Hi every-one.

I'm from South Africa. I came across Naltrexone while searching for information on that awful medication that makes you throw up if you drink. As you can guess I was feeling pretty despondent and hopeless at the time. A comment in a thread uncovered Naltrexone, and I spent the rest of the day learning more. I watched "One Little Pill", sobbed my eyes out, and then watched it again with my partner.

I come from an alcoholic family. I'm in my mid 30s. In the last two years I've been through some pretty intense trauma. I went through a divorce, and then lost both my parents in a violent home invasion. My alcohol consumption through all of this ramped up pretty spectacularly. Since I grew up surrounded by alcohol, the idea of being completely alcohol free is too scary to picture - everything I know is connected to this stupid stuff. Something good happened? Have a drink! Something bad happened? Have a drink. Nothing happening? ....Yep, have a drink. The idea of trying to quit honestly felt impossible.

Meanwhile, I'm stressed, anxious and depressed about being more and more chained to this habit. I haven't gone a day without drinking for almost two whole years. I have good periods (where I keep my drinking to after work hours, and have light days of only 2-3 beers) and terrible periods (where I go stretches of opening the first beer in the morning, or drinking steadily from late afternoon until late) and the in-betweens. I used to think I had it under control in the good periods, but now even the good patches make me feel hopeless because I know I'm just going to slide back down again at some point.

SO... I found a US pharmacy that supplies Naltrexone (Nodict?) online, bit the bullet and ordered a month's supply. One pill costs about the equivalent of a meal here (our exchange rate is the pits), and it took a few weeks to arrive. If I'm going to do this, I'll need to try find a better source. Anyway, the package arrived today, and I'm so damn scared. I'm scared it doesn't work. I'm scared of the side effects. I'm scared of the hangovers. I'm scared I give up on it. I'm just a bag of nerves right now.

I've been reading through some of the forum posts tonight, with the pills on one side and my beer on the other. Tomorrow, my journey begins.

Welcome to TheSinclairMethod and congratulations on getting started with TSM, Kinsugigirl!

Just as a heads up, the board had grown pretty quiet these days and you might want to check out http://optionssavelives.freeforums.net/ as well.

I don't know how much info you've read on this, but the best way to get going is to wait till you have the next day off, in case the side effects are inconvenient. Start with 25mg on top of at least a small meal for a few days , then if the side effects are tolerable, move up to 50mg. No matter the dose, wait an hour after you take the pill to begin drinking. Follow up the dose with plenty of water throughout the evening to minimize the side effects. Once you get past the side effects, you can take the dose on an empty stomach.

You may get the feeling at some point in the evening that you are on the fence about having another drink. That's your brain telling you that it's probably had enough alcohol for the night. Seize that opportunity and switch to a NA drink for the rest of the evening.

Work on stretching out your drinks, even to the point of leaving them out of reach while you keep a NA drink close by your side. It helps to work on teasing out the difference in how you feel when you actually crave another drink as opposed to simply wanting one. If your brain simply won't leave you alone till you give it another drink, that's craving.

Another important point is to wait to take the Naltrexone till you actually crave a drink. This will set the brain up to really anticipate the blast of endorphins and it will get the maximal disappointment when you keep the craving, the dose of Nal and, after waiting the hour, the first drink as close together as possible.

Oral Naltrexone is available in South Africa, but you may have to do some asking around. Hopefully it will be less expensive than the overseas pharmacy.

Hi JoeSixPack, thanks for the reply and thanks for the information - this is very helpful! I'll definitely be following the advise. I'll also check out the other forum.

I was looking around, don't know how much the US pharmacy wanted, but there's an online SA pharmacy (requires prescription) that selling it for about 1200 Rand (about $90 US) for 30 tabs.

Not sure if you have found a source yet, but check out River Pharmacy (Canada).