Gosh Je - your numbers are wonderful! I drink last week and 6 AF !!! I am still trying to decide if I am a binger or not - or if I was - I drank daily, but always over a fairly short period of time and would then stop - drank anywhere from 5-7, and am down to 4 or 5 IF I drink now. At the beginning of Nal, was down to 2 or so a session - wish I could get back to that but it seems it is all or nothing for me ....anyway Je - I am so pleased for you - like Newlife, a tad jealous too though but so pleased !

Hugs, Maggie x

End of week 14 update!
Total number of drinks - 14. AF days - 3. Daily numbers were 0, 0, 1.5, 3, 4, 5.5, 0.

I made it through the rest of my trip, and I am happy to report that my drinking was successfully within the range I was targeting. I knew going in that I would have the chance to try drinking socially with friends and luckily I was able to do exactly that and not go overboard, and now that the trip is over I'm back to drinking essentially none for a while.

Amazingly I drank less than the people I was out with each night! And the first couple of nights I really wanted to stop after just one and had to actually force myself to have a little more just to keep up with them. Just miraculous. I did notice that drinking on successive nights the amount I consumed before feeling satiated gradually increased, which I think is a natural consequence of an increasing tolerance when drinking on a regular schedule. So I'm very happy to be back to not having anything again for a while, and on the next social engagement I can happily have just one or two and leave it at that. TSM is the cure (for me).

End of week 15 update!
Total number of drinks - 2. AF days - 6.

A very light drinking week, just as planned. Following the lead of Ocean and some others, I decided to make a plot of my results so far, pasted below. The horizontal red line is at 15 drinks/week, which is considered the maximum safe or moderate amount for a male. As you can see, from week 8 onward I've stayed within the safe drinking limit. The black dotted curve is an exponential fit to the weekly drink totals, whose equation is shown on the plot. You can see that it decays just like the extinction curves shown in "The Cure" (see Fig. 9 on pg. 120). In case you were curious, the half-life for this exponential curve is about 3 weeks. Obviously I'm just a sample size of one, so no one should read too much into this, but it was just fun to make a visual and see my progress.

Applause!

That is a very nice visual! Congratulations on the results and the successful trip. Trips with partying friends has always been tough for me to handle without getting stupid! I cannot wait until I can say that I was in control and drank only socially when I was on one of those trips.

way to go! pulling through when friends are going nuts counts for a lot! congrats!

Well done!

End of week 16 update!
Total number of drinks - 9.5. AF days - 4.

Nothing too interesting to report this week. I'd say having around 10 drinks a week over the course of 3 drinking days is on the high end of what I'd ideally like my consumption to be. I definitely don't want to be in the habit of drinking more than 2 or 3 days out of the week, and 3-4 drinks in a session is about the most I would like to ever have, so I was able to do that. I'm still amazed by the fact that I can't seem to stomach more than about 3 drinks even if I think I'm going to want more. I seem to just hit a wall and I really can't and don't want to drink any more beyond that.

Week 17 update!
4 drinks, 5 AF days.

Well it has now been 4 months since I started TSM. I just got through a hectic week moving to a new city. I feel like things have completely changed for me, in a great way. In addition to the new location I am starting school again in a few weeks, and most importantly I'm not afraid in the slightest that all of it is going to get f#$%&d up due to my drinking. That is something I haven't felt in a long time because before TSM there was always a lingering feeling that I knew the next mega-binge was coming, and it would probably come at the worst possible time and mess up my life plans.

I think I'm ready to discontinue posting in the Weekly Progress section and instead move over to the Cured section. I'm lucky that this happened quickly for me. I turned out to be a faster-than-average responder, even by the 3-4 month timeline estimate. It has been an interesting and exciting journey to this point and it will probably continue to be going forward. Best of luck to everyone out there who is still trying to make a breakthrough!

Congratulations to you my friend. Job well done! I too get lots done in my life since my cure, -on the one hand it all seems pretty amazing doesn't it?

But on the other hand, -it seems all too easy to forget the past and what a drunk I was. We must therefore remain ever vigilant, Nal always at the ready.

I will look forward to your Cured entry!