Update time. I stopped taking nal this weekend. And I note that there is absolutely no difference in the out come. I still drink too much, my consumption is the same 1 beer and a bottle of wine, sometimes more. Even my husband mentioned, why take it? Its not stopping or controlling your drinking. So why bother going through the motions and suffering the nasty side effects. I don't really know what to do now. I have a huge supply of nal but no longer see the point. I guess after two years I'm calling it quits. Nal just doesn't seem to help me. What's next? Who knows....... (

NWO, I'm a bit late to the party, as I have not seen your thread up until today and my meandering journey out of the pit of alcoholism has only brought me back to this forum very recently. I'm very sorry to hear this news.

There are still other options available. If your drinking is solely a weekend thing, and you really want to eliminate it altogether, you may consider disulfram or "antabuse" as a deterrent. I'm sure you've already read up on it at this point, and I read through this thread very quickly so I may very well have missed it, but to me, it sounds like you might be well served by taking a dose of antabuse on Thursdays and Fridays. This will remove the option of being able to drink at all over the weekend. The medication stays in your system for a few days and then goes away. Then, during the week, you don't normally drink, so you don't need to take the medication. This would minimize the amount of medication you are taking and hopefully keep side effects to a minimum as well.

In doing this, you would essentially disabling your liver's ability to process alcohol during your most vulnerable period, and if you failed to abstain and drank anyway, you would quickly feel very ill and be unable to drink anymore.

I'm not a doctor, and I can't call myself an expert or anything like that...just trying to be constructive and offering advice based on what little I know from reading about your situation and what I've learned by frequenting forums like this one.

Hi Nalwayout. I remember you from when I posted way back myself. I'm returning to TSM and hoping to do a little work along with taking nal again.

I do remember something you said in the past about wanting naltrexone to take all desire to drink away, and that you also wanted it to take away the feeling that you were deprived of drinking alcohol like other people - and that's why you were disappointed in it. Do you think that is too much to ask this drug to do?

There was a point in the recent past when you did say you were not really interested in drinking all that much. Was not that the time to just stop? I think you may have been expecting naltrexone to do more than it could.

I can say this to you because I'm in the same kind of place. I stopped drinking for quite a long time before - nal did the job it's supposed to do - take the pleasure away so there was no point in drinking. Now to be fair, my hand still reached out for the glass. But I had to make the conscious decision to stop reaching.

But I didn't do the work. I didn't fix anything about my situation - my anxiety or my boredom, or my unhappiness with my situation at home, or whatever. So I began to reach out for the ole "fix me up" again. And of course I stopped taking the naltrexone. So here I am back again.

I don't want to lecture you. Who am I to tell you what to do, or what to feel after you have been doing this for so long. But I do want to say that maybe you are asking nal to do something it's not designed to do. Please don't give up. Naltrexone does what it is supposed to do in our brains. But we can simply drink past it. As it's smoothing away the pathways as Dr. Sinclair describes we are laying down new ones. That's probably the wrong science but that's how I describe what I've been doing to myself. Anyway, I hope you will reconsider your goals and have more success.

Hi Nalwayout,

Firstly, I think it's great that you only drink at the weekends and 1 beer and 2-3 glasses of wine sounds like an amazing level to be at...this is probably where I hope to get to! Having said that I totally understand that this isn't where you want to be and that you are striving for more.

I don't know what your drinking was like prior to starting TSM and how much you've been able to reduce your alcohol intake? My concern is that if you stop taking the Nal when you drink at weekends will the craving and desire for weekday drinking increase? Is part of your ability to be alcohol free Monday to Thursday linked to the weekend Nal?

I'm very new to TSM and have only been taking Nal for 2 weeks, so please excuse me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I am worried that by stopping the Nal you could end up back where you started.

Wishing you all the best,

Ruth.

Thank you Ives and Ruth. I've reconsidered and have decided to continue with Nal. I thought about what I said "it makes absolutely no difference taking Nal or not taking it" but that's not really true. When I didn't take it and drank the other night I really really can't remember even eating dinner. That's somewhat worse than when I do take the Nal. It gives me "some control" but not much. I still drink too much. But I fear that if I stop, I will get much worse and as you both mentioned, be back where I started two + years ago. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I know it's hard to take the time out of your day. So appreciate it! Onward and upward I guess. And thank you Ives for your suggestion that there is the boredom factor involved here. You are so right. I do drink to pass the time on weekends. So I'll work on that. Thanks again. )

Credit where credit is due: it was actually the poster dothework whose advice you were taking to heart. I think you got my post and hers mixed up. In any case, great to hear that you're going to soldier on. Doing TSM and suffering some mild side effects is a whole lot better than going back to your old lifestyle, where you were drinking much more than you wanted.

I haven't been able to figure out which it is by reading your posts -- exactly how much do you drink over the weekend? I've seen you say "one beer and 2-3 wines" (4 units) and "a beer and a bottle of wine" (about 7 units). Is that 4 units per day? 7 units over the course of the whole weekend? Fri-Sat-Sun or just two days?

Nalwayout,

No thanks needed!

I guess we do have to look at the underlying reasons why we drink and that will be different for each of us. I'm totally convinced that there's a genetic component linked to endorphins as described by Sinclair and Eskapa. For some people ( and lab rats) that's all that there is to their drinking. For others (like myself and maybe you) I believe that there's an emotional component too. Once we begin to understand why we do what we do we can take steps to stop doing it.

Do you keep a drinking diary? Maybe you could start to notice your mood and emotional state when you drink. Over time you might start to see a pattern emerge which you can then begin to change.

Good luck,

Ruth.