I think the sine wave is pretty normal for all of us. I had a few scary times where I was sure I was a member of the 15%. I am past that now but it was truly there. No road is straight whench it goes long.

I had a run of AFs , the first three AFs went well ,hardly any craving at all.
On the fourth day I had higher craving and reckon I ought to have drunk.
I postponed it partly because I like to drink on friday nights and that has been habit for aeons . I have also still the fear that I'll go too far and be in a bad state for work the next day . These fears are taking me a while to break but I should take confidence in fact that with NAl I generally don't f' up too much .
In any case when I did get to fri night , i had my largest intake since starting : fourteen or fifteen units . So the ADE or explosion effect kicked in . Next time I get craving high I'm going to drink sooner and hopefully avoid this . I don't know if it 'll work , perhaps I'm on an up trend ,we'll see .

It sounds like the Alcohol Deprivation Effect may have kicked in Elfern- that after depriving yourself when you had wanted a drink you over-drank- as Dr. E describes in the book.

Sounds like satisfying the craving might be better- I haven't tried to fight mine to be honest.

Yeah, ADE ...? Or .... cd it be that with binge drinkers they always seek a peak say every ten days . I noticed potatoe has that peak pattern . If that's true then it's just drinking as normal (but lower peaks ). But in anycase as you say I should avoid resisting and then see if the spikes remain .
Feel like a boat with out a rudder buffetted by the waves of kings ALC and NALC .

Elfern -- You'll be just fine if you do as Eskapa instructs and drink as you normally do. As Potato used to say, don't overthink it. In a few months it will have worked whether you want it to or not.

You'll be just fine. Please keep coming back.

Take care -- Lena

Hi Elf - you are almost 50% down from where you started - how AWESOME is that?? Wow.

I would take the Friday binge as another extinction opportunity. Your body / mind hasn't gone af for that long and binged so now you've had one session of extinguishing the feeling you get when you do that. I think it's a good thing!

Have a good weekend - I always enjoy your posts, your writing style is very unique (in a good way).

~Happy

Thankyou to our kind moderators for your help there .
And thanks for your comment Happy .

And yes I definately will keep coming back . I'm most impressed with the whloe thing here .

Score on week six is .... Craving 7 and units 38
22 of those fall into first two days this week(sat + sun ) but were the result of ADE and overdoing it on the AF's (four in a row ) at end of last week - silly boy .
So once that was over the week proceded more calmly 2 AF's not in a row and trying to act on the urges . Although I give 7 for urges that's more because they seemed to be more constant rather than fierce and I was aware of them more often and so I drank . But the good news is that the drinking was not excessive
to be precise : mon AF ; Tues 5 ; weds AF ; thurs4,5 ; fri 6,5 .

Week 7
Blah, blah units ... because I'm in the machine and its taking its course . I try to wade into the bottle when craving rises but as I'm not a rat I do normally (unless a lunchtime ) try to wait til evening also as I'm not a rat I see my diary and know that sat night means so and so at such a place so I'll try and get to it with an AF before if poss .
Quality of buzz has seemed clearer , I mean I felt less drunk and relieved then just stopped . But that was all last week . This weekend which starts week 8 I feel like a dirty rat old drinker scheming my supply concerned about refilling the glass looking for a buzz , worried I won't stop . Is this me or my frustrated shadow . I fear my consumption will go up now because of the frustrated rat and I feel more desire to drink which is ok as its the weekend but not for long .

Yes, I said awhile back that Sinclair's rats (I presume) did not have to deal with messy divorces, financial challenges, pressures at the office.

We need to keep reminding each other that the path will not be straight but we will get there.