In our ongoing look at treating substance abuse in America, we turn now to the most commonly used drug and one of the deadliest, alcohol.

Drinking kills more Americans every year than opioids or any other illegal drug.

But as William Brigham reports, promising treatments that could help people curb their drinking are barely being used.

Do you want a little salad dressing?

Over the last few years, especially after she retired,

Cindy Funkalee felt like she was drinking too much.

She said nobody else noticed, not her husband or their kids,

but she did, and she just couldn't stop.

Trying to Dalla back on my own was really difficult. I would go through this cycle, so I would drink a little bit too much, then I would wake up with like, okay, fine, I'm not going to drink

for a while, so that night I wouldn't drink. And then it's like two days later, it's like,

I can have a glass and it would just set things off again.

And you could never do just one.

I couldn't do just one. It was really difficult to do just one. I would have, one would

make me one another one. It was like a monkey on my back. It's like, I don't want to be thinking about this all the time.

One day, while driving near her home in Princeton, New Jersey,

you must be 18 to 70 and want to reduce or stop your drinking.

She heard about a study at the University of Pennsylvania that was using a long-acting version of the drug naltrexone

to help people curb their drinking.

And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like I never, how come I've never heard of this medication before?

Most the practitioners still don't prescribe or perhaps don't even know about drugs like naltrexone.

Addiction psychiatrist Dr. Henry Cranzler was running that study.

She wanted to reduce her drinking.

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