In the treatment of alcoholism, co-treatment with an active agent capable of offsetting unwanted adverse clinical manifestations to the treatment itself, for example, negative drug adverse clinical manifestations, greatly increases patient compliance. Increasing patient compliance, in turn, creates a better success rate and decreased recidivism or relapse. The current invention combines the use of an opioid antagonist with at least one dopamine D2 partial agonist for the treatment of alcoholism. Suitable dopamine D2 partial agonists are aripiprazole and (−)3-(3-hydroxyphenyl)-N-n-propylpiperidine [(−)-3PPP].