I'm really intrigued by this phenomenon of feeling a slight calm/high from the nal itself. It's funny how our brains give us each such individual experiences.

I hope it keeps going well. Keep us posted.

I guess we drank from 7 to 9 beers each yesterday. I never got a buzz buzz but Johnny did. He made the statement he was getting tired of the buzz in general and was thinking about quitting drinking all together. I cooked and we both ate and stopped drinking around 8pm and ate ice cream and watched The Blind Side. Lights were off at 11:30 for me. Johnny fell asleep around 11pm.

I woke up early this am, 6:15 as usual, and felt fine. Went to the bathroom, got back in bed and fell asleep which is not usual. Woke up around 8:30 the same time as Johnny and now I have vertigo so bad I can't get out of bed. And nausea too. I'm fine in a certain position like now but if I move or try to get up, I have to lay back down. This sucks. Johnny feels fine and is in a great mood. He wants to take the nal all week but not drink. I told him that is not how it works. Still waiting for the book to come.

Another side effect that may or may not be related is that my face has broken out terribly. I have rosacea but it is a mix of that and regular acne so it could be the red wine I drank last Monday. Could be the sunscreen mixed with heat during the week. Could be retin a that I started making me purge. I don't know. I just feel like crap right now.

So I finally got up and made a sandwich but got back in bed to eat it. Club soda with lime is the best! Read Melissa's thread and grabbed this from her:

"The pleasure budget. The receptor control theory goes beyond weight management to explain more generally the regulation of pleasure in your life. If you have ample dopamine receptors, then a wide variety of stimuli– including food, social interactions, work, and other interests– should provide you with sufficient pleasure to make life not just bearable, but interesting. However, if you end up with an undersupply of dopamine receptors — whether it be from birth, addictions or unremitting stress — then your baseline pleasure “set point” will be low and you’ll be vulnerable to depression, low self-esteem and other aspects of unhappiness. Addictive escapes may provide temporary (but unsustainable) bursts of dopamine, serotonin, and other feel-good neurotransmitters, but at the cost of further downregulating dopamine receptors and feeling worse later on."

I'm now reading all about dopamine and motivation. And I just took a 50 mg. nal. I guess I'm going to do my own experiments with this drug. I want to feel the great high I got yesterday but I don't want to drink. I'm interested in the up regulation of my dopamine receptors. Maybe that is why I feel high, feel good when taking this drug. Yesterday was the best!

Of course I'll keep y'all posted!

littlebit I know that miserable feeling well. Personally, I think part of the power of the drug for me has been a bit of an aversion to alcohol secondary to pairing Naltrexone with Alcohol in my brain. Your husband might be feeling something like that, too (subtly) where he thinks, "Geez, it'd be better to just not drink at all than to do this." That's very positive. Just don't give up and endure any suffering, and good will come one way or another (extinction or aversion).

Regarding dopamine receptors, all I can say is that the science is quite primitive regarding the human brain, addiction, the Sinclair Method, etc... Through evidence-based trials, it has been shown that Naltrexone "works," but I'm not aware of any definitive scientific proof of exactly how (e.g. proof that might be obtain via post-mortem autopsies or even before and after MRI brain scans). A lot of this process, for me at least, has been a "healing" of my brain over time via lengthy abstinence from alcohol. That should probably be your goal -- after a bit of time doing the Al+Nal, alcohol and naltrexone free days seem to be required in order to truly re-build your psyche into something more healthy.

So, if you're left feeling a bit empty and sad when sober, activate your personal strength, keep doing positive activities while sober (exercise, sex, etc...) and you will slowly rebuild your mind and life.

Hi Barry,

Did the hangover ever go away like other side effects do? I feel better than I did this morning and I did go ahead and take 50 mg. but while I feel calm and relaxed, I didn't get the big high I got yesterday. That is sad.



Have you been to the "Nal in the News" section of this forum lately? I posted some articles and links that I found interesting about other uses for nal such as for eating disorders. I read today somewhere that it was successful in treating internet addiction.



I don't really feel empty or sad. The only thing that bums me out about myself is my lack of motivation to get back into exercising. I know that it is not all motivation, some of it is discipline, but I was curious about dopamine and motivation.

I found this today while surfing:
"Studies of dopamine began with pleasure until researchers began noticing peculiar phenomena. They saw spikes in dopamine during moments of high stress. Dopamine rose in the case of soldiers with PTSD who heard gunfire. Stress and gunfire are not pleasurable phenomena, yet there dopamine was. What gives?

It was clear that dopamine went beyond mere pleasure, and it turns out dopamine’s true effect may be motivation. Dopamine performs its task before we obtain rewards, meaning that its real job is to encourage us to act and motivate us to achieve or avoid something bad.

Studies confirm the motivation-dopamine link in a number of interesting ways. Behaviorial neuroscientist John Salamone confirmed the link in an animal study on rats who were given the choice of one pile of food or another pile of food twice the size but behind a small fence. The rats with lowered levels of dopamine almost always took the easy way out, choosing the small pile instead of jumping the fence for greater reward."

I am the lazy rat. So I'm wondering if the damage done to my receptors has something to do with my lack of motivation. Once upon a time, before I really fell into drinking daily, I used to work out. You could bounce a quarter off my butt and I had a four pack abs, working on a six. And that was at 40. I got in the best shape of my life at 40 and stayed that way through the most part of 2010 and then I lost it. And I'm having a hard time finding it. But I will find it. The thought that this drug may help repair some damage is very encouraging!

I wanted to mention that nal seems to make me want to cook and clean, something that I don't normally do. Even today, not feeling 100%, I got right up and started cleaning. Weird. Good but weird.

littlebit I never really was, but I'm becoming less and less of a reductionist that views all life in terms of hormones and neurotransmitters and such. However, I realize they are powerful things -- just watching my wife change moods during the month, like clockwork, shows how powerful hormones and neurotransmitters are. At the same time, and as I've mentioned before, we're practically in the Dark Ages when it comes to actually understanding (on a precise scientific level) phenomena like motivation, addiction, etc... That's why when discussions related to Naltrexone and exercise or sex or gardening come up, I'm like, "Meh." Regarding exercise, for example, during my 11 or so years of daily drinking, I went through periods of high motivation and periods of low motivation. There did not seem to be any intrinsic cause of these -- sometimes there was an extrinsic cause (e.g. an upcoming vacation made me want to look my best).

Anyway, I think 99% of all this is trudging through the first weeks and months of TSM so you can finally leave behind the counter-productive drinking and (in my opinion) getting off alcohol and naltrexone (except for, perhaps, "occasions" like vacations, weddings, etc...). So, don't worry if you're motivated or not to exercise, or how good your orgasms are, etc... because that's all pretty superfluous in the big picture. I mean, not to discourage you from thinking and discussing these things, I'm just saying they are SOOOO secondary to the alcohol consumption. Based on what I've read of you, it seems as though you have a high probability of success with TSM. You don't know exactly where this "journey" will lead, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how -- TA DAAAA -- your life magically comes together once you remove alcohol.

Excellent. Congratz on your continued progress.