year in and doing well, tucson az 23 year old male, help me spread the word on craigslist if you get a minute (under the recovery forum)

Are you cured schulte? I see you started TSM in January. -E

hey shulte, are you mysterium on the craigslist forums? age, other things match up. Sounds like you are doing a good job to spread the word if you are.

Interestingly I found this bit of pseudo-scientific misinformation on the site: (From another poster)

spi A warning about the Sinclair method < Naltrexone_Sux > 2009-07-25 21:03:49

Hi I was told by a poster here that should try the Sinclair method. I just want people to be warned what that fraud poster was trying to get me into. I found this warning written by a doctor. Animals and people are capable of learning things, for sure. They are also capable of unlearning things. The process of unlearning things is known as extinction. In the classical conditioning paradigm, learning is the result of a pairing between something that is intrinsically rewarding (such as food) and something that has no intrinsic meaning (such as a bell). To unlearn or extinguish something learned in this manner, you detach the intrinsically rewarding thing (the food) from the other thing (the bell). In other words, you ring the bell a hundred times and never provide food thereafter. Over time the dogs (or people) will learn that the bell doesn't mean food is on the way anymore and there is no reason to drool. You can argue about how to talk about this phenomena of extinction I suppose. Maybe you are unlearning the connection between the bell and the food, or maybe you are learning something new (e.g., that there is no relationship between the bell and the food), but the net result is the same. So, Sinclair is basically extinguishing the relationship between drinking behavior and pleasure. He has the alcoholic take the anti-pleasure pill before drinking, and then when the drink is actually consumed, it just doesn't have that kick it used to have. Over time, the tight compulsion to consume alcohol just sort of fades away as the brain learns that the thrill is gone. There is a catch here, of course. The brain isn't stupid, and it doesn't like change. When you take a pill to suppress pleasure, the brain doesn't like that and fights back by increasing the total number of opioid receptors in the brain; a process known as up-regulation. The brain's strategy is basically, that it tries to turn up the sensitivity it has to opioid agonists so as to restore normal functioning. This is no problem so long as you stay on the pills, but woe be you if you go off them and drink. If that happens, well, each drink is going to be better than ever before (magnified as its impact will be by the increased numbers of opioid receptors), and problem drinking will set in again in record time.

Sound familiar? Is this our friend Dread?

Yes it does sound familiar. In fact it sounds like a quotation.

DN, are you still out there? My niece is still here. Would you like to posit or propose a new hypothesis? If you think you have something to say, by all means say it. We do NOT prohibit free speech here, your opinions are ALWAYS welcome. Be prepared to back up your statements with sound scientific data, which you haven't done to date. Nevertheless, we welcome your propositions and will discuss them with an open mind. -E

To be fair, we don't know for sure it was DN who posted this. It could have been anyone with a 1963 Physician's Desk Reference and a malfunctioning spell check, but it is mighty suspicious, I'll agree.

He does cite a reliable source for his information: A Doctor. Uh, wow. Who was it? Suess? Spock? Moreau?

Also, just to be fair, let's address the one valid point the poster makes: When you use the Sinclair Method you do commit to taking a nal one hour before you drink for life. That is an integral part of the method. It is part of the golden rule. That is why we don't say "Naltrexone (if you feel like it, or not, or whatever) + Drinking = Cure". It is well understood by all of us, and we have decided that is is a small price to pay, given the alternatives.

I've run into this notion quite a bit lately: that because we protect ourselves with naltrexone we are somehow teetering on the edge of disaster. I protect myself with a seat belt when I drive, so does that mean I'm "just asking for" a car crash? If I were to go visit the nice ladies up on North Aurora I would wear a condom for sure. Does that mean that I must be already infected with syphilis, and just not facing up to it? I wear safety glasses when I swing a hammer. Well that's fine as long as you wear the glasses, but boy, you take those things off and you're just asking for trouble!

Well, duh.

I'll take my naltrexone habit over pounding 15 beers every night and scouring the internet looking for chances to deride the Sinclair Method any time.

As a good AA friend of mine would ask: how's that working out for you?