Coding

The Washington Post has an odd article today about coding. Russia is trying to handle its massive alcohol problem with coding. Russia has 50,000 deaths a year from alcohol poisoning alone. Doctors give alcoholics placebos or fool them somehow into believing that if they take even a single drink, they will die is how the process of coding works. I find it completely bizarre that in 2005 this still works. But, then again, after five years of George Bush I find it hard to believe some people still consider themselves republicans.

Check out the strange techniques that they use on these people:

Nemtsov said he used to tell his patients that he could manipulate nerve points in their mouths that would lead them to become very ill if they drank. He said he gave them a liquid local anesthetic to swill and then placed electrodes with a very mild current in their mouths to create the belief that he was permanently removing their ability to consume alcohol safely. "I was an actor much more than a doctor," Nemtsov said. "I had a wonderful effect on them. It's a form of psychotherapy, quick, indirect psychotherapy."

Other doctors place astronaut-style helmets on their patients and tell them they are manipulating their brains. And some say they are administering potentially fatal drugs, which are in fact placebos, to convince patients that their bodies contain a substance that will be fatal if mixed with alcohol.

"It's a technological secret we're not supposed to disclose," said Alexei Magalif, a Moscow psychiatrist, when asked what drugs are administered to patients. "I can only say all these cocktails are a form of psychotherapy." He said the method is not used at the private clinic where he now works.

Weird.