Oh, thanks so much for the great update, including weight loss (a "Two-Fer" Happy Story)!!! It is so motivating to get a report from someone who has reached their goal, so that is a nice New Years gift to us all! Happy new year to you and your family -

Chrissie

It's been almost a year since I gave an update. Last year I was taking 50mg every morning just to make sure it was in my system. I stopped doing that shortly after my last post for fear of turning myself off to everything I enjoyed. I can't say I became disinterested in other things, but there was definitely a lull in my personality. At the time I was willing to trade that for a chance at recovering from my years of alcohol abuse.

Now I follow the protocol much more closely - always taking 50mg an hour before I choose to drink. In the last two weeks I have only drank once. It was this past Friday night and I had 5 beers.

It's worth noting that there were a couple of months where I ran out of Naltrexone and decided to give drinking a shot without doing TSM. It wasn't long before I was back at blackout level and found myself staying out drinking until 3am on work nights. It got ugly for a while and I can definitely testify that Naltrexone is the most important factor in my managing my drinking. Without it I quickly lost the battle.

My wife has been watching this whole process and can definitely confirm that TSM is a lifesaver. During the short period where I quit taking Nal, I contemplated giving up drinking altogether. After all, I was back to being out of control without TSM. Both the wife and I thought it might be a good idea to try AA or something similar - for some reason not recalling my long-term success with TSM. Then one hungover morning I downloaded Roy Eskapa's book onto my iPad and read it once again from front to back in one sitting. I knew immediately after finishing it that TSM was the way to go. I guess I just needed a refresher course on how it works, why it works, and how we become addicted. I quickly obtained a prescription and have since been doing extremely well.

At this point I choose not to drink more often simply because I know it's going to be a short-lived night with TSM and choose to pass on the empty calories. There are, however, those nights (business dinners, work parties, neighborhood block parties, etc) where I want to drink and taking Nal an hour before I start sipping has been working extremely well.

I will update much more often as I continue this way of life. Thanks!

That sounds ideal!

Thanks for your informative update...I'm glad you made it back to TSM, after that scary interlude. Yours is not the first relapse story recently, so that is good info for us all to have.

Have a great holiday season w/ your family...sounds like that will happen!

Chrissie,

I believe the hardest part of TSM is the ability/desire/discipline to take Nal an hour before you drink EVERY SINGLE TIME! There were times where I justified not taking it because it was a 'special' night out and I really wanted to 'feel' the drunk. In retrospect that was a dumb idea. Going back to the hell of what it was like helped in that it made me appreciate this method and not take it for granted. Now I have Nal at my office, home, car, and in my backpack. I take the Nal no matter what.

"Feeling the buzz" rings a chime with me. I'm trying to come back from total AF to moderation, and one difference I'm noticing six months into TSM is a definite feeling of "buzzed enough" after two or three drinks. In my boozing prime I blew right through that point in the first ten minutes, and kept on pouring it down.

I'm going to try and post my weekly recap throughout 2013 to help myself and others. So here we go...

Week of:
12/31/12: 8 drinks, 6 AF (alcohol free days) - Drank with friends watching Packers/Vikings NFL playoff game at local bar

Week of:
12/31/12: 8 units, 6AF
01/06/13: 18 units, 4AF