oh yes, and thank you, spring rider. most encouraging, very nice of you to post.

I have to agree. Your numbers are proving me wrong and that is a wrong I would want to be!!

KrazyKris,
It looks like you are doing great. As you said, I have never been much of a been counter. I am always too busy to keep track of the little things. But I was able to look back at the end of a week and say, "this was a good week".

TSM works!!!

Just checking in.

Everything is still going well. I guess I am outside of the six month window now. Things have levelled out and I have reached a comfortable pattern. I just don't drink very much.

Here is a typical nights thinking.

Desire - "Maybe I will have a drink"
Brain - "That's cool. What time is it?"
Desire - "It's 8:45"
Brain - "Okay. So if I take my Nal now, I can have a beer at 9:45"
Desire - "You know, now that I think about it, I don't want to drink that much"
Brain - "Yeah, let's just go to bed at 10"


That is what it sounds like for me. So the drinking I do is usually one night on the weekend, if any. This last weekend, I didn't drink at all. We went to a little party but since I road the Harley, it was not worth even thinking abouit it.

Used to be that leaving the house without a Nal pill was reason to turn around. Not a crises anymore. I have gone on trips and realized that I didn't bring any Nal with me. The first time, I nearly panicked - but I did not drink nor did I feel the need to. Now it is no big deal.

Six and a half months ago, it was inconceivable for me to string three days together unless I was motivated by some real bad guilt trip.

Haven't read many other posts but I will try to catch up.

This is a workable method for me. Try it. It may work for you.

All was going well and then my daughter went in for surgery. She had an overbite and was having her upper jaw broken and rearranged. Scary stuff but not life threatening.

The morning of 30 June we took her to the hospital and what was to be a 2 hour operation turned out to be six. And then she was done except the next day they realized there was a problem and had to re-admit her. She went back into surgery at 8 PM and was not out until after midnight. For the most part, I did not sleep though the entire affair. To make a long story short, the end results are excellent and she is recovering quickly. But there is a reason for this story.

I went home and was totally stressed. And I was craving to drink like I had not been for a long time. On the way home I bought ¾ liter of Jagger. When I got home, I started drinking shots of it and chasing it with beer. I went to bed and woke up with a miserable hang-over; my first since starting the Sinclair Method. I had drank about half the bottle of Jagger and probably about 8 beers.

But was this a set-back? A slip? A failure?

And my answer is an astounding "No".

This was an opportunity to extinguish a trigger that comes around as often as Haley’s Comet. As I see it, when a craving comes along, it actually represents an amalgam of triggers. As long as I take my Naltrexone, I am armed to go out and fight the beast, head on. And that is what I did.

I have not had a craving to drink since, so I believe my analysis is justified.

Bottom line?
Do not see your upticks as failures or setbacks. This are deeper triggers rising to the surface. Remember, when you first start, anything is a trigger. Things like air and daylight are enough to make you drink. As you knock these high level triggers down through the process of extinction, more deep rooted and often more powerful triggers will surface. Don't let it scare you away. It is the Sinclair Method working for you as long as you follow the golden rule.

Nal + Drink = Cure

-sr

I think the beard would be cute, WTE! lmao! JK!

Thanks SR! You have become the TSM "poster-child" for a lot of folks and especially for me.

I had a sudden drop in cravings after 4 months, then I took a 1 week vacation (my 1st for the year) and I was over-drinking again. Some folks here said it was a different trigger to extinguish, but I had still my doubts, although it made sense. By the end of that same week the cravings ended. So, you are absolutely correct in your assessment of different triggers being extinguished. The next trigger for me to extinguish will be business travel, then the tragedies of life, one-by-one.

Thanks for another inspiring story.

You should go on tour. Or maybe as more of us become cured, we can compile our posts in a book to promote TSM... We'll call it "The Sinclair Method, How We Were Cured of Alcoholism - Real Life Examples".

Just a thought.

Bob

Hey maybe you could call it 'Chronicles of NALnia'

Now that's funny!!!

Chronicles of Nalnia!! Love it! So happy for you SR, and hoping this is the story for us all...gives us all much hope for sure. Glad your daughter is doing well - sounded very stressful & scary. Definitely a trigger to either drink, supersize your order, pop a few more, etc...

Always good to hear from you.