I hope all is well on your end buddy.

I feel exactly the same way - I'm not really scared of the thought of quitting completely now.

Quitting seems pretty depressing to me right now. I can't fathom what my life would be like with out a drink. I don't know why, but it can take your mind off a hard days work with a problems. It helps me forget and when I wake up it is a new day and I tackle it that way. If I don't drink I am constantly thinking of the problems at work and it just feels like something else will give if I don't deal with those problems. Sorry to derail.

Unfortunately, I agree with you Dave. However, that is what has brought us here to TSM. That is why I need this to work. I can't keep drinking away my responsibilities at work, because that ultimately trickles down to impacting my family.

Hey all,

Believe me, I know the feeling that you are talking about - the very IDEA of quitting is saddening and depressing. As if your life is in some way over. Your youth is gone. Now it's just a long boring slide into the grave, right?

In 2004, I went to AA for a couple of months. A bad 3 week bender (thanks a lot for winning the WS, Red Sox!) wreaked havoc on a lot of aspects of my life, and the juice was no longer worth the squeeze... Or the sauce was no longer worth the saucepan? Anyway, in the early days of abstinence, I felt really... resigned.... I didn't want to quit drinking but I felt like I had to. All these things that Dave mentions occupied my mind. What would I do after a long day? What would I do when all my best friends were going out and living life? What would I do when my grandfather wanted to have a scotch with me? Would I just say no to all that living???

Being a drunk sucks, because when you get the strength to quit, this shite is all you foocking think about!!! I don't want to give you the used car salesman turn around where I say "nal is the answer to all these problems!!" I honestly don't know if it is.

I know this hasn't been a super reassuring post, but I can tell you this: The other day, on a Saturday afternoon I went to get ice cream with my wife. As we stood outside eating it, I watched people shuffle in and out of a nearby liquor store. For the first time in my life, I felt a profound sadness, not because I wanted to follow them in, but couldn't, BUT BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO GO IN. That familiar place where I stand at the counter and say "give me a half pint of the J and B" or "let me get a 750 of the Johnnie Walker Black" wasn't appealing on that Saturday afternoon. I preferred to spend my empty calorie budget on an almond flavored ice cream cone.

The closest I can come to analogizing this is the first time I ran into a former love interest as an adult. When I was 16, the thought of living my life without her seemed empty and meaningless. Who would I tell my stories to? Who would I share my ideas with? When I ran into her as an adult I was overcome with a wave of sadness, not because I missed her, but because I didn't.

I think nal helps us break up with alcohol. She looks less and less breathtaking with every pill that we take. It's a process that takes a long time, just like any real breakup, but I have hope that it will work. Right now I've entered the part of my process where I am looking for a new love interest. Friday night without booze isn't a waste of life, its a chance to be creative. I haven't got this hammered out exactly just yet, but I believe we need to eventually replace alcohol with FUN if we are going to make this breakup stick. Go karting! Frisbee golf! Watch a movie at a theatre without smuggling in your ladyfriend, and maybe you will remember the plot! Go to a restaurant and taste the food. I'm thinking of starting a podcast or putting together 10 min of comedy to perform at a local open mic.

In AA, you break up with alcohol abruptly, move across the country, lose her number, and block her emails. All the while, you pine for her sweet embrace. I'm hoping that nal lets me break up with her, while still being casual friends, so that I can see how poorly she is aging, and that my new lady is so much better.

That's nice, Generic, that's right, we're breaking up our relationship with alcohol. How could I ever NOT drink on a Friday night? Well, with nal, I'm getting there - I actually did not drink on a Friday night. I did it! It was fine. The thought of it scared me but I did it. And 1. I remember everything and 2. I felt EXCELLent on Saturday and accomplished so much that day. Boy has that been a long time since that's happened! Yes, I miss the nostalgic thought of alcohol but I'm really so much better without you. My goal: "now you're just someone I used to know."

Back when I went to the AA and stayed sober for close to 4 years, during the first few weeks I used to think that even being at the shittiest place, and place I didn't really want to be to begin with, somewhere I wasn't really enjoying myself, I would drink and it would look better, it could actually feel pretty good even, then going sober I thought, what kind of fucked up thinking that was, if I am not particularly enjoying where I am at, I should just, you know, do something different, be somewhere else. Oh the times I got drunk to handle boring and self obsessed idiots, **** music, local bars, that is local liquor dumps, etc. etc.
As generic said, I 'd rather do something to feel good about myself and enjoy myself not drink myself to feeling better (and feel absolutely **** of course the day after and for several days after, and set myself up to feel permanently **** for a long time to come (that's what the scarier neurological findings imply by the way booze messes up with dopamine and norepinephrine)). Right now, and for the past few months I am not even deriving any pleasure from booze, one drink doesn't cut it, three drinks don't either, I need ten to marginally feel a little bit better, but I don't really enjoy myself even then.

Alright everyone, you are going to have to forgive me for a long winded post. I'm now just over a year into this process and I want to reflect on my anniversary, though I'll try not to repeat too much of what is already in my thread.

I was forced into trying this drug out by what I thought at the time was just a weird bit of my physiology. Many times when I would get super drunk, particularly on those occasions when I had a cigarette or 6, I would wake up early the next morning with very little recollection of the end of the night, but the acute awareness that I was laying in my bed in a pool of my own urine. How odd, right? What a weird quirk! Alcohol plus cigarettes were a magical combination that made me lose control of my bladder.

Now, while it could sometimes happen by booze alone, it was clearly strongly induced by combo with cigarettes. No problem I thought. I can solve this. I can have it both ways. I'll just keep drinking but quit smoking. I mean, I realize how bad smoking is for me anyway, so this is as good a reason as any to give it up. So I'd coach myself before getting the night started. No smoking tonight. NO SMOKING TONIGHT, A$$HOLE!! But then I would. Inevitably, when I hit my tenth drink or so, the craving for a cigarette would actually outweigh the craving for another drink. I'd put it off, try to say no, but give in when I saw one of my friends going for a smoke. Or a stranger going for a smoke. Or if I saw one of my friends that might have cigarettes I'd ask them, and really if they said yes, it was their idea, right?

This made my wife understandably furious. How can you possibly respect a "man" who drinks until he pisses the bed and just refuses to stop? The fighting got bad. Real bad. With her losing attraction to me and me being "unwilling" to change, divorce was on the horizon. Now looking at it, we might have had another 5 years of misery before it all fell apart. She mostly kept my awful secret.... Only on three occasions that I can think of did she out me to friends or family, and in each one of those occasions I was being a drunk enough jerk that a lesser woman would have just walked.

BUT I CAN FIGURE THIS OUT. I mean, I wasn't a real alcoholic after all, but I had this weird quirk! How could I be a real alcoholic? I was finishing up a PhD at the school that has literally recently been named the best University in the world. HOW ON EARTH could I be a real drunk if I could keep my life together enough to be called Dr?

So I decided to use my skills at searching medical literature for something to help me. Something to let me have it both ways. I remember when I first read about nal. I was hung over (not unusual) but it was a bad one. My friends were in from out of town, but I could barely interact with them or anyone because, as was so often the case, I was on the verge of a panic attack from alcohol withdrawal. I wanted a pill that would allow me to drink like a madman and then sober up at the end of the night. keep me from urinating on myself, and take the edge off my hangovers. Actually, as bad as the hangovers were, I could live with them. They were a necessary evil. Really, I just didn't want my marriage to end, so I searched first for any kind of urinary incontinence medicine that I could find... Not coming up with much that looked like it wouldn't cook my liver, I looked for something that would just help me drink a teensy little bit less. Just enough to keep me from hitting the ciggies. Maybe take me from 18 to about 12 drinks a night. Then I found TSM.net, and read all of your stories. Bolstered by the articles I read about nal on pubmed, I placed my first order at allday.

This is getting longer than expected, so fast forward to today. I am still a work in progress, but here is what I can tell you has changed in the last year, beyond the numbers.

1. My wife and I haven't had a fight in over 6 months. In fact, now she wants kids and so do I. She never would have said yes a year ago.
2. I honestly believe that I will never piss myself again (What a huge F*cking achievement, LOL. I shouldn't be so proud of this, but I am)
3. I had a bottle of tequila sitting 3/4 full, in plain sight on my bar. For SIX MONTHS. It doesn't call my name anymore. Similarly, my wife can have a drink in front of me on one of my AF nights, and I can decline to join her out of lack of desire. Before this year, I don't think she EVER had a drink without me joining in.
4. My wife and I went for a long tasting weekend in wine country, and I had no loss of control.
5. I have lost ten pounds and my skin has cleared up significantly.
6. Since the very first dose of nal, something let go of it's hold on me. Since that day I haven't drank on a Saturday morning to get rid of the Friday shakes.
7. I can remember the end of a bunch of parties I've been to.
8. I now know that I was(/am?) an alcoholic. A real alcoholic. Denial is amazing. I never thought I was in it. I pissed myself in bed, and my side had begun to hurt after weekends, likely from a burgeoning fatty liver, but I always thought that I was just a hard-living, misunderstood genius. Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski, and me.

It's funny, because I drink so much less now, but with new gained perspective, I see myself in more danger than how I saw myself a year ago. I'm down to about three bottles of wine a week, which I realize is too high. My goal now is two, but I think this process ends closer to zero. I no longer want it both ways. I don't want to be a drunk in the night and a productive person in the daytime. I want to be myself again, and I can taste it at times.

Congrats on the anniversary.

I have pissed the bed a couple times in the past also. Once, I took the time to pull my unders down, and pee straight up at the ceiling fan. My wife was not happy.

I have not had any miss-fires since starting TSM almost 3 months ago.

Thanks for the encouragement generic.