The Perspective of Traditional Persian Medicine on Botanicals Effective in Quitting Opium Addiction: A Review

Traditional Persian medicine (TPM) is a set of theoretical and practical sciences that are used in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of physical, mental, or social disorders. This holistic medical system can provide solutions for some diseases, including drug addiction, that modern medicine, only offers symptomatic treatment. Since the addiction prevalence in the 16th century, Persian medicine scholars have introduced various ways to quit it. In this study, we investigated if Persian medicine has treatment options to quit opium addiction. We studied the main textbooks of TPM that specifically talked about addiction. Our study was conducted according to a systematic prioritization in traditional medicine. Additionally, scientific databases such as PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Google Scholar searched for plant active ingredients in current pharmacology. By this method, forty-nine drugs were found, and nine drugs with herbal origin obtained the highest score in addiction treatment. Since the main purpose of the study is finding new drugs theoretically effective in quitting opium addiction; we sought to find evidence of that effectiveness in modern pharmacology and we found them in most prioritized drugs. Prioritizing traditional drugs can lead to find new drugs which also have evidence of effectiveness in modern studies. Therefore, they could be introduced as novel natural remedies for disease. The list of drugs obtained in this study can be the basis for conducting in vitro and in vivo studies for design and development of new drugs in the treatment of opium addiction. In fact, traditional medicine could have a special place in quitting opium addiction, and this capacity should be further exploited.