St. Jude, that is an incredible reduction in units from your pre-TSM numbers. Congratulations! You drank 12 less bottles of wine than your preTSM week. You should feel good about that because that is $120 you saved and 6000 less calories in one week. Great progress. Keep rolling.

YG: Yes, that was me over at the SMART recovery site. It is a very good site and helped my from drowning in my frustrations with AA, but they are definitely abstinence-based and they gently guide anyone who mentions TSM to this site (to their credit, they seem to be far more open than soberrecovery).

So, yesterday was my first day of week 2. I drank 11 units of wine and felt pretty comfortable with that. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of someone who wants to drink but doesn't have any money. I scrounged together enough singles from my hidden stashes, old purses, and parking quarters to finance a bottle or two until I get paid on Wednesday. I usually drink moderately expensive/ good quality wine, even in the shadowy depths of my addiction I could never bring myself to buy an economical wine box or cheap 1.5 litre of a South American red. Hey, if I was going to marinate myself in 3 bottles of wine nightly, it was at least going to be $20 bottles (ha). Kiwigirl, I'm going on a 5 star european vacation next year financed by TSM if this keeps up!

Since starting NAL everything has been tasting funny, and I'm wondering why I'm continuing to spend a fortune operating under the thinly veiled genteel notion of appreciating the bouquet and body of a good vintage, which is not really a factor when you're swilling enough for 6 people in a sitting. Today I ventured out to the discount wine warehouse in the suburbs and discovered they had a "buy one bottle get second bottle for $1" promotion going on. Exactly what this poor girl needed! I tried some different brand wines than the (I'm a Malbec/Zin/Cab/SauvBlanc girl) and I just put away a bottle of Malbec I'd recently opened after drinking only 1 1/2 glasses--frankly I'm underwhelmed and not too interested. The wine is fine but the urge isn't there. I have a bottle of white chilling now but feel minimal motivation to tuck into it. The night is young but overall I'm really looking forward to a more economical wine lifestyle.

aah, my analytical st. vinny, keep putting things in perspective like that for me (money & calories saved!). i envision i'll be wearing a thong bikini on my TSM financed 5 star european vacation

Great stuff! It's interesting to me as well how the type of alcohol you will drink may change. many find red wine tastes badly after starting TSM. I still thought it tasted fine, but as time has gone by I realize haven't craved it in weeks, and it's my favorite drunk. I definitely put in a few semi painful red wine nights before the numbers and cravings in the red wine area diminished.

For me, I drink expensive beer almost exclusively lately. I used to drink expensive beer or mid-level wine till i was broke, then scrounged and drank cheap crap until the next paycheck. now I only drink good stuff. gotta extinct that too.

keep rocking St. Jude

Oh you are cracking me up. Monaco is calling you.

Hi St Jude,

Loving the updates, very funny. Always good to bring a bit of comedy to proceedings!

NAL Doctor Saga Part 1:
Great news! I finally found a psychiatrist (an addiction specialist) willing to prescribe me Naltrexone. The downside is that he is the director of our country hospital's addiction treatment program, so I had to enter another outpatient treatment program in order to see him, but he is willing to work with me and TSM. I can't believe how long and hard of a process it was to find a doctor who specialized in treating addictions. I spent hours online and looking in the in the phone book for a therapist/doctor who specialized in addictions who wasn't part of the traditional (12 step) treatment system. I asked my primary care physician for referrals (they referred me to one psychiatrist whose office never bothered to mail me the informational paperwork promised after I called them). I called my insurance provider and they gave me the names of the only two addiction specialist psychiatrists on the list (and I live in a large urban area). One of the names they gave me was this doctor I'm now seeing, and after I contacted an addictions research institute at a local university and they sang his praises I decided to make an appointment. I had to first go through the whole intake process at the hospital addiction center. When the intake counselor heard how much I was drinking daily she wanted to put me straightaway into detox then 28 day inpatient. I refused, but agreed to start an intensive daily outpatient group therapy program in order to get an appointment in 2 weeks with the psychiatrist. I went one time to the group session and it was comically horrific, like something out of a Seinfeld episode.

NAL Doctor Saga Part 2 (of 3):
After that I pretended to be " sick" until my appointment with the doctor today which she thankfully let me keep. I was able to be 100% honest with him, told him I'd already started the NAL from River Pharmacy and was prepared to go it alone if I had to but I really wanted to work with him. He wrote me a two month script for NAL and I see him next month. I agreed to attend 2 weekly one hour group therapy sessions (I'll try anything once and I figure even if it doesn't help, it can't hurt). I'm so happy to have found a doctor willing to try TSM, one I can be honest with. But I'm shocked and disappointed at what a long and arduous process it was. I had to be doggedly persistent and even after all of my efforts was just about to give up on the whole medical establishment before finally lucking out.

NAL Doctor Saga Part 3 (of 3):
I share this so if some of you have had a similar experience and have given up, it may be worth one last attempt to locate that enlightened/open doctor who may be out there. The Newsweek article on NAL has only been out for about 6 weeks (my doctor hadn't seen it yet but I gave him the link), maybe it can open up some sort of trickle of information (to a flow, to a river, then a flood?). I was prepared to spend the $122/month for NAL if I had to, but I'm much more grateful to have a $5 copay at the pharmacy. I pointedly asked the doctor today why NAL wasn't a more standard treatment protocol and his response was depressing I could tell he supports it, but I got the feeling the whole rehab/medical/drug establishment is against him and he has to be very careful in what he says and does. Well, I'm not a medical doctor and I don't have to keep my mouth shut so I plan to sing from the treetops about TSM.
I hope you all have luck finding a good doctor to work with. It's unbelievable how much resistance and ignorance there is out there.

All I would say is if you want to talk about TSM at those meetings, be prepared for a shitstorm! I personally have had a lot of experience in AA, and I know several TSM'ers who've tried talking about it with AA people, including myself, although I never brought it up in a meeting as I never went to one after starting TSM. They pretty much universally pan any other method than AA and it can get depressing as hell. It's like screaming in a deaf ear