The Naltrexone Confidential guy is getting on my nerves.
http://naltrexoneconfidential.com/This blog is fairly popular, I think. At least, the linked Facebook page has quite a few likes.
The guy gets on my nerves with his frequent insistence that there is no pleasure to be had from drinking alcohol. It's a sort of Allan Carr philosophy -- there's no real pleasure, only temporary relief from the pain of addiction.
If that's so, then why do non-addicted people ever drink alcohol? Carr claims that they are addicted, that all drinkers of alcohol are addicted, but that some haven't realized it yet. The Naltrexone Confidential guy hasn't taken a position on it yet. I'm not sure he's thought about it.
BTW, it is
well established that alcohol gives pleasure. Claiming that that's not so is just . . . dumb. Drinking alcohol,
in everyone, causes the release of endorphins. This is so thoroughly established that any research contradicting it would be revolutionary. A handful of people asserting that their pleasure was only relief from withdrawal does not count as revolutionary research.
My experience is not regarded as valid. I twice left comments explaining that my experience differed from his -- both were completely civil and respectful; neither was approved for posting. I wrote to ask if I had offended him in some manner -- he ignored me and never responded. I know that some communication is achieved, though, because he keeps writing about . . .
Quote:
ignorant, ill-informed people free advertising space on here to spread lies, misinformation and disinformation
I really, really hope that he's talking about someone else when he rants about people trying to engineer conflict and people with hidden agendas deliberately spreading false information. Unfortunately, I don't think he gets as much email as all that. The blog is successful, but not to the point where he's getting a hundred pieces of email per day. If he received that much, he'd have more than the occasional needle in a haystack to approve for the comments section.
You may wonder why I read the blog if it bugs me. That's simple -- I read it because it's an active outlet for information and action re TSM.
I do wish the major outlets of information would be honest. This isn't AA. We don't need to lie to trick people into trying it.
I'm not a fan of the "And you can still drink!" hook for TSM. It's misleading. It plants the idea that the pill will turn us into normal people who can enjoy a few without going overboard. That means that more people are willing to try it, sure, but what happens when those people realize that they can drink only in the literal sense of ingesting the beverage, that they can't have what normal people have?
I'll tell ya what happens -- they ditch the pill. Like Joethelion's wife, like barryb, like all the others who have come and then gone, they get rid of the thing which was interfering with their drinking.
Telling the truth about pleasure being blocked would discourage some folks from trying, but would make the noncompliance problem all but disappear. The desperate folks who really need it would still jump on board. The folks who'd ditch after a few weeks or months would just never do it in the first place.
Alcohol is not a deadly trap of a liquid which people drink only because they're addicted. It's a chemical which generates artificial and temporary happiness in all, leading to addiction in some.
TSM is not a delicate scalpel which lets us enjoy alcohol like ladies and gentlemen. It's a sledgehammer which blocks opioid receptors, allowing us to trick our lower brains into dissociating alcohol and euphoria.
Those are not just my experiences, they're solid, fact-based views. They're also thoughtcrime, not only to AA zealots but to the few best-known TSM advocates.
“Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”