Originally published in Synapse on October 3, 1977.
For the past decade, vitamin C — or ascorbic acid — has been touted for the cure and prevention of everything from the common cold to cancer. Now, a group of California researchers — including Nobel laureate Linus Pauling — have stirred a public debate with their contention that massive doses of vitamin C, taken with minerals and protein, can cure even the most severe cases of drug addiction.
“Nothing has been done for the addict in the 117 years since morphine was first introduced in the United States, except to substitute one addicting drug (like methadone) for another (like Heroin),” says Dr. Alfred F. Libby.
Libby, a chiropractor, says he has used vitamin therapy on 75 addicts at his Santa Ana clinic since 1974, and claims he has had no failures. According to Libby, the basic treatment is simple, inexpensive and non-toxic. In the initial phase, the patient is given oral doses of 25-85 grams of sodium ascorbate a day, along with high doses of multivitamins, minerals and protein.
This process lasts from four to 10 days, depending on the patient’s age, size and drug habit. Libby says it is administered in a “calculated and very controlled manner.”
Unconscious overdosed addicts are given sodium ascorbate intravenously, but Dr. Libby prefers the oral method, to discourage the needle-and-syringe habit. The dose is gradually reduced to 10-30 grams per day, and — after about a week — to a “holding dose” level of 10 grams daily.
No “high”
Libby’s most startling claim is that the addict not only loses the craving for narcotics, but is actually unable to get “high” after receiving a massive dose of vitamin C.
“Should a fix be taken,” he says, “it is immediately detoxified, and no high is produced. It is like injecting plain water.”
According to Libby’s colleague, San Jose biochemist Irwin Stone, “There is a great improvement in well-being and mental alertness. In a few days, appetite returns, and they eat well; they have restful sleep and the ‘methadone constipation’ is relieved.”
Addicts reportedly suffer few of the discomforts of withdrawal.
“I’d be perhaps a little more cautious in saying that large quantities of sodium ascorbate can detoxify heroin immediately,” says Linus Pauling. “But I think there’s no doubt that very large doses of vitamin C will relieve addiction.”
Dr. Pauling, 76, winner of two Nobel Prizes, for chemistry (1954) and peace (1962), has received international acclaim for his research on proteins, DNA and sickle-cell anemia. But his recent theories linking vitamin deficiency to the common cold, flu and even cancer have made him a controversial figure in the scientific community for a decade.
A heroin addict treated at the Santa Ana clinic this summer has no doubts as to the treatment’s effectiveness.
“I was dazed when I went in,” says this addict, a 22-year-old white, male upper-class resident of Sacramento whose four-year habit had grown to $50 a day. “I had tried other programs but none of them made you feel like quitting.”
At the beginning of the Santa Ana program, he says, “they give you so much C, it gives you the runs, cleansing your system. Then they reduce the doses. I began feeling really good for the first time in a long while. Usually, you’ve got that craving in your stomach, but that disappeared. It’s really amazing, it makes you feel so good.”
He says he paid $500 for a one-week stay at the clinic, living in a house with five other patients and three full-time counselors.
“Now I’d like to go back and work as a counselor there,” he says.
He still takes 10 grams of vitamin C a day.
Difficult to accept
Dr. Libby admits that the medical profession may scoff at his work in the Santa Ana clinic.
“It’s a little difficult to accept the notion that vitamin C can cure heroin addiction. I don’t have any addicts who come here who aren’t skeptical — and why shouldn’t they be?
“But it would have taken a chiropractor to come up with this,” Libby adds. “We’re trained differently than medical doctors. We’re very deep into body chemicals, and, because of the restrictions of my license, I had to look at something besides drugs.”
Libby and Stone have pioneered the theory of orthomolecular medicine, which is the use of vitamins and other natural substances instead of drugs to treat and prevent certain diseases.
Stone’s theory is that all human beings suffer from a generally undetectable form of scurvy—what he calls “hypoascorbemia”— a vitamin C deficiency — but that drug addicts and cancer patients have it to a much more severe degree.
“Humans carry a defective gene that prevents us from making ascorbate like other mammals,” Stone believes.
“We actually need thousands of milligrams of vitamin C a day, instead of only 45 milligrams as the nutritionists say. Addicts are suffering from severe lack of vitamin C, as well as protein deficiency due to lack of proper diet. We have to correct this with, massive doses.”
Stone, Libby and Pauling contend that every adult should take about 10,000 milligrams (or 10 grams) of vitamin C daily to prevent cancer and other diseases.
How it works
How might vitamin C work in preventing addiction.
Scientists believe that morphine creates a “high” by combining with and activating “opiate receptors” that lie on the surface of certain nerve cells in the brain. According to Libby and Stone, the sodium found in sodium ascorbate can remove morphine molecules from the brain’s opiate receptors and replace them with vitamin C molecules.
They claim this eliminates the desire for an euphoric effect from drugs such as heroin, codeine and valium. Libby and Stone presented a pilot study, involving 30 addicts over a seven«-month period, at a seminar of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine in San Francisco in July.
After hearing about the project, the Board of Supervisors of San Diego County voted 5-0 on July 19 to investigate the feasibility of vitamin C therapy. San Diego is believed to have the fifth highest per capita heroin addiction rate in the U.S., and recently abandoned its ineffective county methadone program.
But Avram Goldstein, a Stanford University pharmacologist well known in the drug abuse field, wrote a letter warning the San Diego Supervisors’ not to accept the Libby-Stone study until all the data is available.
Proof demanded
Goldstein demanded “proof that the people treated were in truth heroin addicts… proof that there were no toxic effects, since these outlandish doses of vitamin C are indeed potentially toxic.
“It is irresponsible to shift position with each new claim of a miracle treatment, and constantly to threaten the budgets of existing programs that are doing their job well.”
Responding to Goldstein’s charges, Libby says, “He’s up there in his ivory tower and I’m down here seeing it work.”
He added that his pilot study with Stone will be published in full by the Canadian Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry in December.
Libby is quick to point out that this method is not a cure all. He says when patients return to a drug-oriented culture they sometimes begin shooting heroin again.
Although he believes the orthomolecular treatment eliminates their physical desire for drugs, it is partially up to the individual to resist social temptation and pressure.
“I’ve treated all kinds of men and women up to the age of 47,” Libby says. “Some are referred by clinics, others by friends. I used to treat mainly poor people for free, but now wealthy clients are flying here in private planes and driving Cadillacs...
“The best feeling you could possibly have,” he adds enthusiastically, “is when people call you up and say, ‘Thank God, you’ve given me my child back.’”
