Peer-reviewed clinical trials showed heavy drinkers cut their drinking by 34 to 57 percent. They weren't trying harder. They just didn't want more.
In a modified laboratory room at McLean Hospital, decorated to look like a small studio apartment (carpet, lamp, reclining chair, television, a mini-fridge stocked with the participant's preferred brand of beer), researchers were measuring something unusual.
They were measuring how much someone wanted a second beer.
The room had a special table. To the participant, it looked like a normal end table. Underneath, it was a calibrated digital scale, wired to a computer in the next room. Every time the participant took a sip and set the glass down, the scale logged the volume. Every pause between sips was timed. Every beer opened was noted.
The participants knew they were being observed. They did not know the table was a scale.
This was the protocol Dr. Scott Lukas and his team at McLean Hospital (a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate) designed to study whether an ancient Chinese root could reduce alcohol consumption in humans.
The root was Kudzu.
The results, first published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research in 2005, changed what the scientific community understood about botanical approaches to alcohol craving. A follow-up study in 2013 moved the research out of the lab and into participants' actual homes.
In both studies, the effect was clear. People given Kudzu root extract drank significantly less than people given placebo. They didn't report trying harder. They didn't feel unwell when they drank. They simply reached for the next beer less often and took longer to finish the one in front of them.
In the outpatient follow-up, where heavy drinkers took Kudzu for four weeks while living their normal lives, the reduction in alcohol consumption ranged from 34 to 57 percent over the treatment period.
Here's what that research means, why it has been largely ignored by mainstream medicine, and why it matters if you've been trying to cut back on drinking and nothing is working.
The Scientist
Dr. Scott Lukas is not a fringe figure. He spent decades as the director of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, one of the most well-known psychiatric research hospitals in the country. His work has been funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He has published extensively on both prescription pharmacotherapies and botanical compounds for addiction.
What drew him to Kudzu was simple. The existing medications for alcohol use disorder (naltrexone, disulfiram, acamprosate) were effective for some patients but limited by side effects, prescription barriers, and poor adherence. Historical Chinese medical texts dating to roughly 600 AD described a root called Ge Gen used specifically to help drinkers drink less. Ge Gen is Kudzu.
The hypothesis was worth testing.
The Plant
Americans know Kudzu, if they know it at all, as the invasive vine smothering trees and highway medians across the South. Most Americans don't know it was deliberately imported from Asia in the early 20th century and that it's the same plant Chinese physicians have prescribed for over a thousand years.
Pueraria lobata (Kudzu). The active isoflavones, including puerarin, are concentrated in the root.
The active compounds in Kudzu are a group of isoflavones, including puerarin, daidzin, and daidzein. Puerarin is the most abundant. When Dr. Lukas's team developed a standardized extract (labeled NPI-031) for their trials, they concentrated these isoflavones to about 25 percent of the formula.
The 2005 Study
The first human trial was designed to be elegant and unambiguous. Fourteen heavy drinkers (people who reported drinking approximately 25 alcoholic beverages per week) were enrolled. Each participant served as their own control. They came to the lab in pairs, hung out in the simulated-apartment room, watched TV, and had ad libitum access to their preferred brand of beer for 90 minutes.
Each participant completed two drinking sessions. Before one session, they took Kudzu extract for seven days. Before the other, they took a placebo. The order was randomized and blinded.
Placebo: 2.5 beers per session
Kudzu extract: 1.5 beers per session
On placebo, participants averaged 2.5 beers per 90-minute session. On Kudzu, they averaged 1.5 beers. They opened fewer bottles. They took longer between sips. The volume of each sip decreased.
No side effects were reported by any participant on Kudzu.
The paper was published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research in 2005. The research was picked up by science writers and journalists at the time, but it never generated the commercial follow-through that pharmaceutical results typically do. This is partly because Kudzu is a plant, and plants don't have the patent economics that fund aggressive marketing campaigns.
"People given Kudzu root extract drank significantly less. They didn't report trying harder. They simply reached for the next beer less often."
The 2013 Outpatient Study
A lab result is interesting. A real-world result is what matters.
In 2013, Dr. Lukas's team published a follow-up study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. This time, the participants were seventeen heavy-drinking men who drank an average of 27.6 drinks per week at baseline. Half took Kudzu extract daily. Half took placebo. The study lasted four weeks.
Participants lived their normal lives during the trial. They went to work. They went home. They drank, or didn't drink, in their own homes. Their consumption was tracked using a wrist-worn actigraphy device and daily diaries.
The Kudzu group reduced their weekly drinking by 34 to 57 percent over the four-week treatment period.
They also had more abstinent days. More consecutive abstinent days. Fewer heavy-drinking days.
The placebo group's drinking didn't change significantly.
Again, no side effects were reported.
If you've been trying to cut back and nothing has worked, the research behind Crave Away is worth reading.
The Naltrexone Comparison
This is the part of the research that rarely gets discussed outside academic journals.
In the published papers, Dr. Lukas and his colleagues noted that the observed effect of Kudzu (reduced alcohol consumption without subjective distress) was similar in pattern to the effect of naltrexone, the FDA-approved prescription medication for alcohol use disorder.
Naltrexone works by blocking opioid receptors in the brain, which reduces the reward response to drinking. Kudzu appears to work through different pathways, possibly involving cerebral blood flow and the speed at which alcohol reaches the brain's reward centers.
The mechanisms are different. The observed behavior (people drink less without feeling deprived) is similar enough that the researchers made the comparison in peer-reviewed print.
In practical terms, naltrexone requires a prescription, a doctor's visit, and, for a meaningful share of users, comes with side effects (nausea, fatigue, mood flattening) that limit adherence. Kudzu is a dietary supplement. No prescription. In the published trials, no reported side effects.
Some clinicians and commentators have started referring to Kudzu as "nature's naltrexone." The phrase is informal. The research behind it is not.
Why This Research Has Stayed Under the Radar
If this research is so clear, why have most doctors never heard of it?
A few reasons.
Kudzu is a plant, not a drug. There's no patent on Kudzu. That means no pharmaceutical company has a financial incentive to run the kind of massive Phase III trials that would bring it to the FDA's attention and into mainstream clinical practice.
Supplement regulation is a grey area. In the United States, dietary supplements don't require FDA approval. This means Kudzu can be sold and taken without prescription. It also means that the supplement industry has a reputation for quality inconsistency, which makes even well-researched botanicals look suspect.
Doctors default to what they can prescribe. A physician who wants to help a patient drink less has a formulary of prescription options and a referral list of therapists. Recommending a dietary supplement isn't standard practice, even when the research supports it.
The grey-area drinker isn't a clinical category. Naltrexone, disulfiram, and acamprosate are prescribed to patients with diagnosed Alcohol Use Disorder. People who drink three glasses of wine a night, don't miss work, don't get DUIs, and don't have withdrawal symptoms typically don't meet the clinical threshold for AUD. They don't get prescribed anything. They're told to "cut back."
For a huge portion of the population, the grey-area drinkers, the research on Kudzu is exactly the research they need and never hear about.
Crave Away
Cloud9's Crave Away is a daily supplement built around a clinical dose of Kudzu root extract. The formula was developed with guidance from Dr. Brooke Scheller, DCN, CNS, a doctor of clinical nutrition, founder of Functional Sobriety, and author of How to Eat to Change How You Drink, who serves as an advisor to Cloud9.
Dr. Brooke Scheller, DCN, CNS — Doctor of Clinical Nutrition. Advisor to Cloud9. Author, How to Eat to Change How You Drink.
The formula is built around Kudzu as the hero ingredient, paired with a stack of nutrients specifically chosen to restore what regular drinking depletes:
Mucuna Pruriens and L-Tyrosine. Dopamine precursors. Alcohol depletes dopamine over time, which is part of why the craving pattern intensifies after weeks or months of regular drinking.
Griffonia Simplicifolia (5-HTP). Serotonin precursor. Restores mood stability and supports sleep. Alcohol disrupts serotonin, which is why heavy drinkers often wake at 3 a.m.
Benfotiamine. The most bioavailable form of vitamin B1. Alcohol burns through B1 stores, which is why heavy drinkers often experience fatigue, brain fog, and memory issues. Standard thiamine has poor absorption. Benfotiamine crosses into cells more effectively.
Methylcobalamin (B12) and active Folate (L-5 MTHF). The bioavailable forms your cells can actually use for cellular repair.
Two capsules a day. No prescription. No doctor visit. No meetings.
The protocol is built for the grey-area drinker. The person who doesn't meet the criteria for a diagnosis but knows the habit has outgrown its welcome. The person who has tried Dry January, read the books, downloaded the apps, and still finds themselves pouring at 5 p.m.
60-day money-back guarantee. Free shipping. Pause anytime.
What Customers Report
"When I am consistent with it, I am barely thinking about drinking at all. It definitely helps with the habitual thoughts."
"I'll pour my wine, but I'm not as interested in having it as I was before."
"The mind chatter is gone."
The Bottom Line
For twenty years, researchers at a Harvard-affiliated hospital have been quietly publishing clinical evidence that a botanical used for over a thousand years in Chinese medicine can measurably reduce alcohol consumption in heavy drinkers.
The research is real. The mechanism is partially understood. The comparison to naltrexone is in the published papers.
If you've been trying to cut back on drinking and nothing has worked, you have not been failing at willpower. You've been missing the chemistry.
This is where to start.
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Lukas et al., "An extract of the Chinese herbal root kudzu reduces alcohol drinking by heavy drinkers in a naturalistic setting," Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2005.
Lukas et al., "A standardized kudzu extract (NPI-031) reduces alcohol consumption in nontreatment-seeking male heavy drinkers," Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2013.
Penetar et al., "A single dose of kudzu extract reduces alcohol consumption in a binge drinking paradigm," Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2015.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This article is editorial content and is not medical advice. Consult your physician about any health concerns.