Not the Standard Sales Pitch: Alkermes Draws from the Passion of Recovery to Bring Its Alcohol Medication Into Treatment Programs (Feature‪)‬

When pharmaceutical company Alkermes, Inc. decided to include treatment professionals in long-term recovery in its "Touchpoints" recovery support campaign for Vivitrol, its medication to treat alcohol dependence, the Cambridge, Mass., company hit on something important. Alkermes' approach recognizes that addiction treatment programs, historically resistant to medication treatments, are more likely to listen to people in recovery than to sales representatives. And the professionals Alkermes has enlisted are spreading the message with a sincerity that at once elevates the conversation beyond the profit motive and brings it down to the level of patient and counselor. "Throughout my career in the addictions treatment world, this is the first time I've agreed to help a pharmaceutical company with a message," says Christopher R. Wilkins Sr., president of the Pittsford, N.Y.-based Loyola Recovery Foundation and one of about 20 consultants for Alkermes on Vivitrol, together a group representing every key sector of the field. "I did this because I've been in recovery for 17 years, and I remember what those early years were like trying to keep off craving, just with rational support. I would just want someone to lock me in a room so I couldn't hurt myself."