Ruteburn (sic) Trail ? Watch out for stoats !

I think you're doing great! Keep it up and enjoy your trip.

hang in there Nigel & keep the faith

have a fantastic time in NZ

I am back!

Had very amazing time, my units are slightly down due to the fact I was often camping wild and didn't have access to booze, when I did I did drink as it was a heatwave and the beer tasted yum.

I have decided to drink less wine, I can drink it as I adore the taste so beer only in the week for me, I am thinking this maybe a reason I am taking longer, I have lost the NEED to drink, and if I only have beer around I am really not that fussed about drinking it, wine however I do like and the taste/feeling of it I still very much want.

Pre TSM 30-45 un/wk 1af/wk us units
0 43/0 no nal 6 39/0 12 46/0
1 40/0 7 37/0 13 34/1
2 29/2 8 34/0 14 35/0
3 44/1 9 39/0 15 31/2
4 35/2 10 25/3 16 25/2
5 31/3 11 42/0

Welcome back nigeir

Great to hear you had a wonderful trip, it sounds like a once in a life time event.

I think switching to beer is a good call, be intresting to see what happens over the next few weeks. I'm in a strange place because all drink is just so unappealing.

Look forward to reading your posts again

Good luck

welcome back Nigel - glad you had a good trip

interesting what you say about wine vs. beer - I am much the same. if I have a bottle of wine in, I will drink it, I'm still not at the stage of just drinking a couple of glasses. however, I'd probably be equally satisfied - from an AL pont of view - with a couple of beers

so the same the same the same!

Drunk everyday this week for a total of 71 units, feeling down about the method at the moment. Its a bit like religion and I am waiting for that 'moment' that I see others having, so I end up convincing myself that there are changes but if I am honest they are small.

So for example had friends for dinner, normally would be very boozy and I did drink at least a bottle of wine, but stopped and couldn't make myself have more, where as normally I would be trashed; HOWEVER last night, did my totally favourite thing, music on in kitchen few glasses of wine and cooked drank over the evening way too much.

I can honestly say that I don't overall feel that much has changed, certainly not dramatically, there have been some low level changes both positive and negative, positively I find AF days if they happen easier and I don't have such huge spikes on a big session, but negatively I am feeling down and I think it has a lot to do with the lack of endorphins, having come back from a totally awesome 3 week holiday I am feeling grumpy and meh, which cant be right.

I can see success happening to others that started when I did and I am so very happy for them, not too sure why it isn't happening to me, I have followed the GR, maybe in the whole time I might have drunk before the hour 5 times (and at 45 mins) and had one glass of wine with no pill the afternoon after an evening of taking (so within 24 hours), and whilst my alcohol intake has been high for years I don't consider it outstandingly worse than many here.

The thing that is attractive is the total lack of willpower needed (supposedly) but we all talk and talk about what we are going to do, I got lots of beer in last week, but still ended up back to my old favourite wine, do I force AF days? I have several things on this week and so will be going af, but not really out of choice, the real thing that needs to change is af days when I stay in at home..... in fact I have organised these outings to stop me drinking so I can get a hit of endorphins.

I wonder how the rest of the class of Autumn 2014 are doing? I can see thistime, all41 doing well, cheeto snapdragon and me not a lot of change, there were others that posted a bit and then went, I can only imagine things might not be doing so well.

Pre TSM 30-45 un/wk 1af/wk us units
0 43/0 no nal 6 39/0 12 46/0
1 40/0 7 37/0 13 34/1
2 29/2 8 34/0 14 35/0
3 44/1 9 39/0 15 31/2
4 35/2 10 25/3 16 25/2
5 31/3 11 42/0 17 40/0

Nigeir

I'm not surprised your units are up this week, coming back from such an awesome trip would definitely have blown me off track.

I have a little theory, which is probably a load of rubbish but I will put it out there anyway.

The reason some folk go after AF days is to break the habit side of things, this is very plausible and works in parallel with TSM changing the brains pathways. However, if I've understood the science behind TSM then the longer we have been heavy drinkers the bigger the short cut pathways or super highways have become. Hence the longer we need to take nal for.

If you took a longish break from taking the pill in NZ plus you've been pretty good at getting some AF Days under your belt then that's good for your habit breaking but the less total quantity of pharmaceutical extinction has occurred.

In my own experience when something happened it came fast and furious, one day I'm drinking 50+ units the next it really was like my receptors were saturated.

The other thing I can say in my own experience is the nalmefen is accumulative and once it works it stays that way. I have only taken nalmefen on a few occasions in the last 3 weeks and I'm feeling the same now as I was when I noticed that drinking had first lost its appeal.

Either way it's only a matter of time before you've taken enough to saturate every receptor to make a difference. My theory only really explains why it may take longer than me because we started at the same time but I pretty much took nalmefen every day without a break.

Of one thing I'm sure AND that is it works, it's very unlikely that out of the autumn 2014 class only 2 of us succeed and the rest don't. It's much more plausible that out of all that started back then a few fell by not following the GR but of those that continued the time it takes will vary but it will work in the end.

As plantPrO would say "keep the faith"

nigel,

I think you were away when I posted this on Cheeto's progress thread:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2442

it's a few years old, but I found it quite useful as it shows that the vast majority of people don't reach 'cured' in a few weeks, or even in a few months, so hang in there & keep the faith!

Nal + Drinking + PATIENCE = CURE!!

-badger

thank you peeps... good great link there badger very reassuring