Alcoholics Can Drink Their Way Sober

10/02/2008

A medical cure for alcoholism - without abstinence, detox or rehab - but which gradually removes the craving for alcohol, is being hailed as a life-saver for millions of alcoholics.

Each year, 105,000 Americans die from alcoholism, 18 million have their health damaged by it and the cost to the nation approaches $200 billion.

The cure for this terrible affliction is revealed in a definitive and ground-breaking new book by Dr Roy Eskapa - The Cure for Alcoholism: Drink Your Way Sober Without Willpower, Abstinence or Discomfort - which rejects the pervasive belief that alcoholism is incurable without total abstinence.

Instead, this authoritative book publishes a detailed account of 70 major clinical trials which prove beyond doubt how a treatment known as the Sinclair Method removes the underlying biological cause of craving and compulsive drinking.

The treatment has an outstanding 80 % success rate and offers a safer, kinder and far more cost-effective solution than previous techniques.

Read more...

Thanks, Virgil! Looks like the word is getting out.

Nice find. I am still concerned about backlash if we ever begin to effect the revenue to the clinics but that is a discussion for another day.
Thanks

Something you might notice if you Google around a bit is that Beverly Rayfield, the shrink in Florida who uses the Sinclair Method (for $3500 <yikes>), has at least a half-dozen sites that are branded completely differently. I get the feeling she more about marketing than anything else. She sells a $250 "do it at home" kit that explains The Sinclair Method. She should be ashamed of herself.

Yes, the rehab industry is big. . .but I don't believe that's the only self-serving interest at work here. Has anyone considered that the health care industry as a whole gains approx. 2 billion dollars a year from alcohol-related diseases? That's to say nothing of the price of accidents, income generated in the legal system and local economies as a result of DUI's. . .and the list goes on.

Just as there is a negative motivation for a cure for cancer or cheap, green fuel sources, there is a negative motivation for the word on Naltrexone to be properly (as in, without misleading, false prescriptive information) disseminated. I have contacted Oprah and a few other news organizations, and encourage anyone else with an interest in this topic to do so as well. The word on Naltrexone will only spread if there are enough people dedicated to making it their mission to do so.

Count me in!

http://en.allexperts.com/e/s/si/sinclair_method.htm

Effectiveness
It's impossible for any treatment for alcoholism to have 100% effectiveness because some alcoholics really don't want to stop drinking. Clinical studies of the Sinclair Method achieve a success rate where 87% - 78% of treated patients reduce their drinking below the level where cellular damage occurs. About a third of treated patients completely stop drinking

The end result of the treatment is a patient that can take or leave alcohol. They have no particular craving for it. The patient must still take their antagonist drug an hour before consumption of alcohol, but besides that they can drink normally without the fear of relapse.

This treatment also has the advantage that the patient does not need to undergo detoxification before treatment. In fact, detox can decrease the effectiveness of the treatment because it can change the alcoholic's drinking patterns.

Naltrexone is not tolerated by some people. Roughly 10% of alcoholics cannot take naltrexone because of prior liver damage. A standard test for liver damage can determine this so that patients who pass the test can take naltrexone safely. Other alternatives to naltrexone, such as nalmefene, have been developed that are safer to take, but they have not yet been approved by the FDA for use for alcoholism in the United States.

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_g ... holic.html

The classical use of medications for alcoholism is to encourage abstinence. Antabuse (also known as disulfiram), for instance, prevents the elimination of chemicals which cause severe discomfort when alcohol is ingested, effectively preventing the alcoholic from drinking in significant amounts while they take the medicine. Heavy drinking while on antabuse can result in severe illness and death.

Naltrexone has also been used because it helps curb cravings for alcohol while the person is on it. Both of these, however, have been demonstrated to cause a rebound effect when the user stops taking them. These do allow a person to overcome psychological addictions to alcohol, but they do not treat the neurochemical addiction.

In more recent studies it has been demonstrated that the use of naltrexone while the alcoholic continues to drink can result in extinction of the neurochemical addiction. Referred to as the "Sinclair Method", this technique is used with good results some US states and in Finland but has failed to penetrate much of the world because of the long-standing bias against any treatment that doesn't involve detoxification and abstinence.

I appreciate all this b/c I still find it hard to believe I am drinking with a "cure" in mind. Need to be reminded and reassured all the time, thus checking in here daily.

I read Eric Clapton's autobiography last summer and found it very inspirational (not sure that's the word - "impressive" is too weak) that he managed to kick a heroine habit and later booze...and maintain that sobriety through the death of several career twists, and ultimately his son. I cannot imagine the flip side of this journey...starting at square one and looking at sobriety thru AA..or just trying to control it on my own...daunting thought altho my new doc gave me Rx for Campral to control cravings...the very idea...:-( ick

I am hoping in 3-4 months I will be free of the monkey; I am also using Retin-A and hoping for a dewier, fresher complexion LOL; stepping up my exercise to include a 6 am jog in addition to what I do in the afternoons; committed to improving my golf game (@#%%&*) and hoping to inadvertantly lose the 10 "oh what the hell he doesn't love me anymore" pounds!!

"Blind Faith": in reference to Clapton's great, early band, is my new moniker & describes my commitment. I'm in, with blind faith. BTW, I lost an earlier essay along these lines but if it mysteriously posts...gack - forgive my redundancy! TGIT

Not sure where to post this, but I am seeing Naltrexone beng mentioned more and more in many publications. In a classroom journal, Junior Scholastic magazine, and more recently in last week's issue of TIME magazine, an article on health. One of my students used the article as the basis for his current event presentation, mentioning NAL as being a drug that helps curb the craving for alcohol. At the end of these presentations, they are supposed to ask a question to the class. His question, "What is the drug that helps stop cravings for alcohol?"

I wanted to raise my hand so bad b/c no one heard or remembered. LOL He won the prize for "stumping the audience"...and I corrected his pronunciation of the drug "Naltrexone". LOL Kinda weird/funny...