Hi Everyone,
I've been lurking here for a month or so and I've read the book, made a decision to try out TSM. So today I had an appointment with my doctor and he said no-way and told me I needed to attend AA meetings. I live in a very rural part of the country. Doctors are pretty hard to come by here and I don't want to be embaressed if I make another appointment. So my question is, how reliable are the online stores that are mentioned here? I've never used an online pharmacy, but it's my understanding that those who do have a problem with getting fake prescriptions.

Also, I have one other question. I wasn't sure about this from the book, but I'm not a 7x365 drinker. I tend to drink a 4 days out of the week or around that. Sometimes it's heavy drinking, sometimes it's just a few. But there are days in there that I don't drink at all. With TSM do I have to drink w/ it all the time, or do I just take the medication regardless of whether I'm drinking or not?

When I started this back in July of 2010 I ordered from two different online pharmacies on the recommendation of others on this site. You can trust that River Pharmacy and All Day Chemist are going to give you real naltrexone. I, too was worried about ordering online. In the back of my mind I was afraid the DEA was going to kick my door in and put me in jail. Naltrexone has no abusive potential and the DEA has better things to do than track down 120 naltrexone tablets from some online seller when there are real prescription drug problems out there to deal with. It is not a crime to have naltrexone in your possession without a prescription in the US. Your doctor may have done you a favor. Now you won't have "substance abuse problem" stamped on your medical history to follow you around when you apply for health, disability or life insurance. Alcohol is a much more dangerous drug than naltrexone. You put yourself at risk every time you take large doses of alcohol. As for not drinking everyday. Look at Minneapolis Nick's thread, he was a Thursday-Sunday kind of drinker too. He saw an immediate reduction (honeymoon) then settled in for several months before he gained control over his drinking. You don't need to drink everyday for this to work. The only golden rule is take naltrexone about an hour before a drinking episode. Don't take nal on days you don't plan on drinking. If you respond like Sinclair's subjects in 9 months you may be drinking 25% of what you are now. Welcome aboard, read, post and get better.

Welcome:
You don't need to worry too much about the quality of online pharmacies. Many on the boards here use them (so do I). If you are in the US you can order up to three months of Nal without a problem from customs. You only need to promise that the meds are for your personal use. I don't know about other countries. When you take Nal, you take it only on the days you drink. If you don't drink, don't take it. This is all explained very well in the book.
As far as fake meds go: I think its easy to think that the pill is not working on some days simply because of the nature of the extinction process. Most everyone has ups and downs and there is a natural impulse to want to hang it on a simple explanation like "must be a fake pill". Most likely it's not.
Read Bob3d and Firebird threads among the many others. They offer a good/realistic portrayal of the nature of pharmaceutical extinction. Good Luck!

I've ordered from both alldaychemist and riverpharmacy. I find them both to be reliable, but I think I prefer riverpharmacy. You don't need a prescription. You just order it.

5Excellent, thanks for everyones response. I have one other question. So I quit drinking on my own about 6 months back and was hell but I did it. What should I expect with this method?

Edit-- My brother quit drinking cold turkey, said that I would experience a 'thaw-out' period which I did. Will I get that same thing?

Thanks a ton. Your advice is extremely helpful. I hope to get better soon.

themarmot, I read your posting with great interest. Like so many of the others on this forum, and those who replied to your post, I ended up ordering from River first and then alldaychemist (based on good referrals from TSM forum posters). Like St Vincent said, I too ordered with great fear that I would be "caught" and publicly humiliated as a drug abuser.

St Vincent's comment about "substance abuser" notation on medical records also occured to me when I decided to try ordering from India sans prescription.

Both NAL sources were fine with me, but SLOW! You do have to remember to order well in advance. River's NAL are coated, alldaychemist are not and it IS a bitter tasting pill; but I found alldaychemist is half the cost, so a little bitterness is OK with me! Shipping is so high ($25/order) so I order 100 tablets at a time to save on shipping. First order I got about a month's supply to make sure I could tolerate the drug before I bought inventory. I took half a tablet per the CURE instructions until the side effects waned (about 5 days for me). I have no side effects at all now.

I have planned twice to talk to my doctor about NAL and TSM but backed out both times. My "gut" tells me not to do it. If she discouraged me, I might drop the plan, and it is working. My brother started it recently, after watching my success, and we now coach each other. I absolutely WILL tell my doc about it once I am in the cured category. I keep my daily spreadsheet and diary and I will present it to her. TSM should be shared. My doc is a reasonable person and open minded. I think she will share my success with other patients and that will be MY giving back to others in gratitude for this wonderful program that gives back my life.

The other options -- alchoholic or abstinence are NOT choices. This has to work, and I feel so incredibly grateful that I stumbled upon TSM, the book, and this forum. My life is already 100% better and I'm still months away from saying "cured".

GOOD LUCK! This forum is fantastic and coupled with the NAL and a lot of self discipline makes for success!

Yve

thermarmot -- I thought I should share my experience with getting nal here. Several weeks ago I told my primary care physician at my 50 year old checkup that I felt I drank too much and it was my way of handling stress. I explained that I drank a bottle of wine 5 to 6 nights a week. I asked for nal and explained about the book and his response was (in email), "The Sinclair Method is just overblown marketing garbage, but if you want a drug I will give you antibuse." Under the circumstances I felt like that antibuse was an overreaction (and punitive) and I was pissed. I persisted with him, sent him reports from the studies and basically pushed back. His compromise was to email Dr. George Kolodner at the Kolmac Clinic in DC on my behalf, asking him to talk to me. Kolmac is an abstinence only outpatient treatment program here. But Kolodner agreed to discuss it with me and I took him the book. He said that my level of drinking would not qualify me for his program (he treats people who drink much more and have high tolerance evidently) and that I can't come there unless I pledged abstinence. He uses nal when the patient is abstinent because he thinks it helps with cravings.
However, he was willing to give it to me because he he said it could not hurt me and he was interested to watch my progress and see what happened. I have shared with him my strong side effects, and I think he thinks I'm a hypochondriac as he claims that it is like a vitamin pill for everyone else, but he has suggested I stay on 25 mg.
If there is a moral to my story, it might be that we need to advocate (nicely) for ourselves and not let doctors push us around. We are the customers, after all. I am paying for the nal and Kolodner in cash and I have asked my physician to not put this in my chart (but he might, I guess).
If we keep this underground by going to online pharmacies, then there will never be any change in attitude. There are a lot of recovery doctors who have a vested financial interest in keeping treatment programs as they are, and hearing that a drug will solve the problem could put them out of a job.
Frankly, I think that if TSM works (I am just at the beginning), it shouldn't be a secret!
On the other hand, I suspect that this forum acts like AA for us in that it gives us the support group we need to persist with TSM. Maybe that part of AA isn't wrong and TSM works best when you have a caring community supporting your efforts. I know that if you were all here, I would probably want to have an hour-long meeting with you every day. I would find that helpful, although this forum is a good substitute.

To anyone who is struggling with their doctor about the legitimacy of TSM, I urge you to peruse the qualifications of this TSM proponent:

Mark L. Willenbring, M.D.
Mark Willenbring, M.D., is Director of the Treatment and Recovery Research Division of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/National Institutes of Health. Prior to his current appointment he was Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota. He is Board Certified in General Psychiatry with Added Qualifications in Addiction and Forensic Psychiatry. In his research, he worked to develop and test innovative management strategies for patients with complex addiction problems, such as combined mental and addictive disorders, medically ill heavy drinkers, and homeless public inebriates. He has also played a leading role in development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for treating addictive disorders, and co-led in a national initiative to determine the utility and feasibility of implementing practice guidelines in the treatment of addictive disorders within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In his current position, he works to stimulate new directions in research on treatment and recovery, health services research, and to disseminate new research findings in order to facilitate their adoption.

In other words, this man is the NUMBER ONE MAN at the number one federal agency that deals with alcoholism: THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALCOHOL ABUSE AND ALCOHOLISM/NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH. I have read him quoted online as basically stating that it is LUDICROUS that alcoholism isn't being regularly treated by drug therapy, including naltrexone. Take this man and his word and throw it in the face of all of the ignorant doctors who try and send you to AA.

And copy and paste this CNN story quoting the good doctor: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-15/heal ... =PM:HEALTH

And this, the medical treatment of alcoholism, by Dr. W: http://www.hbo.com/addiction/treatment/ ... olism.html

And, the New York Times authenticates Naltrexone and TSM in this story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/health/12bside.html

My best,

Nick

Good stuff Nick! Thats powerful!
On another note, I would LOVE to get together with other TSM people. However, I find it humorous thinking about us getting together ....Would it be at a bar? Would we all be trying to drink enough to ensure extinguishing? Sorry if this seems flippant, it's just that after 18 years in AA and 1000's of meetings in AA, it tickles me that we could actually get together and have a few drinks and talk about how it's going! It's just like an alternate universe!
Anyway, Nal is working for me and I DO wish I could have a face to face get together with others. It is a CRIME that the "recovery industry" has such a vested interest in their methods and obviously if they said "here's a pill, take it before you drink, and in about a year you shouldn't have to fear alcohol anymore" they wouldn't be able to charge too much money for that!
Dave