Had an interesting weekend - not good in some ways, and yet a bit of hope shining through. We'd intended to do a lot of work around the house, but Friday night turned out to be a 'perfect storm' where Mrs. BWD wanted to drink and two Nal didn't seem to have as much effect as usual. I record drinks on my phone as I have them, and normally see a pattern where the time between drinks gets longer over time giving an estimated BAC chart curving towards a plateau; this time, the interval between drinks got shorter over time resulting in an exponential-type curve.

Apparently Mrs. BWD accidentally hit the panic button on the burglar alarm at 2am; I was completely oblivious to the siren etc. Although I rationally know that I'm unconscious when I drink that much, it really brought it home to know that I didn't even react at all to that.

A positive thing, though, was that my wife was not distressed and upset as she has been previously, because she says that she's seeing the intervals between extreme drunkeness getting longer and she is is starting to believe that this is going to work. We also had a good time together having a bender "by mutual consent" instead of the old days of me hammering myself into the ground whilst she stewed and worried. I think that I could have stopped had I chosen to, but in a tacit way we'd both decided that we wanted to get s***faced.

So, not a great weekend, but far from a disaster, too. I'm looking forward to the time when I don't make the decision to get drunk as a skunk; hopefully this is just part of the extinction. Nal on!

Ah the bonding joys of mutual shitfacedness
Glad to hear it wasn't a disaster. You know, sometimes you just want to tie one on...moderate drinking be damned. As long as it's infrequent and doesn't have negative consequences, why not?

Definitely no disaster, though there were some negative consequences. We're both just grateful that they're getting less frequent! It was followed by two AF days [the first being the traditional too-sick-to-drink, the second just not wanting any] and then a day with one 500ml bottle of beer. Had four tonight, but don't want any more; pre-Nal, I might have been able to stop on four because of fear of it impacting my work, but NOT WANTING any more? That's cool.

My big worry at the moment is that Nal is doing it's job, but I'm not doing mine - the reward pathway extinction effect is obvious and pronounced, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to address the underlying issues that made me want numbness in the first place. By almost every objective measure I have a fortunate life (job security, loving wife, nice house) but I somehow manage to despise my own existence. I have a catalogue of mistakes I've made in my life dating to back to age 3, all remembered with perfect clarity courtesy of what used to be a photographic memory - the slow destruction of that memory is a partial goal - that I seem to use to prevent myself feeling good. Simple, normal childhood mistakes have become weapons to be used by my adult intellect to prove that I'm stupid or evil; the adult part of me instantly sees the flaws in my previous actions, but refuses to make any allowance for being forty years older! Neither being stupid nor evil are things that I can easily live with, and so the obvious(!!!) solution is to be unconscious. There seems to be a vague similarity between the effects of Prozac and Nal for me - Nal mostly deals with the reward and cravings but not the underlying issues, and Prozac stops me being suicidal but leaves the underlying issues.

Most of the time I'm grateful for everything that both drugs have done / are doing for me, but sometimes it feels as if I'm just subsisting but not really living. This is something that I need to address, I think - there's no magic bullet or pill that's going to do it for me. It's much easier to subsist than take responsibility for my own life though... I seem to be pathologically cowardly in this area.

Hey BWD

As everyone says to me - try not to beat yourself up. We are all too good at that. No doubt you have a parent or 2 who is an alcoholic/depressive/prefectionist/ all of the above??
Yorkshire is a cool place and full of lots of (sometimes dry) humour. I've been there, had a Yorkshire bf in my 20's and now have a friend living in NZ who hails from there. I am of Welsh & English descent on my mum's side (she grew up in Wales during the 2nd World War) and foster parenting and lack of interest on my dad's side, so most of my family are in the UK.

I can add a bit more here - was dux at my primary/intermediate school, leaving at age 12, did well at school and at Uni, with mostly A's, but have spent a lot of my life running myself down or hanging around people who run me down. Why do we do it to ourselves?

Nal on
Sticky

Thanks Sticky - yes, one side of my family is well known in the area for mental illness which has affected a lot my relations. I'd love to visit NZ someday, maybe it'll happen eventually!

There's a definite pattern in my consumption where it builds up over a few days into a "wave" that culminates in going overboard - then, there's a period of reduced drinking until the wave reappears. Over time [on Nal!], the distance between the crests is getting longer and the height is getting less. Last weekend was one of those crests, so as expected this week has been very moderate. Here's the great news (for me) - this week, for the first time in many years except for an AA period, there have been more AF days than drinking days. Also interesting is that it's 8:15pm on a Saturday, and it really looks as though today is going to be AF, too.

My scholastic experiences sound similar - either 1st or 2nd in school year (one of my friends and I always fought it out for top spot), earmarked for 'great things' at Uni until kicked out for depression, did well at Uni [v2] until dropped out through depression & alcohol then went into a cycle of in & out of psyche hospital until the SSRI's came along and worked.

Hi BWD,
I've looked thru your thread and see you've had a lot on your plate! As others have mentioned, you've likely inherited the "depression gene", the "alcholic/addition gene" and other things that make you feel less than normal. I know in my case, that once I understood that my alcoholism was a flaw that I inherited----just like my migraine headaches are something I inherited---the reality has been much easier to deal with. I didn't make myself this way---these were the cards that I was dealt, given the genetic make up of my parents' families. Btw, I also suffer from depression....good times(!)

In addition to the medications that ease the symptoms of these ailments, the other thing that has really made a difference is exercise. Back in 1993, after my father died, I went into deep depression....ready to "crawl into bed and die" depression. I eventually talked myself into joining an exercise class and made myself go everyday. (I had never done that in my life.) Even if I couldn't get myself into work, my priority was to drag myself to that exercise class every day. As time went by, I still felt depressed but somehow stronger internally. After several weeks I pulled myself out of the depression and the by product was I looked the best I ever had in my life. Fast forward to today, I find myself again in a deep hole with this alcoholism business and have signed up at the gym....day 5 of classes and I of course still am a mess but am feeling stronger internally. Anyway, something to consider if you aren't already doing so.

Just thought I'd check in ... the last couple of months have been very mixed for me. On the plus side, I haven't had an off-the-rails binge since new year's eve; on the negative side, average consumption is markedly up since January, and my liver function tests reflect that as a result of which my (excellent) doctor today said that she wants to have an ultrasound scan then refer me to a hepatologist; I also got the results of a glucose tolerance test from Wednesday showing that I'm borderline pre-diabetic (as borderline as technically possible, fortunately, so I've got a chance to do something about it). Plus I've got a surgery referral coming up for a benign tumour. All told, I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself and am duly behaving in the worst possible way by getting sozzled. There is a little bit of a sunray though in that the alcohol consumption graph on my phone [each and every drink gets logged religiously] is showing a tailing-off in the rate, which generally corresponds to stopping whilst conscious. We're having a minor heatwave over here in Blighty atm, and so I'm currently sitting in the hotter-than-hell computer room (despite 3 machines having been shutdown due to temperature) wearing just a pair of shorts and dripping sweat.

The effects of Naltrexone have been very dramatic for me - I've totally lost the elation and euphoria that came from drinking, and the desperate need to keep drinking so that that elation doesn't disappear. However, I seem to be pathologically incapable of capitalising on the respite and indeed fear that I'm in danger of squandering the pharmacological effects of the Nal.

Hang in there BWD. Just remember the folks who turned a corner after more than a year of TSM.

Another less than positive update, I'm afraid. My drinking is now approaching pre-TSM levels again, although in a different pattern [couple of days off, then minor bender, rinse and repeat w/ bender quantity increasing]. Although there haven't been major disasters for several months, I'm pretty sure that tonight's going to be one --> unit log shows it, as does my general behaviour and thinkings.

I've not had the liver scan results back yet, but have decided that the following exchange with the sonographer was significant:

Me, during scan: How does the liver look?
Sonographer: I haven't finished the examination yet, hang on a bit!
(more scanning)
Sonographer: OK, that's it, if you just wipe off the gel then your doctor will give you the results
Me: Did you see any scarring?
Sonographer: I'm not a clinician, so you'll have to wait to talk to your doctor about the results

Hope I'm wrong, I'm very tired of 'being sick and tired' but unable to handle anything, it seems. At the moment I'm sneezing my head off (because drinking beer does that to me - I seem to have a perverse hop allergy) and every time I do so I have a stab of pain in the top-right quadrant of my belly, aka my liver. I'm well aware that I'm slowly killing myself, but don't actually want to; I want to find a 'self righting' mechanism, recover, and carry on. Sorry if that doesn't make sense, tonight's log is 23.48 UK units so far and I'm not very coherent

I reiterate that I believe that Nal is extremely useful and helpful, and that my failure is due to me failing to capitalise upon the drug's benefits as opposed to the benefits being over-hyped. By contrast, though, I also believe that Dr. Eskapa's book does a dis-service in some areas by promoting the idea that the drug alone is sufficient, without willpower; I believe that if I'd chosen to use willpower earlier then the results for me might have been different.

Thank you for listening to the rant... as an aside, I'd also like to say that I thought that the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics was excellent, that it made me proud of my country [England - one part of Britain], and that Mitt Romney should stick it in his pipe and smoke it . Non-British citizens may well have missed that each and every Rugby try showed one of the 'other' countries scoring against England - I though that this was a very significant symbolic statement in recognising the wrongs that we've done to them over the centuries.

As to the booze... any suggestions or even understanding would be most appreciated. I feel that I'm going down in flames but without the glory; drink's starting to affect my work, and beer doesn't really catch fire.

Hey ho, etc... any newcomers, PLEASE, I'm unfortunate with Nal - most people have much better luck than me, just read the fora!

Hi There, BWD. I'm sorry you are in such a state. And yes, I understand what you mean about missing the moment where willpower might have made a difference in your success. But maybe it's not too late. Could you now make a plan to incorporate some willpower into your drinking pattern? I don't know what it might be but you can think of something that makes sense to you eh?

So many of us are in the same boat really. We wait for the magic to happen but we've missed that subtlety naltrexone brings. Like realizing the glass is sitting there half full and we really don't want it - but we drink it anyway, because that's what we do. Or pouring one in the beginning when we really don't feel like it, because "that's what we're supposed to do on TSM."

So try to recapture those very subtle moments now - it's not too late. And you have the added incentive that your poor ole liver may be involved! Keep posting and keep reading, and never give up.