Stress — in the form of the psychic distress and aggression traditionally experienced as a substantial part of the withdrawal syndrome — is a major obstacle to the successful detoxification and rehabilitation of the chemical dependant. Transcranial electrostimulation, a detoxification modality applied for a maximum of 10 days, and ‘cranial electrostimulation’ (known as CES), a treatment adjunct, significantly ameliorate these affective components resulting in a lowered drop‐out rate and enhancing the patient's ability to benefit from relapse‐prevention modalities. Electrostimulation has been demonstrated as efficacious in both inpatient and outpatient settings; and, used appropriately, has no unwanted side‐effects. The work of the authors in relevant animal and clinical studies over the past 20 years is summarized in the light of general electrostimulation research, and their recent clinical investigations described. Various representative psychological assessments are reported. The confusion and controversy arising from the embryonic nature of the electrical criteria integral to electrostimulation applications is considered to be the greatest single obstacle to controlled and replicable research.

At a period of fundamental review of the health care system, it is timely to re-assess one of medicine's most intractable problems--the treatment of addictions. The apparently insoluble dilemmas posed by the acute and chronic withdrawal syndromes underlie universally high drop-out and relapse rates. In a decade of HIV and AIDS infection, poly-substance addiction, potent street drugs, and ossified treatment strategies, it is urgent that policy formulators investigate seriously a flexible system of non-pharmacological transcranial electrostimulation treatment, based on its record of rapid, safe, and cost-effective detoxification in several countries, as one innovative contribution to the challenges presented by addiction in the 1990s. This is a brief report of the introduction of NeuroElectric Therapy (NET) into Germany, describing the responses of the first 22 cases. The daily progress of a heroin addict and a methadone addict are detailed: both were treated as outpatients for 8 hours daily, for 7 and 10 days respectively.

2:073-079, 1982.Female rats, anaesthetized with hexobarbital, regained their righting reflex more rapidly following electrostimulation than sham-treated controls. The extent of the decreased sleeping times in these animals varied according to the frequency (cycles per second) of the electrostimulation applied. The frequency which produced the largest decrease in sleeping time was 10 Hz. Determination of the activity of some microsomal enzymes indicated that the decreased sleeping time was not the result of increased hepatic enzyme activity. Animals which had received prior treatment with naloxone exhibited increased sleeping times following barbiturate administration, but the effects of electrostimulation on the sleeping time at 10 Hz was diminished, while the effect of electrostimulation at high frequency (500 Hz) was enhanced. Although repeated daily administration of hexobarbital progressively decreased sleeping times for all the animals, electrostimulation decreased the sleeping times of the treated rats by a similar percentage of the control animals on each successive day. Electrostimulation at a frequency of 10 Hz produced a significant decrease in serum corticosterone levels, whereas 500 Hz resulted in an increase.

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