I heard years ago that at WW if you pigged yourself everyone would wave a pig sign in the air and cheer . Please tell me this is not still true .

Hi Kris,

What can I say? I am blown over by your warmth and support! I am particularly touched by your fourth sentence; it gives me even greater resolve to see TSM through to the end.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

V.

Virg, everyone here has that 'gut feeling' that YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT. Your stalwart perseverence is awesome. (There, now somebody else use 'stalwart' for Virgil. . . ) We love you!

Hey Virg,
Looks like you got this thing working.

Tell you what a night is like for me. My wife just asked me if I wanted a beer. I looked at the clock and thought, I can take my Nal now and wait unti 10:30 PM and drink a beer. So I told her, "I'll pass". In some ways, the regementation of Naltrxone is a natural deterrant.

Congrats!!

Hi Folks,

So, here we go again. Great to see the forum up-and-running again following the recent outage. I certainly missed it.

Well, it's time to tot up the figures for the last seven days and, you guessed it, it was yet another 100 UK units week. If it's the case that I need to get benzos out of my blood circulation before I see progress, that's at least another twelve weeks to go. I've just completed week 13. Perhaps there should be a prize for the person on TSM the longest before they start to see progress. If so, I'm going to nominate myself!

As an aside, a question popped into my mind recently. You know how some of us have been trying to understand the subject evaluation criteria for those taking part in TSM clinical trials. It has been said that people with underlying psychiatric conditions (e.g. depression and anxiety) were excluded from the trials. Yet, on page 96 of The Book, Dr Eskapa states "One of Sinclair's findings from an analysis of the Finnish alcoholics was that the treatment produced a very large decrease in depression". These two sentences do not tally. Can anyone shed light on this apparent contradiction?

All the very best to everyone!

V.

Virgil,

You have my vote for the prize! Start planning your victory party, even though it might be 12 weeks or so from now...

Hi Kris,

Many thanks. The planning has begun!

All the best.

V.

Hi Folks,

Well, I have just completed week 14 on TSM and progress still continues to elude me. This is proving to be a long haul for me and I'd be lying if I said that I don't get a tad disheartened when I read of others' progress. But, what can I do? I'm doing what I can in tapering off a benzo and I'm hoping that, once I'm clear of this medication, I might start getting somewhere.

I'm also concerned that people with underlying psychiatric conditions were excluded from (some of the) TSM trials. What, if any, are the implications in my case? Some of you will have seen that I am probing this further by posing a question directly to Dr Eskapa. I can understand why people with psychiatric disorders might be excluded from clinical trials because it makes sense to minimize the variables. But, at the same time, there are a lot of people suffering from anxiety that turn to alcohol as a form of self-medication. Sorry, I'm just thinking aloud!

Anyway, as a famous DJ used to say here in the UK, back to the records!

V.

Virgil --

Do you think it's possible for us to read too much into the exclusion of certain participants from Sinclair's studies?

As I understand it, it's standard practice to do such screening. Otherwise, I assume the findings would be questioned for failing to properly screen the subjects.

I don't think we should take it to mean that if we would have been screened out of the study, TSM will not work for us.

Take some comfort in the fact that you seem to be right at the time at which spirits sagged for SpringerRider and others.

I've posted elsewhere that, on this board, the benzo users as a group seem to parallel the pattern of the group as a whole. Not scientific, but reason to stay optimistic.

I admire your persistence and I'm glad you're here.

Hi Lena,

Apologies if it came across that I was reading too much into the exclusion of certain participants in TSM trials - it wasn't intended. That's why I made the statement "I can understand why people with psychiatric disorders might be excluded from clinical trials because it makes sense to minimize the variables".

Thanks for your last sentence - it means a lot.

All the best.

V.