Hello,
I'm new to the forum and TSM - nice to be here.
I'm a binge drinker and was prescribed Nal earlier this week and decided to kick things off on Thursday.
I had 50mg straight out the gates - my fault for not reading about splitting the dose the first two/few times!

I felt terrible nausea almost straight away headache, dizzy, a general feeling of being out of it, could actually feel my eyes blinking for a period which was annoying. That went away but it took me over an hour to drink a (large glass) of white wine because I felt so bad.

Eventually I felt better and cut to 6 hours later and I think I've had 5 wines total. I / my friend poured them so they might have been bigger than standard drinks.
I did notice my speech was a bit slurred a few times but went away. I thought that might've been because I was hungover, tired and had a head cold.
I didn't get any of the buzz or "lift" or "hyper" mood - this I was expecting from the Nal doing its job.
I bid my friends farewell and walked home feeling kind of average - not bad, not totally sober, a bit meh but ok with how it went.

An hour later a splitting headache starts. Can't sleep. Nausea returns. <<< And I still feel headachy and crap 2 days later with nausea coming and going.
Not a lot of energy. No Nal or alcohol since Thursday (it's Saturday night).

SO - my questions are:

1. Was that a Nalover? Did I go overboard by being vague on the pours and counting drinks? I thought I'd be ok because I'd stretched it over so many hours

2. How many times a week should I be drinking for extinction to take place? Is 2 or 3 enough? That's about my usual (to blackout, mind you)

3. How many drinks do I need to have in these sessions? ...IF the Nal is making me feel like crap, I'm less inclined to do my usual drinking behaviour on it (chasing the initial buzz, sometimes getting to blackout). I have no idea how much I usually drink in a week - I binge so it varies wildly. I've never been to hospital but have had a few close calls.

Any advice appreciated. Sorry for the long post but trying to be specific (while being unfortunately but not deliberately vague on my own habits! Sorry!)

Hi, Kodelis! No problem about the length of the post, glad you took the time to write it out and share it with us!

Sorry to hear you got such awful side effects from the Nal. I've never had a Nal-over myself, but I've heard they're quite wretched so that could well be what it was. Side effects in general should pass within a couple of weeks, often it's only a few days. I'll give you a link with some tips for TSM in general, but it includes info on how to minimize the side effects:

http://optionssavelives.freeforums.net/ ... hints-tips

Would you have fared better if you'd started more slowly (less Nal and fewer drinks)? I can't say for sure, but my feeling is a softer start would likely have helped. Some do continue to get occasional Nal-overs though, sometimes from just a couple of drinks.

The last guidance I've seen on starting TSM as a binger is to drink a few days a week for the first couple of weeks, then resume your normal pattern. Generally, craving sets the number of drinking days, but feel free to bear down on the number of drinks per day. For bingers, the sooner you lean into that the better, as alcohol starts to numb the conscious control faculties beyond a certain point. So whatever tricks you've used in the past, recycle them and see what you can manage. One that I've used is to open a beer, take a sip then put it back in the fridge and walk out of the room. Get up to a small task, 10 or 15 mintues worth. When that's done, see if you want another sip. If you don't, then go look up neuroplasticity on the web or something. If you do want another sip, just notice how that feeling feels inside you, the feeling that's pulling you back to your drink. Keep on interspersing sips and chores like that and you may find it's been an hour or so since your last sip. The focus here is to break up the habitual part of drinking and insert pauses, so you more easily become aware of when you don't especially want another slug. Because that's the feeling that's going to grow, the one you want to become familiar with. That's the way you'll feel for the most part towards the end of the process. You largely just won't give a fig about booze.

You only need one drink per session to get a notch closer to your goal. If you can hold it there, so much the better. If not, slow your drinking down, and ask yourself at every pour whether you really want that next drink or not. When you feel like "Meh, I don't really care for another" seize the moment and switch to a soft drink for the remainder of the evening.

As far as numeric stuff goes (what is "a" drink), it really doesn't matter as long as you stick with the same measure throughout. Your typical bottle of wine holds 5 standard US drinks, unless it's high ABV stuff. That's important when it comes to filling out your log, which is a great tool:

http://optionssavelives.freeforums.net/ ... graph-tool

All that said, welcome and thanks for sharing your journey with us! Hope to hear more from you soon, so post whenever you get the notion!

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