How does Campral work? I have a suggestion.

The way my mind works changed while I was taking Campral and 7 years after my treatment ended, it appears the change was permanent.

I have no medical qualifications, I am a brewer. However,  I am well read and in my career have solved vast numbers of biologically-based problems by comparing systems that are going wrong with correctly functioning systems, and looking for differences - there is no need to know everything just what is important.

When an active well-nourished yeast cell is put into grape juice or wort (the watery malt extract from which beer is made) it is in ideal conditions - far better than any that it would find in nature - and it begins to grow and repeatedly divide into 2 new cells at an incredible rate - and this continues until all the oxygen dissolved in the liquid has been used up.  


When humans run out of oxygen they die, but yeast is able to go into “survival mode” and keep going; all growth stops and instead of getting energy by converting glucose into carbon dioxide and water (just as humans do) it converts glucose into carbon dioxide and alcohol (ethanol). It also starts to excrete a large number of complex molecules which are formed during the cell’s normal metabolism but cannot only be processed normally in the absence of oxygen, these do not all appear at once but one at a time in a specific sequence - in other words the cell has a strategy for dealing with the lack of oxygen, shutting down metabolic pathways in a planned way.

If a yeast cell that has only just gone into survival mode and is transferred into fresh grape juice or wort,  then it will start growing again almost instantly, however, the longer a cell has been in survival mode, the longer the period before it starts growing again. For a yeast cell taken from the end of a fermentation this recovery period - even in perfect conditions - takes hours.

The human body is an amazing thing and if the simple yeast cell has a well-defined strategy for dealing with a lack of oxygen, it is likely that our bodies have an equally well-defined strategy for recovery from a period of malnutrition.

I have read that B vitamins are vital for brain development; from my own experience and the observations of others, I suggest that Campral is most effective when the body has an excess of  B vitamins.

My father came from Stockport in the north west of England; my mother from Dundee in the north east of Scotland, but both their families were complex mixtures from all over northern Britain, I consider it unlikely that my genes are significantly different from other people in southern Scotland who have drink problems, yet Campral transformed my life within 6 weeks but in clinical trials conducted within the south of Scotland population, the rate of success was so low on 52 week trial it was no better than the placebo.

Although I don’t believe my body to be significantly different genetically to those who took part in the trial, I know it was vastly different from a general health point of view; prior to taking Campral I had consumed alcohol on fewer than 28 days in the previous year and those were in 3 discrete periods; I ate healthily whilst drinking and throughout the rest of the year.

In contrast; the people on the trial were given Campral or the placebo, immediately after making their first approach for help with their alcohol problem; a drinker usually asks for help only when they have reached a new low; when frequently drink has been their primary consideration and supplier of calories and their hunger has been satisfied with junk food and crisps.

I understand that six months before trying to become pregnant, women on vegetarian diets are recommended to have a check up so that any vitamin deficiencies can be corrected before conception. Any vitamin deficiency is likely to inhibit the proper development of the foetus.

Correcting vitamin deficiencies in humans is clearly a complex and time consuming process and if the yeast cell is an indicator of how our bodies work, vitamins will be utilised in a pre-determined way  to restore the body in an orderly manner.

Now if the above is true will the body provide scarce resources (vitamins) to make the brain work in a new way when so many of the body’s existing systems are in need of repair? I think not.

I think that Campral will only be effective i.e rewire the brain, when the body has no other vitamin deficits.

I discovered that Campral had completely changed my relationship with alcohol after only 6 weeks of treatment, but I have no idea how long I had been in that condition and I did not notice any change during the remaining 28 weeks of my treatment.

Now if my treatment was so successful in 6 weeks why does the standard course of treatment last 52 weeks? Could it be that the 52 weeks is not the time that Campral needs to work but that body needs to recover from the vitamin deficiency after stopping drinking?


I wonder if all the people who currently attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and have no vitamin deficiencies could be completely cured of their desire for alcohol with a short course of Campral.