has been successfully treating addictions of all kinds in England for the past ten years.
Getting Off the Hook tells the story of Dr. Patterson’s remarkable discovery of this revolutionary drug-treatment program, documents its results, and provides a model for rehabilitation of former addicts based on sound mental health principles. Patterson cautions that in order for addicts to be “cured, rehabilitation must follow detoxification and solutions must be found for the problems that led them into addiction in the first place.
Publisher: Howard Shaw Publishers, USA (1983)
Hooked? NET: The New Approach to Drug Cure
Meg Patterson
Hooked? tells the story of NET - a revolutionary cure for drug addictions. In this remarkable book Dr. Meg Patterson writes of the background to her discovery, her painstaking research and the extraordinary results, which at last offer real hope for addicts.
The treatment is fascinating and effective. Using a tiny electrical current tuned to various frequencies, NET (NeuroElectric Therapy) stimulates the production of several body chemicals - including endorphins, the body’s natural opiates - enabling addicts to any drug to detoxify with only minimal withdrawal symptoms. Writing from her wide experience with addicts in Asia and the West, Dr. Patterson also stresses the crucial importance of solving the basic psycho-spiritual problems leading to addiction.
Rock stars Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Pete Townshend, as well as hundreds of other ex-addicts from all strata of society and countries, testify to the success of NET. With a worldwide drug problem of frightening proportions, Hooked? reveals a solution - if the battle against government apathy and medical establishment distrust can be won.
Publisher: Faber and Faber, Great Britain (1986)
Publisher: The Long Riders’ Guild Press
Drug Free: The Story of NeuroElectric Therapy and Other Addiction Treatments
Lorne Patterson
In the mid-1970s Scottish surgeon Meg Patterson made her name as a pioneering doctor who treated a number of music legends for their drug addiction with an astonishing and controversial electrostimulation technique she had developed called NeuroElectric Therapy (NET). Then she largely disappeared from public view.
Now, in the depths of a global drugs crisis, NET is news again.
Drug Free reveals the facts behind this fascinating story. The book also draws out the emergence - and sometimes disappearance - of other significant addiction treatments in an absorbing year-by-year record that uses the words of key participants to underscore historical milestones. Here are the stories behind step-down ‘weaning’ and ‘cold turkey’ unassisted withdrawal; behind morphine, methadone and Suboxone substitution; chemical and electrical shocks; detox under anaesthesia, acupuncture detox, and hallucinogenic ibogaine detox - and various transcranial electrostimulation techniques including that of NET. The stories behind 12 Step programmes, ‘no-crap’ confrontational therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Trauma-Informed Care and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy. Behind prison-hospitals and Therapeutic Communities, Hazelden and Betty Ford multi-modality centres, San Patrignano and other social-enterprise communities, Teen Challenge and other faith-based rehab programmes, and the luxury ‘Executive’ retreats of today’s billion-dollar recovery industry. Here too is the still unresolved – and heated – debate over abstinence, maintenance and what actually constitutes ‘success’ in drug addiction treatment.
Finally, Drug Free offers insights, primarily in their own words, into why people continue to take addictive drugs despite the well-established risks – and records the voices of those who have undertaken the long struggle to become, once again, drug free men and women.
Drug Free: The Story of NeuroElectric Therapy ™ and Other Addiction Treatments is available as an e-book on Amazon.
Reviews:
‘Despite a growing body of pharmacotherapy research, treatment of withdrawal syndromes and substance dependence still has a limited efficacy with a high proportion of those who do not respond well to pharmacotherapy. That's why it is important to explore new options and develop new approaches. One promising approach is NeuroElectric Therapy which has already demonstrated efficacy in a number of preliminary studies. Of course, more research is needed, but I am sure that NET might be a valuable addition to pharmacotherapy for both substance withdrawal and relapse prevention.’
Professor Evgeny Krupitsky, MD, PhD, D.Med.Sci,
Vice-Director for Research and Head of the Department of Addictions at V.M. Bekhterev National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Neurology, St-Petersburg, Russia
Director, A.V. Valdman Institute of Pharmacology, First St-Petersburg Pavlov State Medical University, Russia
‘I personally have used electrostimulation to treat opiate withdrawal symptoms, and the effect is often quite remarkable - the person who was complaining bitterly settles down, will start chatting and smiling and may even feel so comfortable that they go to sleep. I have absolutely no doubt that this is more than mere placebo, and an area worth putting the effort in to gather the evidence, in order to bring a non-drug safe treatment into mainstream services. The NET researchers are aiming to do just that.
This volume is a fascinating encyclopaedic account of the development of and socio-political issues related to addiction and abstinence in particular. The authors have achieved an extraordinary level of detail, accuracy and unbiased account by quoting and summarising the original sources. It also describes Dr Meg Patterson’s development of NET and the battle by her, her family and colleagues over the decades to bring it to public attention and recognition as a valuable clinical treatment by the authorities. The fight is ongoing, but may well come to fruition in the near future when the results of the current randomised controlled trials are known.’
Dr Fergus D Law, BSc, MBChB, FRCPsych
Consultant Psychiatrist in Substance Misuse, England
‘I don’t know whether NET will ever become anything more than a rare promising tool helping addicts in the earliest stages of their recovery, but what I do know is that we have too little in the armamentarium of effective treatment to have been so casual in letting this one slip by.’
Professor Neil McKeganey, Director, Centre for Drug Misuse Research, Scotland
from the Introduction to Drug Free
