Hi everyone,

I made a video review of "The Cure For Alcoholism" which I've posted to Youtube and am trying to get approved on the Amazon Books page for the book as well. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaU4pDHwcWA

I have been using TSM since January 10th, 2010. For the first six months I drank every day, often 12-14 beers per night. I also went on a series of binges off naltrexone, three of which landed me in the hospital. For a while, I was afraid TSM would never work for me. I even had times when I got extremely drunk ON naltrexone. After those events, I decided to start over and see if I could drink just once a week on naltrexone. I had been using TSM for about ten months at the time.

I drank seven beers on my first session of my "once a week" plan. Then, a week later, I did not want to drink, so I didn't. At the end of a second week, I had a slight interest, so I took naltrexone and drank five beers. Over the last two and a half months, I found that my desire to drink had been snuffed out most of the time, with a slight flicker once in a while. My most recent drinking session was on January 31st, 2011 when I had five 12oz Red Hook beers.

Now it's almost three weeks later, and I still don't want to drink. TSM can take a long time, present temporary reversals, and seem like it isn't working at all. But the fact remains that in less than a year I arrived at a spot where I drink every two or three weeks, and have not had alcohol-related problems even once. I used to end up in the hospital, often in ICU, with DTs after every drinking binge since about age thirty-five, and I'm forty-seven now.

I'll take one year of ups and downs followed by success over 23 years of AA and 11 trips to 12-step treatment, none of which helped me in the least.

All the best,
Ben

Hey Ben.

Great work as always. You represent to me the reason we should strike "cured" language from TSM. This is a revolutionary new treatment and millions are skeptical. The word "cured" sets everyone up for the false expectation that you take the pill and are forever risk-free from drinking alcoholically. Your three stints to the hospital after declaring yourself "cured" will only add fuel to the fire for outsiders who have a vested interest in calling TSM a sham.

I think the TSM movement would benefit greatly by changing expectations. If it is declared as a revolutionary treatment that permits about 80% to regain control of their drinking and recapture their life -- as opposed to an out and out "cure" -- I believe it will catch on a lot more quickly as the revolutionary treatment it is.

Some would argue the distinction is semantics. However, I have talked to numerous doctors with Eskapa's book in hand who believe in Naltrexone but say, "That book is a drastic overstatement of the efficacy of TSM" and I agree. The illusory "cure" after 3-4 months is nonsense for most of us and only serves to add fuel to the anti-TSM crusade that will be out their for years to come. And we know that doctors and society have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of AA and its horrendous success rate so we should be doing everything we can to enhance -- and not undermine -- the credibility of TSM. Those saved by TSM need to scale back our assessment of this life-saving treatment in order to preserve its credibility.

My best,

Nick

Ben

congrads.

Nick - totally agree with you cure is a bad word. Cured implies that at a certain point you are done taking the pill because the alcoholism has been removed and one could become a social drinker. Even the book says, drink without it and it will come right back. Ben drank off the pill and that experience, You and I did also. I am not an MD and we are very small sampling but I know for me it has not "completely" cured me. HOWVER the end result was WAY better than I ever anticipated...it gave me my life back and pulled me completely out of a whiskey soaked hell on earth by simply taking a pill along with my drink..how easy is that?. I was not drunk in a year, I got drunk when not taking NAL on the 13th month. Like Ben said, I will take a year like this ANYTIME. But you are dead right that cure is a bad word and it portrays TSM like a new fangled BS type thing and It's TRULY not. I am sure the book was written to some extent to make money and there is nothing wrong with that. But that cure word sure turn people skeptical VERY quick.

Me personally, I was highly skeptical but tried it figuring hell I can still drink so what can it hurt. I wanted to quit but didn't want to quit..we all know that feeling. AA me? NOT...it a real shame naltrexone has not hit the masses because it would sure save a lot of live and families and needless suffereing. But I think the other issue is the grip the "recovery" industry has on society and the medical field. They are making huge money with a huge failure rate, ie repeat business, so they are not going away or going to back a generic drug that renderes them useless an un-needed in their market segment of alcoholism..lol they would still have drug addiction...Im sure they want the whole pie though. The recovery industry and the holy grail of abstienence is the big hurdle. Like Ben said and for me also Last Year was incredible. I mean I probably had , I'm guessing here maybe 20-30 drinks all year...then a blow out on xmas for 2 days off nal. I mean hell if some just met me and knew me all of last year they would NEVER beleive I was capable of going to 2 half gallons and a 30 pack in a two day period..lol and then do it again a couple days later.

All the spouses that suffer from an Alcoholic spouse I doubt would cry if they had that year out their so-called drunken spouse, Families no longer worried the whole 9. AND the alcoholic gets his holy grail which I would tend to beleive we all will agree CONTROL. This drug is so win win for a lot of people. But yep cured is a bad word, bad portrayal and marketing. LOL I remember I was in some aa forum staing my experience and forum user was actually being very polite and he said "wow, AA worked for me but I'm glad TSM worked for you, I read the title of the book mentioned it seemed like some snakeoil salesman stuff trying to get rich off the suffering" I explained the whole generic drug peice etc...but yep that cure word

Interesting points both Crown and Nick. I couldn't agree with you more about the "cure" word being too strong. It was clearly a marketing thing for the book title which is a shame because there is so much potential good that can come from this method. It looks like oral nalmefene has a good chance to get approval in Europe later this year and it will be marketed TSM style to doctors as a way to help drinking patients cut down on their drinking (harm-reduction). I doubt the word cure will be allowed anywhere in the marketing materials so we may start to see a paradigm shift in physician's attitudes towards abstinence-only based approaches. The problem with paradigm shifts in medicine is they take 10-20 years to occur. You almost have to have a whole generation of doctors retire for attitudes to change. Right now there are no plans to seek approval for oral nalmefene with the FDA so it may be a while before we see it the US.