Everyone, thanks for your comments. I had an AF day and feel MUCH better. The difference between how I feel after an AF day vs. even having 1 1/2 - 2 glasses of wine is striking since I started TSM/Nal.

Flaco, no judgement here but if I drank that much booze in 2 - 3 days, I'd be in a coma!!!!
I weigh less than half of you and my goal is to get to 50 mg. of Nal -or more if necessary - to eliminate the buzz. I'm increasing gradually since I am hypersensitive to the side effects.

I'm no expert but it sure seems from what others say that 75 - 100 mg is not unreasonable especially since you're a big guy.

And if you are only drinking outside the house and buying drinks at a bar, your bar tab must be huge! Since you're analytical, why don't you keep track of your AL costs over the course of a month? Imagine if you saved it or spent that money on something that gave you real pleasure. What would you save in a year? 5 years? Sobering, huh?!

I am so grateful to have this forum. Chrissie, you're an inspiration for "the cure"... FA

Concerning AF days. I love the feeling you get when you just wake up and realize you weren't drinking the night before. Its a great feeling.

2+ AF days is were you really start to feel it though. I struggling with more than 1 lately but going a couple of days without feels great. Being AF for months must feel out of this world.

Flaco,

We are all different and unfortunately most of us are doing TSM without Doctor supervision. The fact that you believe that you are still feeling an endorphin rush from alcohol, sounds like the current dosage is not fully blocking it. I have played around with my dosage, I have tried moving up to 75mg however I did not see any significant affect. Since I, like you tend to spend many hours drinking on the weekend I have started to take two 50 mg doses. I'll take the first one an hour before drinking, usually around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I will then take another dose three hours after the initial one. So far this seems to have kept me more in check and has allowed me to end the night earlier.

Nal-On

Diver

Thanks! I'll try this.

Flaco,
I don't know if you had your liver function checked lately, however if you have not you may want to before you up your dosage. While Nal is certainly very safe for people with normal liver function it may not be if a person has liver "issues".

Best of Luck

Diver

Yes, I have had my liver function as well as pancreas and other blood profiles done recently and at last 2x per year. I am OK there. But good point to monitor that closely.

Hmmm... I have 2-5 AF days a week. I crave on my AF days. I really don't like the idea of drinking on AF days just because I'm craving. I understand the science behind it... but drinking more frequently just because I'm craving scares me. If the ultimate goal is to drink less frequently, I need to drink more frequently? This is what makes me very leery of this whole approach. Just being honest.

Drink as you feel you should. I drank every day at the beginning after being essentially a binge drinker just because I 'could' then I decided to try a few forced AF days and found this actually helped. I always recommend not forcing yourself, but going with what you and your body wants.

Indeed the Sinclair Method approach seems a bit backwards...drink more to drink less??? Well, yes, if you are still craving the booze. Naltrexone, working according to the pharmacological process of "Extinction", works to reduce and even eventually eliminate the craving. It's not like a Tylenol taking away a headache, however; Baclofen works that way. If you do thoroughly understand the way Naltrexone works, then it shouldn't scare you. If it scares you, well then.........

All the best.

I did the same thing, mostly to try and speed up the process. I think us binge drinkers have it the worst in terms of extinction because we drink very heavily on a semi-frequent basis. From what I've heard from Sinclair and Eskapa, once you get past a certain number of drinks in a drinking session, you aren't gaining anything in terms of drinking. You are just setting yourself up for a really bad hang over.

My goal, as a binge drinker, has always been to drink more frequently, but decrease my number of drinks in a session. This way I'm getting extinction time in, but I'm not getting so intoxicated that I have de-habitability hang over the next day.

Q