I honestly have no idea why you believe this. Since the "magic bullet" is less effective each time, it actually poses a fair bit of danger.

This is already the second go-round, and the protocol is already being violated again. This is a really, really bad idea.

I think that Barry's quest can be safely put in the following context:

"The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker."

I know AA is not particularly popular on this site, but I think this particular piece of wisdom might have some relevance in this instance. If you are spending any about of time on this site it's safe to say that you are at least an abnormal drinker, if not an alcoholic. I have certainly dabbled in the science of trying to control my drinking. I have proven time and time again that I am an abject failure at doing this. I am also of the opinion that little a versus big A alcoholic is simply a function of time. Given enough practice and effort, we all eventually graduate from little a to big A (some might consider that from little asshole to big ASSHOLE). Barry, I've mentioned before that I am quite a bit further along than you, but I was also right where you are at one point not long ago.

The next two sentences are significantly more important. They say the following: "The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death." Although it would have made more sense to say that many pursue it through the gates of insanity, I get the drift. We all have different bottoms, some are low bottoms and some are high bottoms. And some people go right through the bottom and end up swimming with the fishes. Barry, maybe you haven't found yours yet. And maybe you will never have to find it. Some people can skate on the thin ice for their entire lives and get away with it. My personal experience is that my fat ass eventually falls right through the ice. My personal experience as well as that of countless others tells me that for me to continue to drink is a losing proposition in the long run. TSM has given me a tool to overcome my biggest challenge which is the mental obsession. I am not going to look that gift horse in the mouth. I am going to take it and cherish it and not tempt fate. I'm not where I want to be just yet, but I do see light at the end of the tunnel and it is very promising and hopeful.

A few paragraphs later the following statement is made: "Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet." It would appear that we are still not there. While we may be able to drink as a "normal drinker" from all outward appearances, the truth of the matter is our drinking is no longer the same. But it hasn't been the same for me for a long time, so I welcome the change.

Sorry if I offended anyone for beating the AA drum. Good luck to all and have a great week!

I'd like to get high. I'd like it very much. I know it would be unwise, though. It wouldn't stop there. The slide back usually starts with one, then with just a couple, but it leads to bad places.

I'm glad that medical science has put me back in the driver's seat. Now, where am I going to drive my life? I'm thinking that "right back into the swamp where I got stuck and that I just barely got out of" is a bad idea, and that puttering around its outskirts is not so much a happy middle ground as a dance with a demon.



As I've said before, naltrexone is a sledgehammer. Medical researchers are working on developing more delicate tools, and someday -- maybe tomorrow, maybe in a decade -- we will have a tool which really does let us feel alcohol's warm glow while blocking its addictive properties. That day isn't today, though, and we have to live in the world as it is.

Good luck, Barry. I hope this plan works out for you, and that your magic bullet saves you if and when you ever need it again.

What if the warm glow IS the addictive part?
What if "normal drinkers" don't experience it like we do?
What if "normal drinkers" experience drinking is more like us drinking with nal?

Food for thought.

Everyone assumes that normal drinkers have more control. What if they have less enjoyment?

I wondered that also.

FWIW, my husband -- a normal drinker -- tried some nal+al as an experiment. He described it as missing the "ah, that hits the spot" feeling. He was disgusted by alcohol and did not finish his drink. It definitely didn't replicate his usual experience. Based on this, I don't think the nal blockage is causing us to experience alcohol as most do. If that were the usual experience, nobody would ever start drinking in the first place.

There's some evidence that people who will later become problem drinkers have a stronger pleasure reaction from the start. That would certainly explain a few things. It's not conclusive, though, and in fact some people think the opposite may be true. It's hard to catch pre-alcoholics and track them through their alcoholism.

"That hits the spot" isnt close to what I experience. Interesting that he thought the alcohol was disgusting.

I really, really enjoyed my bite of alcohol laden desert. I was afraid too, but I could tell why i liked drinking. Thankfully, I think the nondrinking behaviors are ingrained in me now.

Yeah, I know what you mean, but I think lack of vocabulary may be part of the problem. It was clearly worse than his usual experience.

It might be something like this:
nal+al leads to a zero Pleasure Quotient. Regular drinkers, sans nal, experience something like 30-50 PQ. People who develop alcohol addiction gradually are getting something like 70-90 PQ. People who drink addictively from nearly the beginning are getting 100+ PQ.

Then again, it may not. Maybe everybody's getting 40-60 PQ without nal, and some of us want the high more than others.

The former would be interesting because pre-alcoholics could take a smaller dose of nal, or perhaps dork with their dopamine levels, to prevent addiction and actually achieve the Holy Grail of becoming normal drinkers.

There's also the research indicating that heavy normal drinkers report less pleasure from the same amount of alcohol. Do they drink more because they want to reach normal amounts of pleasure, or do they report less pleasure because they're used to a higher level of pleasure? Who can tell? We need to get more people into labs, with their brain activity monitored.



Yeah. When I was experimenting with different dosages and wait times, I knew that 20 minutes was too short because I enjoyed the alcohol. Moremoremore.

Maybe someday I could use the nal as a brake, taking it with the first drink and enjoying those first few, knowing that the nal will shut it down before true drunkenness . . . ah, there's that old thinking again. It would work for a while, but thirty years of conditioning would reassert itself, and sooner or later I'd skip the nal and end up in trouble again.

We kinda hijacked Barry's thread, didn't we? Sorry about that, Barry.

I couldn't believe how quick I got readdicted. Over Christmas I drank about 10 times without Nal and had a large binge on Diazepam. Whatever it was I slipped back into 10 cans a night by February.

The thing which shocked most was that even when I started back on the Nal in early January I seemed to stop working. This is in contrast to when I just started on TSM and felt it working straight away.

To this day I blame it on the Diazepam. I'll not be making the same mistake second time around. I'm waiting until the new year to make sure my system is totally clear of all benzos.

Nal from the off totally took the pleasure away. The science behind it really made sense to me. When I tryed battling on I could still get the relaxing feeling (the GABA side of things) but no matter how I tried there was no pleasure (endorphins blocked). Now that I'm off Nal I get that lovely warm happy feeling after 2 beers. It just totally makes sense.

I'd like to think that we're just wired differently, because that would mean our addictions aren't our fault, but I'm not convinced.

The euphoria, warm glow, whatever you want to call it, is highest during those first few drinks. Everyone's happier after a few. Those who keep drinking, though, don't get happier. We have our happy drunks and our mellow drunks, but there are also weepy drunks and belligerent drunks. Those people aren't inducing happiness. They don't end up happy.

Unfortunately for my self-image, it makes more sense to believe that a few drinks make us happy, more drinks are counterproductive, and most people are better than I am at targeting the sweet spot.

This could still fit with the idea that some people experience either more or less euphoria than average. It just doesn't absolve us. We spent a lot of years burning bad patterns into our brains.

There are also life factors. Even mice bred to crave alcohol drink much less when they have satisfactory little mouse lives than when their horizons are limited to a boring cage.

So, so much research has been done . . . and we still don't have a full answer, much less a real cure. We have TSM, a wonderful tool which has saved lives and restored control and freedom, but calling it a "cure" is accurate only in the behaviorist sense. It doesn't turn us normal.

Thomas1210, what was your readdiction experience like? How did it begin, and how did it progress? More details might help others avoid that trap.