Hi everyone,

I have neither had nor wanted a drink in over a month now, after a year of TSM. For many months I drank as many as 15 beers a night on naltrexone, then went through a period during which I drank without the medication, and wound up hospitalized and in terrible shape, for reasons which are still unclear to me. It is true that TSM can take over a year to cure some people, and it does not work for everyone. I am cured, if the past three months are any indication. I know some people take issue with the word "cure", but I do not. TSM is a form of chemotherapy, and is not always straightforward, but it cures between 78 and 80% of alcoholics. That a cured alcoholic must always take naltrexone before drinking, for life and the fact that TSM doesn't work for everyone does not mean that it doesn't cure alcoholism. I have been a hardcore alcoholic for decades, in and out of institutions and jail and treatment for years. Now I hardly think of alcohol, and have no temptation to drink. I call that a cure. The notion of being in "recovery" because I am maintaining my "spiritual condition" is antiquated nonsense. I have no problem calling an alcoholic who drinks moderately on naltrexone, or a person like myself who lost interest in drinking altogether "cured".

For a long time, I did not work at my easel because I wanted to wait until my drinking levels were either low or down to zero. Here's a link to my new video, shot in my studio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CctgIQo8eDE

Here's a link to my blog: http://acrylic48.blogspot.com/

All the best,
Ben

Ben, great video. Whether we call it cured or regained control doesn't matter. It's semantics and personal preference. It describes the same thing. If the definition of health is absence of disease then you certainly fit that. You show no signs or symptoms of alcoholism and you're not taking any medication currently since you haven't drank lately. If you were a type II diabetic and cut out all sugar and grains from your diet would I say you were cured of diabetes or you regained control over diabetes. You wouldn't show any signs of the disease but would be susceptible to it if you ever starting eating sugar and grains again.

It seems we've had a few others on the board who have had some off naltrexone drinking relapses around the year mark (Minneapolisnick and Crown86 come to mind). They couldn't explain it either. Maybe it's the disease's last attempt to lure us back. I'm at eight months now on TSM and close to declaring victory so knowing this may happen in a few months is very powerful. Hopefully, if it happens to me I will recognize it for what it is and not panic. I guess in a way this board is like the hitch hiker's guide to the TSM universe. It tells us all the things to expect that are not covered in Dr. Eskapa's book. Thanks for all you do to promote this and congratulations on getting your life back.

While I don't like the word "cure", I don't want to quibble over this fact: TSM works!

Great work, Ben!

My best,

Nick

Thanks Nick! We agree on the most salient point, that TSM works. I used to wonder what it must be like simply not to be an alcoholic, to be as indifferent to alcohol as I have always been to sports, say, or candy bars. Now I do things that were impossible for me before as a matter of course. Living alone with money in my pocket was impossible for me. At one point, when I was on probation for multiple counts of shoplifting alcohol, I actually asked the judge to sentence me to a full year of electronic home detention with a Martha Stewart type ankle bracelet! Even that couldn't stop me from getting drunk again and coming an inch away from jail.

Part of the reason I use the word "cured" is that I was told over and over again, for twenty-three years, that "alcoholism is progressive, fatal and incurable". That false claim was used to manipulate me into accepting A.A.'s claims about god and prayer, which turned out to be the same old Bronze Age superstitions hawked in fundamentalist churches, only dressed up to look like treatment for alcoholism.It turns out that alcoholism is reversible and, as a bonus, that that reversal has nothing whatsoever to do with supernatural beliefs about god or prayer and nothing to do with enforced socializing with people who generally thought I was an arrogant idiot because I think Richard Dawkins is a more reliable and interesting writer than Bill Wilson.

Getting TSM accepted in the mainstream is going to be very tough and take years. One of the things we have to accomplish, I think, is to change the way people think about alcoholism. It isn't an "incurable mental, physical, and spiritual disease", but an endorphin-reinforced learned behavior that can be unlearned by drinking on naltrexone. Calling it a cure that uses medical technology is accurate, and it also shocks people used to hearing the same old "recovery not cure" nonsense that has been repeated so often that it doesn't occur to people to question or challenge it. A.A. claims that everyone, especially the alcoholic, is incompetent to run his or her own life without supernatural control and total immersion in the theistic and anti-intellectual society of Alcoholics Anonymous. That has to change, now that this medical technology exists and is being not only ignored but suppressed.

I don't think we actually disagree about anything of any substance, Nick. And even if we do, so what? We're not in AA, where one of us has to be right, and the one who is wrong ends up in "jails, institutions, or dead of alcoholism". That's why I prefer science and humanism to religion and groupthink!

Best,
Ben

Well said! Totally agree about AA. I could spend a whole day ranting about this bogus religion. I'm sure you know that Bill W followed the preachings of The Oxford Group and Frank Buchmann, a fringe Christian group described by Time magazine as a cult in the early 20th century. The Oxford Group believed everyone must have a "spiritual awakening" in order to be saved and originally had nothing to do with AA. AA, with its higher power, making amends, etc. is almost a word-for-word replication of The Oxford Group's scripture. In fact, Bill W and the AA founders knew that AA as originally scripted was nothing more than a trip to church and therefore changed some key words like God to "higher power" to make AA seem more secular and therefore more appealing to the masses. Praying away your sins through AA is not the way to treat addiction and AA's 95% failure rate is proof it doesn't work. Never mind that the scientifically demonstrated "deprivation effect" shows that AA is setting people up for failure; alcoholic mice deprived of booze drink twice as much when they get their hands on alcohol. If you believe that these mice are incapable of being honest with themselves and suffer from moral failings, then you should go to AA. If not, try TSM.

I'm not sure I even buy into the "disease model" for alcoholism. Is an addiction a "disease"? I'm not sure. I believe alcoholism is an addiction with varying degrees. I don't believe you are an alcoholic or not. I believe problem drinkers are suffering from an addiction that varies from individual to individual. Your experience with drinking is nothing like mine but mine was also leading to a premature death. An addiction -- as you correctly explain -- is a learned behavior that can be unlearned by reconditioning. However, the reasons "cure" rubs me the wrong way are twofold. First, it has not accurately described the fate of nearly all of the 800 members on the TSM board. While there are a handful of people who no longer drink and have no interest in alcohol whatsoever, they are a tiny minority on the board and do not come any where near the 80% that TSM does work for. So, IMO, an 80% cure rate is highly inaccurate. Rather, the vast majority -- probably 80% or so -- are like me: Formerly drinking at lethal levels to continued drinking at moderate, healthy levels with occasional unhealthy periods of drinking too much. In May it will be two years for me on TSM and I still like to pound down 12 beers or so in a night and do so every month or so. Whereas I used to do it 3 to 4 nights a week. So I am definitely not "cured". I would say that my addiction has been drastically reduced through unlearning from lethal levels to safe levels. And from what I'm reading on the board, most of the other self-described "cured" people have had similar experiences. And, as I said, I do not quibble with the word "cure" because you have to keep taking the pill or because it works for 80% or so; I quibble with it because I believe of the 800 members on our board, only a handful have reduced their addiction to non-existent, which is what the word "cure" connotes to me.

Another reason I dislike the word "cure" goes to the issue that is most dear to my heart -- and yours as well -- namely, to spread the word about this miracle treatment to as many people as possible. From my experience, the moment you describe TSM as a "cure" to anyone, including especially those in the medical or addiction profession, they scoff so loudly that they don't even hear what you have to say after that. But, from my experience, if you present it not as a cure, but instead, as a pill that sharply reduces one's compulsion to drink alcohol, they tend to listen far more attentively. And, as I've said before, I think the way to present this revolutionary treatment is not to use risky words that sound like hype like "cure" because it sets people up for failure. For those who went from drinking 100 drinks a week to 15, they will feel like failures because they still drink and don't meet the definition of "cured." When, in fact, what they have experienced is anything but a failure; rather, it's a miracle that has saved their life.

You are obviously a very bright guy and GREAT spokesperson for the method. I just want to think out loud about the best way to present this to a skeptical public. And I think we pretty much agree on everything but have a slight difference of opinion on how to sell it to the public. Our lives have been saved and we want to shout it from the mountaintops. Now our job is to figure out the best way to explain our miracle to the public. And I think Bill W was right about one thing: the power of language. He knew if he used words like "God" and "redemption" that the public would tune it out. Kind of the way the public now tunes out the word "cure." We need to package this thing correctly in order to save as many lives as possible.

My best,

Nick

I think there are some interesting events on the horizon that will bring pharmacological extinction for alcoholism to the public awareness. Most notably Lundbeck has licensed oral nalmefene from Biotie. They will be seeking marketing approval in Europe in the second half of this year to market oral nalmefene to doctors in Europe (probably 2013 before available) specifically as a non-abstinence based way to reduce drinking in heavy drinkers and alcoholics. The pharmaceutical sales force will then be the ones trying to influence physician opinions motivated by sales numbers and profits (the only way to get anything done in medicine unfortunately). Oral nalmefene will enjoy patent protection for a number of years and there will finally be motivation for a drug company to push the Sinclair Method. Of course Sinclair will get no credit for this, I'll wager they don't even reference him in the phase III trial results that are due out soon. The drug insert instructions for oral nalmefene will presumably contain the correct instructions on how to take it (unlike Revia) and if it catches on in Europe maybe we'll see it in the US in 2015 or 2016. Profit was the component missing for oral naltrexone to catch on. There was no profit for drug companies and only a few addiction treatment centers had figured out how to profit from naltrexone. We are the lucky few who have heard about this (the highest number of people we've ever had on the board at one time was 33 back in December). To quote science fiction author William Gibson, "The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed."

That's great news. And you are spot on: no profit motive, just good works from humanitarians like Eskapa and Sinclair. It's such a pathetic statement about our society that saving lives is not worth doing unless there is a profit on top of it.

BTW, I hope my above anti-AA post does not offend people. I think everyone's beliefs should be respected. But when something is marketed to me through deception, I speak out about it.

[*]Ben has a new video out on Youtube that was posted yesterday. His life continues to get better. He looks great, sounds great and is currently abstinent but most importantly he is running his life now, not alcohol. His time frame to cure/regained control as reported by him was 10 months. An inspiration to us all and another example that flies in the face of the addiction treatment establishment that claim alcoholism is a progressive disease that will worsen. Here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/user/NaltrexZone For any of our members needing a little encouragement I can't think of a better example. Very few on the board started where Ben started. Ben, thanks for another great video.