Jaba, I was just thinking of ordering on line to have some extra on hand. I will be out of school the end of June. I will see how everything goes with the doctor next week. I will be careful with the type of antidepressant. Thank you all, looking forward to these 4 days.

Enjoy your time off, Meggie!

Oh, I enjoyed all right, I curled up and watched some shows and drank tooo much. I feel it today. I didn't do anything horrid, usually don't because I never drink out of the house.
I know this is a habit, even when I have started the drinking at a later time.
Joe, how is your drinking going?
Maggie, wow, almost 4 months. I know you have taken the journey for years with me. I am hoping my day will come when I just don't want it.
Jaba, are you still good.

Meggie, I'm down from a peak of 15/day and average of 12/day to 4 per day as of late.

Is the later starting time feeling fairly natural to you now? Another technique I used was to put my beer back in the refrigerator, so you might give that a go with the first drink. Any excuse to keep it out of your hand (and preferably out of sight), so you get back to it after a bit, have a sip, put it down again, etc. For me, it's about trotting out a part of my brain that used to have something to say about how I was drinking and getting it to be front and center on a more regular basis after having fallen into disuse for so long. That just kind of segued into keeping an eye on the total units through the night, noticing that if I didn't slow down I was going to go beyond my "allotment" for the evening. Well, if I did go beyond it, no big deal. I'd just re-target for the next night and expect that there would be some up and down.

So you are still taking the medication? How long have you been on the program? I drink gin or vodka in a large 32 ounce jug of water. I did much better last night and feel much better this morning. I wish it would click in
Do you know the pharmacy from Riverside? I tried looking it up and came up with all sorts of answers.

Yes, I've been taking the Nal every day since I started in early January, as I'm a daily drinker.

Glad to hear your numbers were better last night! Did you do anything differently or did you just not feel like drinking as much?

I've never used Riverside, but folks seem to like it. They seem to be a bit pricey to me, but if it's a one-off thing it really doesn't matter. Here's a link to their page on Naltima:

https://www.riverpharmacy.ca/drug/naltrexone-naltima

I have a prescription for Nal through my TSM doc, so I pay more for the doc, but it costs a lot less to fill the prescription.

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No AF days, I did have a couple in November but not since. I would love to have that feeling of freedom of not having alcohol in the house. I also get nervous if there isn't an extra bottle. I will be at 8 months, April 7th. I would also love to get to Maggie's situation. Happy Easter all.

Just keep with it, Meggie. Keep trying things to break up the habit, like keeping the bottle out of sight. There's a part of the brain (the Striatum) that remembers alch=pleasure. It's actually divided into two parts. One that feels euphoria from the dopamine release (which is caused by the endorphins), that part is called the Nucleus Accumbens, it's involved in remembering pleasurable activities. The other part is called the Dorsal Striatum. It also uses dopamine, but it doesn't feel anything from the dopamine release, it just compels you to act. So you have one part of the Striatum that remembers pleasureable things and the other part that remembers the pattern of how to get you to obtain that thing. The Striatum itself is an unconscious part of the brain and has no use whatsoever for logic or reason. It just builds the pathways to pleasure. Every time you engage in a pleasurable activity, that pathway gets wider and stronger. The Dorsal Striatum will give you a little bit of dopamine for each step along the way (leave work and think about alch, stop at the store and get some, take it home, get the glass, open the bottle and pour, sit in your favorite chair, etc., etc.). Well, once that pathway is there, it's there forever (which is why, for instance, you never forget how to ride a bike). But you can make it weaker and weaker, while building new patterns that become stronger and stronger. So while the Nal is working on weakening the link between alcohol and pleasure, you can work on disrupting the pattern via mindfulness and work on building healthy patterns to "dilute" the unhealthy ones.

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