INNOVATIONS: DESIGNATED DIETERS

As Kathleen DesMaisons pursued her career as an alcohol and drug treatment
counselor in the Bay Area in the 1980s, she got interested in the links
between addiction and diet. She felt that her clients did not eat well
enough, so she put together a food plan for then, emphasizing complex
carbohydrates like whoe wheat and potatoes. She became convinced that this
program helped her clients in their recovery effots.

In 1993 she brought her ideas on addiction and nutrition to officials in
San Mateo County. They were searching for new ways to deal with the
county's most common criminal offense -- "DUI," driving under the influence
of alcohol. DesMaisons set up for the county an innovative treatment
program for multiple DUI offenders -- the first effort in the nation to
intervene nutritionally in the DUI cases, according to Deborah Bringelson,
executive director of the Criminal Justice Council of San Mateo County.

The full name of DesMaison's treatment plan is "Biochemical Restoration
Program for Multiple DUI Offenders" ("DUI Diet" for short). It's based on
her theory that an alcoholic suffers from impaired physiological processes
in the body; such as low serotonin levels, and that if the person follows
certain dietary guidelines, these impaired processes will be restored, and
the person will have am improved chance of recovering from the addiction.

The DUI Diet pilot study program has 60 participants. Half of these, in a
control group, received the standard state-mandated course for multiple DUI
offenders, consisting of about 70 hours of education and counseling. The
other 30 people, says DesMaisons, received about 50 hours of "alcoholism
treatment, with a focus on nutritional information that's geared toward
healing the particular biochemistry of alcoholics."

Participants in the DUI Diet have, over the last several years, incurred
one-seventh as many probation violations compared to the control group, and
less than half as many new criminal charges. These and other statistical
results are "very exciting," say Bringelson, and study of the diet is
continuing.

Meanwhile, DesMasions has become something of a celebrity because of her
book, "Potatoes Not Prozac," published in February, in which she spells out
many of her theories on diet and health.

Her ideas are not universally accepted. For example, her belief that diet
can affect serotonin levels has not been definitively proven, says Lisa
Sasson, assistant clinical professor at the Department of Nutrition and
Food Studies at New York University. And DesMaison's ideas on treating
addiction are controversial in the recovery community, says Stuart
Oppenheim of San Mateo County's Human Services Agency. "There's a lot of
skepticism," he says, "because there are well-established treatment
modalities that people rely on, and the diet isn't well-established." He
adds, "But it's worth exploring further, and we're providing funds with
which to do that."

DesMaisons, who holds a doctorate in addictive nutrition, is president of
Radiant Recovery, a treatment center for alcoholics in Burlingame. Her Web
site address is radiantrecovery.com.