Can Amino Acid Therapy Help Us Get Sober?

Eric Lapp—founder and CEO of Raleigh House Treatment Center in Denver, Colorado—knows what it's like to hit rock bottom, having been hooked on meth, cocaine, alcohol and Oxy for years. “I had been in and out of rehab 14 times, lost everything I had, and watched my weight drop from 190 to 135 pounds,” he tells The Fix. “I was depressed and suicidal, but I still couldn’t stop taking drugs.” Lapp is now four years sober—and he believes he owes it to amino acid therapy. “My withdrawals were reduced by 80-90%,” he says. “That was the turning point for me. I finally felt good—without drugs—and have been sober ever since.”

This relatively new form of addiction treatment, which comes in the form of powders that are made into drinks, is being used by a growing number of rehabs—including, of course, Raleigh House. “We use targeted amino acids,” says Lapp, who claims, “We are seeing people on day three and four of withdrawal and feeling great!” The idea behind using amino acids, the body's "building blocks," is that they're responsible for keeping the chemistry in our brain balanced; drugs changes the chemistry in the brain—so using supplements such as L-Tyrosine is meant to help create new neurotransmitters in the brain and redress this imbalance. Lapp says his facility steers clear of maintenance drugs like suboxone and methadone. “You have to remove the drug in its entirety,” he says. “If not that behavior is still there, and there is still that drug-seeking mentality.” In addition to starting his own treatment center, Lapp and his team have developed a recovery supplement called ModeraXL, which contains an amino acid blend to promote healthy brain function. “Using amino acid therapy to treat addiction, in my opinion, is the closest thing to a cure for addiction,” he says. “It makes everything else fall into place a little bit easier.”