Forty years of war on cocaine, forty years of defeats. Every treatment, every program, every approach has shown devastating limitations in the face of the power of this addiction. Cocaine, with its ability to hijack the reward system, has resisted every pharmacological attempt to neutralize it. Until today. A drug called mavoglurant is quietly rewriting this history of failure, significantly reducing drug use among addicts. It's not a miracle, it's not magic: it's science finally hitting the right target, after decades of failed attempts.
Lack of solutions for a lethal problem
It is incredible that in 2025 there is still no approved drug for cocaine addiction. It really makes me think of how many people we have lost in these years, while researchers desperately searched for an answer. Cocaine and other stimulants contribute to about half of overdose deaths; we are talking about thousands of lives. As stated Ricardo Dolmetsch founder of Organic Tempera:
This is a gigantic unmet medical need.
And it is precisely him, with his Californian pharmaceutical company, who is leading one of the most promising researches in this field. Mavoglurant was not created to cure addictions, but thanks to its action on brain receptors, it could become the first truly effective drug against cocaine addiction.
Cocaine, the diabolical mechanism of addiction
Cocaine seduces the brain in a subtle way, flooding the reward pathways with dopamine. That feeling of euphoria that users enjoy so much? It's simply a chemical flood that overwhelms normal brain connections. The problem (or rather, one of a thousand problems) is that the brain is not stupid: it adapts by reducing its sensitivity to dopamine.
It's like when you keep turning up the volume on music: eventually your ears get used to it and you have to turn it up even higher. The same thing happens with cocaine, but those who are addicted to it can no longer experience pleasure from normal daily activities. Imagine a life where nothing gives you joy except the thing that is killing you. Mavoglurant does just that: it restores the brain's sensitivity to dopamine.
The results that give hope
Lo study conducted by Novartis (before it sold the drug to the Swiss company Stalicla) involved 68 adults with cocaine use disorder from Argentina, Switzerland and Spain. The results are remarkable: who took mavoglurant used cocaine for an average of 12 days versus 20 days in the placebo group. And there's more: 27% of those who took the drug stopped using cocaine completely in the last three weeks of the study.
Surprisingly, the drug also significantly reduced alcohol consumption: 31% of participants stopped drinking completely, compared to 11% of the placebo group. This suggests that we may finally have an effective drug for several addictions, not just cocaine.
“Antidote” to cocaine, shadows on the horizon
Of course, nothing is perfect. As he points out Paul Bremer di Cessation Therapeutics:
This is not going to be a silver bullet. Addiction is such a multifaceted disease, and there is such complexity in the neural circuitry involved.
Mavoglurant has side effects like dizziness, headache, and nausea, which could discourage patients. Also, the study involved almost exclusively white people; we don’t know how effective it is in more diverse populations.
It always strikes me how science progresses in small steps, never in great leaps. This too drug, if approved, will have to be accompanied by therapy and peer support groups. As Dolmetsch himself admits: “There is no doubt: a pill alone is not enough.” But for those who struggle daily with cocaine addiction, Even this small hope could make a huge difference.
