Hi Lo0p,

You're welcome to do mine whenever you wish. However, I very recently plotted my graph (using Excel) and, if anything, the trend was slightly upwards! If you want more data than that which I publish weekly, just let me know.

All the best,

V.

EXACTLY!

I don't really understand these graphs. I get that a pattern that may not be obvious at the time can become clearer later on, but what does the exponential mean?

Not much really. It's just one of several types of trendlines that happens to predict the progress of someone going through TSM, more closely than other types of trendlines. What I am trying to show through these graphs is that 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through this process, the exponential trendline is actually NOT a good predictor of progress. Only when someone is cured do we see that the exponential trendline matches and has a tendency to predict their actual consumption.

I'm missing something still. Why use these lines at all when they mean nothing (?) till one's cured?

And I'd be grateful for these trendlines to actually be explained as they are so often used on this site.

A very confused 8

8days

think of it like this

Our behaviour under TSM is governed by biological and pharmacological laws - how our body reacts to the combination of naltrexone and alcohol. Those laws dictate that the more we drink the stronger the reinforcement - and it is this reinforcement that naltrexone acts to reduce - by chipping away little by little. Imagine that we drank exactly 20 units a day every single day, and lets further imagine that this was in the form of some weak beer, so that we physically consumed 5 litres of this beer every single night. Now lets imagine that the impact of naltrexone was to reduce our consumption by 5% every night.

The amounts we'd drink would be 20 (before we start), 19, 18.05, 15.15, 16.29.......

This sort of pattern is in fact what actually happens, and this type of relationship (where the next value is a set fraction of the current value) is called an exponential.

The thing we don't know however is whether the reduction is 5% or 4% or 6% or 8% etc before we start.

So instead we have to rely on measurements of our drinking rate. The problem is that there are other factors at work here - maybe your beer ran out one day, or you started later, or you fell asleep earlier etc - so the actual number on any given day will be a little higher or a little lower than the 'ideal' (i.e. that effect produced entirely by naltrexone)

What doesn't change however is that the CAUSE is naltrexone, and the laws of nature that cause this dictate that the nature of the relationship is exponential. This is why we use an exponential fit. However the 'noise' (e.g. falling asleep, being sick, running out of beer etc) in the data means that it can take a while for the 'true' curve to emerge

I'm not sure how right or wrong I am about this so anybody else please feel free to chime in:

We use them because they are what Drs. Sinclair and Eskapa used to visually describe and predict the extinction of craving and consumption in their subjects studies.

I am separated from college by 8 years of alcoholism so I'm not sure that this is correct but if I am remembering correctly I think that an exponential trendline is: an equation that provides the "best fit" for the data available that can "predict" unknown future data to a certain degree (R^2 value). The equation takes the form of a 2nd(?) order polynomial better known as a quadratic equation (a^2+b^2=c^2)

I could be way wrong on this, I tried to wiki it and got nothing and I'm still drunk from last night Does somebody else know?

thank you!

Thanks so much for your excellent, careful, explanation 1-4-the-road But I'm afraid I still don't see it. All I see is that when we're finally cured we get a graph that slopes downwards nice and smoothly, even though it seems to have little or no relation to the short-term figures.

Is there any evidence that Nal has a steady exponential effect? Doesn't the sudden 'switching' that many of the cured have described seem to argue against that? And if there isn't, why produce such graphs? If there is, where does the equation used come from, and how was it arrived at?

Sorry to be so difficult. I am really trying, but failing to see, any point here other than that you won't see a general trend until you're cured.

Yes there is evidence that it has a steady exponential effect. The graph out of the book was an average of all the data that the Dr.'s had available to them, data from MANY different people and experiences. The fact that it comes from many different people and there is so much more data than just one persons journey LESSENS the perceived impact of those "other factors at work" that 1-4 mentioned. By adding data you are removing the impact of the "noise" and REVEALING what is actually occurring which is the extinction curve and the fact that nal, on average, has a steady exponential effect. -still drunk (grain of salt, all that stuff)