My Experience
Naltrexone is a type of drug known as an Opiate antagonist. It's been around since 1963. Since the early 1970s David Sinclair has been conducting research in the Biomedical Research Laboratories in Finland that indicate more than a 78% reduction in alcohol consumption. Studies done since 1992 in Florida suggest success rates as high as 85%.

Originally intended to help opiate addicts to detox; it has been recently discovered that Naltrexone can actually cause a pharmacological extinction of cravings for alcohol. This is referred to as "The Sinclair Method."In the book "The Cure for Alcoholism" by Roy Eskapa, PhD and David Sinclair, the Sinclair method is described as a way to drink yourself sober. Sounds kinda nutty? Well, actually its not...For four months I took Naltrexone with my first drink each day. I was a hardcore fall down drunk daily drinker for 25 years. I had been in ten detoxes and four dual diagnosis wards over a period of 15 years. Nothing I tried was able to successfully curb my desire to drink... Then I tried Naltrexone... I' haven't had a drink or even a desire to drink since.

The Sinclair studies seem to focus not only on people who quit drinking entirely, and included people who were able to moderate. In my opinion, this does not detract from the fact that Naltrexone actually works. I tried for many years to stop drinking, and no matter how hard I tried, I was unsuccessful every time.

Naltrexone, along with a comprehensive Personal Recovery Plan gave me the edge that I needed to achieve total abstinence from alcohol. Naltrexone has proved to be a very useful tool in my recovery toolbox. I would recommend that anyone who is having a problem with booze should learn more about it.

Hello Gunthar2000, so glad you posted what a hope you give for us who are still struggling and doubting about how effective NAL can be, so thank you so much for the encouragement!

Please don't be a stranger here we need all the help we can get.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ( it will be a new beginning for a lot of us)


corkit

Hi Gunthar, thanks for posting. I'm curious about the "Personal Recovery Plan" - could you tell us more about this?

Yes Gunthar, please tell more. Your post sounded almost like an infomercial! You are preaching to the choir here - we all know about TSM. What is your story?

Hope you will provide details as to your history of drinking, when you started TSM and how soon it worked, etc. We need to hear more please. Start from the beginning & don't leave out any details :-)

Ha ha Gunthar!

Hey folks this is the Gunthar that originally told me about TSM on a different forum.

Gunthar, Im so glad you could come here and post for us. I had so many requests to try and get you over here. Thanks for coming!

From a person who has gone through TSM long ago (in relation to us) your posts here will be invaluable.

Could you please post the tools you showed me previously so that others may take advantage of what you have found and what has worked for you beyond TSM?

I really am grateful for the chance hap that we crossed paths. TSM is my saviour.

Thanks again,

hapful

Wow -- Thanks to you both. Hapful -- I do remember you saying you had a friend who got you started on TSM. Every success story gives us more hope. I strongly suspect that many who enjoy success jst sort of drift away from here. I can't fault them; I know sometimes I find it helpful to just get away and not even think bout drinking as its importance recedes in my lifew. That's why I feel such gratitude when someone like you stays around, hapful. And a new cured person showing up is a real bonus!!

I'd really like to give an accurate and honest account of how I stopped drinking. I want to be able to help as many people as I can. I got a chuckle out of the comment that someone posted saying that my December post seemed like an infomercial. I dropped out of school early in high school, and I'm pretty much self-educated. I'll try to be a little more casual in this post.

First, it's important that I make it clear that I did not use The Sinclair Method to get sober. What happened was... I had been in and out of detoxes and AA for years. I could not stop drinking, no matter how many promises I made to myself or the people around me. No matter how sincere I was about quitting, I always wound up craving alcohol so much that it seemed like life was not worth living. The only way to stop the wheels from spinning in my head was to get drunk. My life was a living hell.

AA was a real problem for me. After years of working the steps, I lost faith in AA and began to see it as a religious cult. I left and decided to try to find something else.

I went to my doctor and he gave me a perscription for a drug that I can't remember the name of. I do know that my insurance company refused to pay for that drug and the pharmacist made arrangements with my doctor to get a perscription for naltrexone instead.

My memory is a little fuzzy... I was in a real daze back then.
I believe my doctor told me to take the naltrexone each morning. I think it made me nervous, so I decided to take it when I got out of work instead.

Usually I'd come home and start drinking right away. Now I was supposed to take the naltrexone and not drink, but that's not how it happened.

What happened was that I would take the naltrexone and start drinking. Many times I'd wash the naltrexone down with the first beer.

In a short time I noticed that I was drinking less. I just didn't feel the need to slug down 20 beers. All of the sudden 10 was enough... then 6 was enough. I wasn't catching the same buzz any more.

I slould also clarify that I was not exactly consistant while taking the naltrexone. I took it for a couple of weeks... said, "this stuff makes me nervous." and dropped off for a week or so. Sometimes it was three days here... four days there. It wasn't until about half way through a four month period that I was sure a change was happening and began to take it every day.

At that point I also started to believe I might be able to give up drinking.

During about a 4 month period, I probably took two months worth of pills. At the end of 4 months or so I was finally able to walk away from alcohol for good.

Later on I learned about The Sinclair Method... I skimmed through the book (didn't read the whole thing) and said, "Wow! That's kind of like what I did."

Naltrexone was a small part of what I did to ensure that I was free of my addiction. I'd like to share more about how I developed a PRP, but that would take a book and you are probably getting bored by now.

I am very interested in helping one or two people who are interested in abstinence. I've been through it. I'm not talking about AA spiritual nonsense. I'm talking about pulling your life together after years of drinking and failure. I'm not a doctor... I'm not selling anything... I just want to help.

If you need help... Like a pen pal or maybe even someone to talk to... maybe you can teach me what you've learned about TSM and I'll do whatever I can to help you get through early sobriety.

You can contact me at purple-papers@hotmail.com

I know there will be many who will want to contact you personally for direction/help/support or whatever, but could you please describe your personal plan here? If it's long that's a bonus! I would really appreciate hearing your plan in detail - and there are many others who could learn bits and pieces from your story, as we do from all the others.

So please don't worry about length or boring us - blather on brother, we'd like to hear from you (hope I'm not just speaking for myself here...)

It is fabulous to read posts by those of you who have been cured. I am in my 8th week of using Nal, and I drank way too much this weekend. I ordered my Naltrexone from River Pharmacy, so I started to worry today that I have fake pills. Then I searched the boards and saw that Crown86 and a few other cured people got their Nal online, so hopefully my pills are legit.

I'm very happy for you, Gunthar, and the rest of the cured TSM users. Thanks for posting, because I need to read encouraging testimonials, especially after the bingeing I did this weekend.

Many people here, myself included, have ordered from River, including a good portion of those on the official "Cured" list. I actually use alldaychemist now because they are much cheaper. Many here use alldaychemist as well. Literally thousands on MyWayOut have ordered naltrexone, baclofen and topamax from River for years and I've never noticed a single claim of defective pills on that site about River. I just feel the need to make that clear because I don't want people needlessly worrying about their pills if they suddenly hit an uptick in drinking, which is a part of the process.

I'd be interested to hear what you have to say, Gunthar. I actually believe you DID in fact do TSM, albeit inadvertently. This is the way the protocol actually was identified as being effective in many studies, especially the meta-analyses. Subjects who were non-compliant with instructions to abstain in various studies were noted to have the most significant reductions in drinking long-term. So while it's always good to attack life's battles on all fronts, I hope you give naltrexone its due and, given the name you chose for your thread, I assume you will.