I'd been doing some research on the Web about alcoholism and ran across a piece on baclofen and how it helped some people reduce their drinking. As a freelancer writer I do a lot of this kind of research, so I started Googling baclofen and found this site, which mentioned both bac and nal. Which sounds a lot like bacchanal, but bear with me. I first tried baclofen, but the low dosages by doc put me on didn't really help, although it gave me a glimpse of what life without an alcohol craving could be like. One of the sites that had mentioned baclofen also mentioned naltrexone. It was
www.thesinclairmethod.net. After doing a few weeks of baclofen, I went back to my doc and requested naltrexone. I showed him the "For Physicians" part of the book I downloaded from the site. He was already familiar with the way Chantix worked for smokers, blocking the nicotine receptors that prompted nicotine addiction, so recognized the possibilities immediately and wrote me a script. Three months later, I'm still on track and hoping for a good outcome, although I realize there is a significant percentage for whom nal just won't work.
I should also mention my experience with AA, or in my case, NA. My therapist sent me to NA because of my binge drinking, and I immediately felt like a fish out of water. According to them, my drinking was caused by some character defect. I was, to hear them tell it, damaged goods. But I could make it all better by towing the NA line, which is pretty much the same as AA. I went to a couple of meetings, but soon realized that for most of these folks, the meetings had taken the place of alcohol in their lives - it was just another form of addiction. I started researching AA, and that's when my eyes opened even wider.
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by Bill Wilson in the mid-Thirties after he hit the proverbial rock bottom. He was actually given hallucinogens at a rescue mission in which he saw a vision he later described as "meeting God," which engendered in him the task of saving other poor souls like himself from a life of alcoholism. He became a student of philosopher Williams James, who believed that suffering was the only way to spiritual transformation, which became the seed of AA's "you are all damaged" philosophy. In other words, AA is espousing the teachings of a man who had a vision under the influence of a hallucination. Sounds a little like Scientology, doesn't it?
Now take a look at TSM, which is based on a sound scientific principle stating that the opiod receptors alcohol binds to can be blocked by Naltrexone, causing the alcohol to become ineffective as an intoxicant, and that repeated blocking results in pharmacological extinction of alcohol cravings. Which one sounds more appealing? Yes, AA has a certain limited effectiveness among a small group of people. And god bless 'em, they've found what they're looking for. But for the vast majority of people for whom the religion-based...I'm gonna say cult...has not worked, I think TSM is a kinder, less accusatory solution that doesn't require the demolition of one's self-image in order to work.
Whew. OK, lemme get off my soapbox here. I admit I'm a little biased here, and I'm one hundred percent in favor of whatever works. But I hate to see folks down on themselves because of a chemical imbalance that in some quarters equals a character flaw. Let's hope the truth spreads quickly.