Dr. Keith Humphreys

It's working on the very system we use to negotiate life.

It is the thing we use for, you know, learning, you know, acquisition of knowledge, acquisition of skills.

So...

It's not like if we just didn't have that, we would be better off, we wouldn't be better off, we couldn't survive without it.

The only neurosurgery patient is at West Virginia University, you know, who had a very uncontrollable addiction and got, I'm not exactly sure the nature of the implant, if it's a stimulating implant, that's happened once, it was covered.

People want to read about Lenny Bernstein, a friend of mine at Washington Post interviewed that patient and the team.

But I think that is likely that we will see something like that.

I suspect we will see more RTMS, transmagnetic stimulation, because it's not so invasive, not so expensive and not so risky.

We're about to start led by Greg Salem, a really good psychiatrist, a multi-site study with...

RTMS to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for people who are cannabis use disorder, addicted to cannabis.

There are lots of people working on these protocols for alcohol, for cocaine.

It doesn't always work, you know, saying like RTMS is almost like saying we put them on pills because there's, you know, what brain region, at what intensity, all that kind of stuff.

That is a way to intervene far more directly to the brain than talk therapy, for example.

So, I think that is certainly possible and implants made possible.

This particular case was someone who was very, very, very... had tried everything on earth and still couldn't stop.

And interestingly, even with the implant still needs medications, goes to lots of 12-step meetings, it didn't just make it disappear.

I can say though, we haven't talked about GLP-1, Agnes, if we want to get into that, that is maybe something that would have the lasting effect on changing what one wanted.

Yeah.

So first off, yeah, it is a very high rate of substance use and mental illness, higher now than in other periods because unemployment is low.

You know, when the economy is really terrible, there are a lot more people who don't have anywhere to live, who are, you know, just need a job, basically.