Hawaii has one of the highest rates of alcoholism and drunk driving in the nation and the legislature may take steps to correct that.

The house health committee held a hearing today to listen to the experts.

Nearly every week, there is news of a crash involving drunk driving. This is part of the motivation for the house health committee hearing on alcoholism and addiction.

Representative John Mizuno, the Health Committee Co-Chair says, "We need to address this and it is costing the state millions of dollars. And families, other things that we can't quantify in dollar amounts."

Unfortunately, the experts agree there is no magic bullet that will cure alcoholism.

UH Medical School Dr. Bill Haning says, "That said, there's some pretty good news on the horizon regarding adjunctive medications - medications that supplement other forms of therapy to produce a greater yield in terms of recovery from alcoholism."

Dr. Haning says part of the problem facing those working in the recovery field is that no one medication works on all addictions - - or even all those with the same addiction.

"What that probably reflects, kirk, is the fact that there are multiple different alcoholisms and different people who are in stages of alcoholism. it's not just one disease or one process."

During today's hearing, a new treatment mode was made public - an antabuse shot taken once a month.

Alan Johnson of Hina Mauka says, "It's a great new field that's coming out. lot of new medications will be coming soon. But it doesn't replace treatment. But it can sure make treatment a lot more effective."

Whether it's a shot or a pill, medications alone are not likely to lead to recovery.

"Yes, in fact, they've done testing on the drugs alone and they found they failed. But they found when they did testing it with treatment - it greatly improved treatment. You just can't replace - there's a lot more to stopping drinking than just stopping drinking."

Dr. Bill Haning says, "It requires social, spiritual, medical and ultimately some sort of psychological assistance in order to get people through this."

Representative Mizuno and others will use the testimony when they consider legislation next year.