On June 26, Qiu Shaohua*  laid on an operating table of San Jun Brain Hospital in south China's Guangdong Province. After taking drugs for 11 years and every effort failed to shake off the addition, Qiu learned from newspaper a latest technique of brain operation, and thus became the 99th patient turned to the hospital.

"Open your skull, locate some points, and destroy them", will this terrifying-sounded operation root out man's addiction to drugs?

Why addiction hard to shake off

Statistics show that generally only 10 percent receiving rehabilitation treatment quit drugs successfully, while the more often heard story is taking drugs again. Quitting drugs has long become an experience putting man's will power on grill, said Friday's People's Daily online.

There exists in man's brain a normal award mechanism, scientists found. That is, if man fell pleasant after doing something, a reflex then forms in his nervous system. After that man keeps thinking about it, this we call desire. The most basic awarding actions in our daily life are eating and sleeping.

Drug addiction is a kind of dependence on medicine, in which the sensation of pleasure caused by drugs is transmitted into brain by an award center and forms repeated nervous urges which can only be maintained by continuous drug taking. Viewed from this, drug addition is not only a bad habit but also a chronic brain disease that attacks again and again.

How to locate the origin of addiction ?

Finding the origin of addiction in one's brain is just like picking a needle out of a sea. Overall location examination is needed before the operation begins, and this is the technological core of the whole brain operation.

The three-dimension locating is completed by MEG, NMR and CT. Doctors should also lure out the addiction origins in patients' brains. By playing video tapes featuring drug taking they observe patients' MEG and locate the points of strongest signals. These are places the nervous center developed abnormally under drug control and continuously asked for new take-in. The locating equipment, worth 160,000 dollars, plays a key role in the operation.

Operation destroys desire?

Traditional operations could cut off part of human body, such as the appendix, while brain operation on drug addicts is to eliminate a shapeless desire.

Qiu Shaohua slept through the operation, during which his nervous circuit carrying urge for drugs had been blocked.

There are reports say the operation eliminated patients' memory. In fact, the target is addicts' habitual desire for drugs, not their memory for taking drugs. After the operation, they can still recall their history of drug taking, but will no longer long for them.

Another feature of the operation is getting rid of physical and psychological addition at the same time. The physical dependence will be removed immediately while psychological dependence disappeared three weeks later.

Side effect?

One or two weeks following the operation, patients might experience unclear awareness and decline of memory and intelligence, but these conditions are only temporary and will disappear in three or four weeks.

Will the operation destroy man's normal desires? A monthly follow-up check showed that the normal desires for food and sex, the nearest ones to drug in the circuit blocked, increased instead of fading away. This is because that in the past the circuit was overloaded by desire for drugs, but now after the operation normal desires recovered.

Brain operation not recommended

The operation on Qiu Shaohua turned out a success and he feels quite well, said Wang Xiancheng, Qiu's doctor.

Despite of that, rooting out addiction by operation is traumatic, and as an unconventional treatment should not become the top choice, Wang told reporter.

Traditional methods, such as Chinese medicine, affect the human body less despite their defects of long treating period, slow effect and higher rate of failure. The hospital only accepts patients whose drug taking history is long enough, desire for quitting is strong and over those other means had failed. Usually the hospital doesn't recommend such brain operation to addicts, Wang stressed.

* name changed to protect privacy

(People's Daily July 5, 2004)