Born on January 21, 1946 in Moscow,
the scion of a prominent Russian family, Marshak
graduated Moscow State University in 1971 as a mathematician,
and began his professional career as an analyst
at the Soviet Academy of Sciences Neurological Institute.
Long interested in western methods of drug rehabilitation,
which were virtually unknown in the USSR, Marshak
entered medical school in 1981. After his third
year of studies he received permission to conduct
an independent research project which allowed him
to formally study the effect endogenous alcohol
and exercise had on mood. His study concluded that
alcohol inhibits the enzyme dipeptidase in blood
plasma that breaks down opiates, allowing Marshak
to hypothesize that elevated alcohol content in
the blood stream and brain increases levels of metencephaline
which regulates state of euphoria.
After Marshak presented his results
at the 2nd Moscow symposium on psycho-endocrinology,
he was asked to join the first-ever group of Russian
citizens to be trained by Alcoholics Anonymous –
a program still virtually unknown in the USSR. After
intensive language training in English, Marshak
and ten others traveled to the United States. He
spent half of a year in Florida at the Heritage
Health Treatment Center, ultimately qualifying as
a CAP (certified addiction professional). The second
half of the year he spent in Seattle at the Lakeside
Treatment Center.
By the time Marshak returned home
in 1991, he had visited many US facilities and was
familiar with the varying methodologies that Americans
used to treat addiction. For his first Soviet patients
- alcoholics and heroin addicts -- he designed a
program that incorporated much of what he had learned
in the US with the results of his 1987 study. For
Marshak, addiction treatment had to begin with normalization
of the biochemical imbalance that had developed
in his patients due to alcohol and drug abuse and
was, he believed, the very cause of the dependence.
His goal was efficiently and quickly targeting and
controlling the imbalance in the brain, only after
which he believed his patients could fully benefit
from the 12 Step program.
In 1997 Marshak opened Moscow’s
first clinic for the treatment of addiction. Influenced
by the findings of neuroscientist Kenneth Blum,
which identified a defect in the dopamine D2 receptor
gene, Marshak began testing his patients for the
D2 gene variation. Through scientific literature
Marshak and his daughter, a post doctoral researcher
at the University of California (Irvine), found
other genes linked to reward deficiency syndrome
in general, and specifically in drug addiction.
Over the time, Marshak refined and improved his
genetic testing. Since 2001 all patients at the
Moscow clinic are tested for 4 genes; based on the
results, a special program is created for each individual
client.
The Marshak Clinic Moscow did two
surveys to determine the success of their unique
treatment. In 2000, 53 of the 80 alumni were still
sober after 2 years. In 2003 of the 200 former addicts,
144 were still sober after 2 years.
