Russia's 1-Step Program: Scaring Alcoholics Dry

Coding was created by a Soviet psychiatrist, Alexander Dovzhenko, who assumed a cult-like status in the treatment of alcoholism. "The Dovzhenko method is basically a form of hypnosis: You drink, you die," said Andrei Yermoshin, a private psychotherapist who no longer uses the method, preferring long-term therapy. "It's fast and cheap, and supposedly you don't have a problem for a year or two years or five years, depending on how long you have been coded for."

The method's efficacy has never been seriously studied, Nemtsov said. But some Russians swear by it.

Andrei Pavlov, a chemist at a state research institute in Vladimir, about 100 miles east of Moscow, was first coded for five years in 1995. After a group lecture that involved some relaxation techniques, he said, a doctor massaged his head for several minutes, whispering mantras about the dangers of drink.

"He said, if you drink, it might lead to paralysis or blindness," said Pavlov, 54, who was re-coded in 2000 and says he's been sober for nine years. "Coding is like a computer program inside your head. And when you start drinking, something goes wrong and it may damage your brain."

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.

"You have to believe in something," said Dmitry Polyakov, 32, who has been coded four times in five years and has been sober for six months. Most recently, he had what he believes to be a drug that can't be mixed with alcohol stitched into his shoulder. "You have to have the will to stop. But coding is an auxiliary help, just in case. I want to believe in it because I don't want to drink."