Hope you continue to post on the cure sight! Great to hear about successes.

So happy to read this j3625!!! Really thrilled for you!! Big hugs from Newlife

Congratulations to you! I find this really encouraging! Looking at your consumption for the first month and seeing where you are now really gives me hope that I'm on the right track. Please check in from time to time and let us know how things are going.

Je - I am so happy to hear your progress - that is just awesome - you are the Poster child !!!

Please keep posting - even if just now and then .....

Hugs, Maggie x

Thanks for all of the positive feedback everyone, it is very encouraging and helpful.

very nice! stay the course!

Time for an update here. Unfortunately I hate to add a discouraging post, but I recently had a big spike back up in my drinking. Ironically it came just a couple of weeks after I wrote a nice, long post in the "cured" section claiming that I had my drinking under control. I'll have to go back and edit that at some point, but for starters I just need to figure out what went wrong and how to get things back on track.

It is true what I said that for 2 straight months I was drinking within the safe, moderate range. That's the good news. I'm afraid I just got over-confident or cocky and took that to mean that I was back in control and didn't have to worry about how much I was consuming or something. I can also blame the fact that I just moved to a new city (the party capital of the world, in fact) and spent the first week going out to bars and having fun, thinking I'd be fine. I saw my numbers start to increase a little bit but shrugged it off at first. I also noticed that I was starting to get more of a pleasurable effect from alcohol again than I did when I was drinking less, and not doing it on consecutive days. That culminated in a nice little 3-4 day binge, which is the first time that has happened since I started TSM.

So, I now have a lot to think about as far as getting back on track. Perhaps this was a good reminder that although TSM is an effective treatment for alcoholism, it's not really a cure, and to be successful I have to persist at actually trying to moderate or eliminate alcohol from my life. I think I took my self-proclaimed "cured" state as a free ticket to drink how I wanted again. I did continue to take Nal each day I drank, but some days the drinking took place over a longer period of time and I wonder if some of the effect wore off, which could explain the increase.

I hope I didn't let anyone down who had been following my posts! I still believe TSM will work for me, but this was a reminder that the goal has to be either truly drinking a very small amount (like no more than one at a time) or perhaps none at all. I don't get to be a partying heavy drinker who's immune to his alcoholism. That isn't going to work for me. I'm definitely going to go back to tracking my numbers and doing the things that produced great results in the first place.

Je - no worries about letting any of us down - I am happy that you came back and wrote about it all. You could have just left us all thinking that you were fine and dandy! I do think that it is hard when we think we are 'cured' - the week before last I was feeling amazing and really felt that I was definitely 'on the way' - and then had a TERRIBLE week - but when I posted and wrote about it someone said to me that she wondered if on the Nal that one part of our brain is fixed but that awakens another part of it and then THAT part has to be fixed - it sort of sounded good to me and I wonder how true it is. Anyway - I am glad that you posted and wrote what you did and that you know that things still have to be watched ! Hang in there and keep the faith!!

Hugs, Maggie x

Je - sorry about the setback. I think that you are not the only such story - I have read on some other posts of people having setbacks but then getting back on track again. I don't really like "cured". I am aiming to be "in control". Let's face it, all of us will have to be careful with AL for the rest of our lives. Better to just come to grips with that.

You gained control once, you'll do it again, and quickly. Thank you for letting us know what is happening.

Hugs from Newlife

I agree newlife - 'in control' does seem better than 'cured' .... maybe because we cannot imagine ever being 'cured' but can see being 'in control'?

Hugs, Maggie x