Dr. Eskapa.

I've just started week 21 of TSM and my units per week are down 37%. I have noticed I have less tolerance of alcohol now. i.e. I cannot stomach as much as I used to and blackouts occur after fewer units.
Does a decrease in tolerance go hand in hand with Extinction?
If so, why?
Is there pathology for this?

Cheers.
tuttle

Hey Tuttle,
I cannot answer for Roy but I will tell you that what you are experiencing a normal phenomena. I noticed a decrease in tolerance, for the most part.

But do not be shocked if you find yourself regressing and going in for a real bender some night. You are right at that window. The path is not straight. Let it happen and just be sure to drink under safe conditions.
Namaste,
_sr

Bumping this topic as I am experiencing this right now.

However, I just did a reality check on my martini glass. It is closer to 9 ounces. So I am going to say (because olives take up some mass...3 to be exact) that my drink is more like 6.5-7 units. So although I'm not obsessing about numbers, that probably makes my pre TSM closer to 100-120 units. Yikes

I guess, my alcoholic ass wanted to fudge my numbers. Damn!

However, Pre TSM I could have one or two martini's and quite a few beers (4-6) on any given night. A pint of vodka for me was no big deal. So I will still state that my tolerance seems to have been reduced. This is amazing to me. But 8 units is more like 64 a week and this is new, so I'm going to take a moment to look at the folks in my range and study the charts for 15-17 weeks out..... Best, Jim

Jim your posts are making me very optimistic for you. We have different drinking histories but you seem to describing something that sounds familiar - a sort of ratcheting down. I'm a creature of habit for sure, but what happened along the way was I adopted new habits as they became possible. By that I mean, when I started I just drank my bottle of wine as was my habit. Then I found one night I could stop at three - so I made an effort to stop at three for a few days in a row, until it became my new routine without further effort. Later that ratcheted down to two. Still latter it ratcheted down to one. At the moment I'm "practicing" stringing together AF days (mostly as a test).

The key for me was to let each "level" ride for a while at that new plateau- long enough for it to become a new habit. A nice thing about this concept is that the changes I was focusing on were relative to my *current* plateau and were therefore small changes which seemed more achievable than grand changes.

Edit: Oops - I just realized I posted in Dr. E's subforum. Apologies. I guess my new habit had better be reading more carefully!