NORTH FORT MYERS LCSO searching for missing endangered adult Lee County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a missing person.
The Weather Authority: Scattered storms for your Saturday The Weather Authority is tracking afternoon scattered storms for Saturday this Labor Day weekend.
WINK NEWS SWFL Scoreboard: High School Football Week 2 The Golden Eagles took down the Cougars 64-7 to win the Crosstown Showdown for the 26th year in a row.
NAPLES Naples mayor speaks out after DUI arrest Naples Mayor Teresa Heitmann has sent a statement to WINK News after being charged with a DUI.
FORT MYERS Woman stabbed at Fort Myers gas station Authorities responded to an active scene at a 7-eleven in Fort Myers after a woman was stabbed early Friday evening.
FORT MYERS FMPD investigating a van that followed a student from bus stop Police said a suspicious van followed a middle school student home from the bus stop on Thursday and yelled, “Get in the van.”
CAPE CORAL Report: Teen was on crosswalk when she was hit The driver of the box truck told officers he didn’t see Kendra as she rode in front of him, and he started to go.
FORT MYERS BEACH Celebration of Jimmy Buffet Day at Margaritaville Friday was Jimmy Buffett Day at Margaritaville and Fort Myers Beach is gearing up for a fun party all weekend long.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County deputies hold training for mental health encounters Charlotte County deputies are entering the community equipped with a new tool for handling mental health: the crisis initiative training.
Neighbors worried about flooding in Rotonda Heights Neighbors in Rotonda Heights are fed up with the flooding and they want to see it fixed.
ORLANDO Smart living moms reclaim their careers Betsy Gardner president and CEO of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce started Relaunch, a program to help stay-at-home moms.
FORT MYERS BEACH A closer look at the gas leak that killed 2 men at Fort Myers Beach home A closer look at the gas leak that killed two men in Fort Myers Beach has revealed some new details leading up to the deaths.
SANIBEL Sanibel CVS Pharmacy reopening after Hurricane Ian The CVS Pharmacy in Sanibel is reopening nearly two years after Hurricane Ian caused severe damage to it.
FORT MYERS Woman transported after boat hits large wake under Midpoint Bridge A woman had to be transported to the hospital after suffering an injury when the boat she was in struck the wake of a yacht.
NEW YORK (AP) Trump has history sparking outrage for incidents around veterans even as military voters backed him The reported altercation at Arlington National Cemetery involving Donald Trump’s staff was far from the first time that veterans or the families of service members have criticized the former president for words or behavior they saw as disparaging.
NORTH FORT MYERS LCSO searching for missing endangered adult Lee County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a missing person.
The Weather Authority: Scattered storms for your Saturday The Weather Authority is tracking afternoon scattered storms for Saturday this Labor Day weekend.
WINK NEWS SWFL Scoreboard: High School Football Week 2 The Golden Eagles took down the Cougars 64-7 to win the Crosstown Showdown for the 26th year in a row.
NAPLES Naples mayor speaks out after DUI arrest Naples Mayor Teresa Heitmann has sent a statement to WINK News after being charged with a DUI.
FORT MYERS Woman stabbed at Fort Myers gas station Authorities responded to an active scene at a 7-eleven in Fort Myers after a woman was stabbed early Friday evening.
FORT MYERS FMPD investigating a van that followed a student from bus stop Police said a suspicious van followed a middle school student home from the bus stop on Thursday and yelled, “Get in the van.”
CAPE CORAL Report: Teen was on crosswalk when she was hit The driver of the box truck told officers he didn’t see Kendra as she rode in front of him, and he started to go.
FORT MYERS BEACH Celebration of Jimmy Buffet Day at Margaritaville Friday was Jimmy Buffett Day at Margaritaville and Fort Myers Beach is gearing up for a fun party all weekend long.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County deputies hold training for mental health encounters Charlotte County deputies are entering the community equipped with a new tool for handling mental health: the crisis initiative training.
Neighbors worried about flooding in Rotonda Heights Neighbors in Rotonda Heights are fed up with the flooding and they want to see it fixed.
ORLANDO Smart living moms reclaim their careers Betsy Gardner president and CEO of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce started Relaunch, a program to help stay-at-home moms.
FORT MYERS BEACH A closer look at the gas leak that killed 2 men at Fort Myers Beach home A closer look at the gas leak that killed two men in Fort Myers Beach has revealed some new details leading up to the deaths.
SANIBEL Sanibel CVS Pharmacy reopening after Hurricane Ian The CVS Pharmacy in Sanibel is reopening nearly two years after Hurricane Ian caused severe damage to it.
FORT MYERS Woman transported after boat hits large wake under Midpoint Bridge A woman had to be transported to the hospital after suffering an injury when the boat she was in struck the wake of a yacht.
NEW YORK (AP) Trump has history sparking outrage for incidents around veterans even as military voters backed him The reported altercation at Arlington National Cemetery involving Donald Trump’s staff was far from the first time that veterans or the families of service members have criticized the former president for words or behavior they saw as disparaging.
Ketamine may treat harmful drinking behavior. (Credit: CNN) A single dose of ketamine may be able to curb harmful drinking behavior by “rewriting drinking memories,” according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers say that, when coupled with an exercise involving beer that pulls memories of alcohol to the foreground, there’s evidence that the drug can disrupt how the brain associates these cues — like the smell or taste of beer — to its perceived “reward,” making relapse less likely. “It’s those kinds of associations that we’re trying to break down,” explained study author Ravi Das, an associate professor at University College London who specializes in psychopharmacology. “We’re not talking about people’s explicit recollection of the fact that they drank in the past.” Ketamine is a powerful medication used in hospitals primarily as an anesthetic, though it has also been used illegally as a club drug, often referred to as Special K. It generates an intense high and dissociative effects. “It’s an intriguing approach that builds on existing literature in a couple of areas,” said Dr. Henry Kranzler, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. Earlier studies have explored ketamine for alcohol, cocaine and opioid addiction — but many had small sample sizes, limited follow-up and lack of placebo, according to experts. Das said it’s also difficult to blind participants to whether they’ve received ketamine or a placebo because of its “strong effects.” Other research has shown the drug’s potential to counter depression and suicidal ideation. In March, a close relative of ketamine — called esketamine and sold under the name Spravato in the form of a nasal spray — was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment-resistant depression. The new study recruited 90 “beer-preferring” people with potentially harmful drinking patterns from internet ads and separated them into groups: those who underwent an exercise involving alcohol-related cues and received intravenous ketamine in a controlled environment; those who completed the exercise but received a placebo; and those who received ketamine alone. While the authors said participants “showed a clearly harmful and problematic pattern of drinking,” they were not seeking treatment for an alcohol use disorder and had not been formally diagnosed with such. But there was some heterogeneity between the groups. While the first group reduced their drinking to the largest degree, they also happened to drink more to begin with — “and therefore their consumption was more likely to decline, a phenomenon known as regression to the mean,” explained Matt Field, a professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK, in an emailed statement. After the treatment, there wasn’t a significant difference between the three groups in terms of how much alcohol they drank. Nine months later, average weekly consumption was roughly the same across the board. The authors say this may have been influenced by losing participants to follow-up. Field said the findings are “promising,” but the claim that the full treatment protocol “leads to ‘unprecedented’ long-lasting reductions in alcohol consumption are not justified on the basis of this data.” Das pointed out other layers to the data, however: Those who completed the exercise and received ketamine had less desire to drink, and they drank less frequently. In addition, there was a correlation among that group between concentrations of ketamine and its breakdown products in the blood, and the reduction in how much participants drank. “People all vary in how quickly they metabolize” and excrete ketamine and its byproducts, Das said. “That level of individual variability with ketamine actually predicts drinking outcomes subsequently.” The group that received ketamine alone saw improvements, too, but not to the same degree as those presented with alcohol-related cues, according to the authors. Kranzler said the study is an intriguiguing proof-of-principle that he suspects will spur subsequent studies needed to replicated these findings. But an important question, he added, “is to what degree could combined psychosocial intervention — cognitive behavioral intervention, for example — synergize with or at least augment the pharmacological effect” of ketamine. “That’s the kind of treatment study that I think would make a lot of sense,” he added. “So this wouldn’t be used in isolation.” The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2019 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.