Pharmacological approach of the treatment of drinking problems: a critical overview.

Many pharmacological agents have been proposed for the treatment of drinking problems. However, there are many pitfalls in the assessment of the clinical interest of those drugs. In this paper, we propose a new classification of drugs of interest for treating alcohol abuse and related problems. We also review the major clinical studies about those pharmacological agents and discuss, through the studies about serotonergic agents, lithium salts, disulfiram and related compounds, some peculiar aspects of those trials that we think to be important to develop better strategies for the evaluation of pharmacotherapy of alcoholism.