Hey Bardo

I have read your thread with interest. I am in a similar boat as you, though I had not the same degree of problems with alcohol, I am dependent nonetheless. I am also mostly abstinent for the better part of two years and have only recently dabbled....

I'm curious about your comment in the quote about the label "alcoholic"....

I mean, I guess I know what you're saying, (if I understand it) that people counting drinks and leaving liquor alone while denying they have any problem doesn't make sense.

Do you still consider yourself what society has deemed "alcoholic"?

Although I'm not sure there's a better term that is widely used, I still don't like it. People assume that as an alcoholic, I get stupid drunk, fall down, piss myself, drive recklessly and a million other things that I really didn't do. There are horrible alcoholics out there that are just a complete other level from where I was at, and I drank quite a bit. But without the drama I guess.

(BTW, in no way do I mean "horrible" as in a bad person. I mean a horrible problem which it can certain be....)

I never did go to AA. My father wanted me to badly, he even had a friend buy me the Big Book, and while I found the first part of it interesting, I really didn't see myself entirely in those stories, and I hadn't really hurt anyone with my drinking - other than myself of course.

I do not like the word "never", as in my father telling his 44 year old son "you can never drink again, it's poison now, you could die if you ever drink again"

I have just been white knuckling it on my own, doing pretty well, but rarely feeling like myself, always the craving underneath though it is often manageable since I'm either busy at work or exhausted. I miss the social aspect of a few beers though, and having previously lived life without brakes and lots of options, feel really limited in the world where "I can't drink". Many say that they've come to not feel weird - and I say, good for them. Whether divine intervention, providence, or good old science of TSM provided relief, it doesn't matter. But as you know, no amount of others telling you how your broken brain should feel does a dang bit of good!!

I also, had done my research on the other side of AA and found that there is a whole school of thought out there that says, your usual AA member can be "frozen" in time with their addiction, and is never really able to return to firing on all cylinders. Too much focus like you've said on "disease" and so forth..... the arrested alcoholic becomes arrested as a person, stunted, and refuses to get over it and grow as a human being. Though perhaps the support would have helped me to mitigate my anxiety of going it alone, I was afraid to have AA get it's hooks in me, and me becoming "addicted" to it in some way.

Anyway, I'm just curious about your comment, not in a negative way at all. I just related that to my own experience and dislike the term because as TSM book says, we have to live with this stereotype of being an alcoholic and I do not want to be pigeonholed. I want to believe that maybe I can still have a life with some choice and control, and though I am mostly accepting that I'll not be able to drink without some help from NAL I would very much like to be free of the everpresent static of cravings for C2H60.

thanks all....

Zk

Weeks 5, 6 and 7

Going well!

Week 5: 14.5
(3.5, 0, 2.5, 5.5, 0, 3, 0)

Week 6: 19.5
(6, 0, 3.5, 0, 3, 3, 4)

Week 7: 16
(3, 10, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0)

Things have been going nicely. Continuing to feel my urges, cravings and habit for reaching for alcohol diminishing. Haven't gone to a meeting yet...

Just got back from a trip to the Caribbean. Drank very lightly except for 1 night. So, I was feeling really tired each night from travel, doing so many things and being in the sun. I also think the Nal typically makes me 10-15% more sleepy. So the third night there night, I took a half a pill to try and not fall asleep in my dinner plate. BIG mistake! I drank a ton. Huge goblet of rose at one bar, 3 beers at another (lapping my wife twice), and then a few more wines back at the hotel. It was like the good ole days! The next day I was wrecked, and completely hungover. Felt absolutely awful, way more than a typical 10-drink bender for some reason. Totally ruined what could have been a very lovely day in the islands.

So this tells me two things: 1.) This TSM stuff is working, and I need to keep taking the Nal at full dose. 2.) I need to be careful and always remember that relapse back to my crappy days of daily hangovers, embarrassments, and perma-guilt are only 1 decision away (choosing not to take the pill).

The fact that I was (mostly) lightly drinking while on vacation was a minor miracle to say the least. We were at bars, restaurants beach clubs and booze and boat drinks were flowing all around us. I typically go a little nuts on vacation, and LOVE me some good rum with my beach time. We went to this baller beach bar known for celebs, where DJs were blasting tunes, and rosé was being poured by the gallon-- and I had one glass the whole afternoon!

I have a cold now back at home- presumably from public travel and possibly b/c my immune system was wiped from that one night of binging. Often in the past while sick, a couple of beers or wine would make me feel better or more cozy somehow. Tonight, I have absolutely no interest and just want some hot tea and hit the bed early.

I'm gonna keep on keeping on. Thanks everyone for reading, and offering feedback.

Cheers,

Wolfie

Wolfie - Great progress and congratulations on that! I am still struggling when it comes to the rum and the beach but it is a work in progress. Hope you feel better and keep up the great work

Nice work, Wolfie!

Interesting effect from dropping back to 25mg, I wouldn't have thought it would have such an immediate effect, I count myself forewarned. I'm my second week in, still working up towards 50mg, but the side effects are a bit funky. I'm getting on top of them though!

Bet your wife is liking TSM too! You're doing great!

Thanks JoeSixPack.

Good luck on your path. Keep me posted on how you do.

I found initial side effects to be jarring at first. But they dissipated over about 3 weeks. Don't try and overthink them, and keep plugging away and hopefully they will diminish.

Yes, the wife is very pleased with these changes. She says I'm a new man. To be honest, she didn't ever really know what my struggles were before. But I took control and found this method and dove in. But she has learned a lot as I've slowly been more comfortable telling her about the medication, and how it feels and how I'm experiencing these changes. I help out around the house more, we have sex more, I'm in better moods, I've lost 6 lbs, no anger or resentment from some dumb $hit I did the night before, etc, etc.


On a side note, I just watch an episode of Intervention. This young girl was ravaged by alcohol abuse. Like- really bad. So they build up the whole drama over the course of the hour. Made the audience see her good sides while also her awful states. You meet the family and see how it's wrecked everything. You yearn to see her get better and wince at all her struggles and disappointments. They do the intervention with the dramatic music, and ship her off to rehab in Canada. The lovely music kicks in and "3 months later" and there she is! She looks great. 90 days sober. She says all these quotes about willpower, "my decisions" and "why" she drank. Then, in the last 30 seconds the text scrolled on the screen, "Nichole checked out of rehab against the advice of staff and was arrested for public intoxication within 24 hours."

Jesus! This made me so angry. All that crap about why she drank seems to me to be totally wrong. She thought is was all these family problems and her failing at making the right choice. But she (nor the show) showed any inkling of how alcoholics are lead around by their frontal lobes. We're flooded with these weird endorphins when we drink. We crave them so much but confabulate other reasons why we drink (or ignore it.) Not only that, but we know that cravings and urges actually grow the longer you abstain.

Not everyone has this condition. It can be blocked with medication. This fact seems to be almost totally lost on the rehab and AA world. I don't mean to judge, but just venting here. But the more I learn about addiction, the more I see how poor the current methods are working. Rehab has been said to have a 90% relapse rate and AA as much as 95%. I wish more people knew about TSM. And personally I'm glad I found this method when I did before getting progressively worse, then banging my head against struggles and dead ends for years.


...

Wolfie -

Great post, and ain't it the truth!

If we could just get people or even just the medical community to understand about Alcohol Deprivation Effect it would be huge. It wasn't about that girl's choices, she didn't have any choice. Yet AA and it's ilk, SoberRecovery, SMARTRecovery and others, not to mention the "Treatment Centers" (I'm sorry, but detox and abstinence isn't a "treatment" it's mis-treatment) and "Rehabs" all have one thing in common: A miserable success rate. They produce far, far more serial relapsers than success stories. Hopefully, that will change within my lifetime and these people will have to shut down their $40k a throw fraudulent operations or sell them off to Motel 8. At least Capo by the Sea is offering Vivitrol (their "Luxury Vivitrol Program") , but that's still not doing it right. And what's the first item on their "Contact Us" menu? "Financing Available". Nice. Sooo, you have to get a loan just to call them? Spend some of that "Luxury Vivitrol" money fixing your website, ya charlatans!

I had a friend who went to detox before I knew about TSM. Not even a week's stay in a local hospital. The tab was over $24k. They pushed him out the door with some meds and the number for an outpatient 12-step program. Insurance pays half. You would think the Insurance companies would be as interested as hell in TSM.

It's just hideous. If these rehab/detox centers knew about ADE and TSM, but failed to offer TSM or even Nal on an "as-needed" basis and that client died from any outcome of an ADE driven relapse, that would amount to murder 1 in my book. Murder for financial gain. Like the lady in One Little Pill said, it's a crime NOT to use it.

Of course, I'm not going to win any converts talking like that.

On a lighter note, my first pint just lasted 2 hours. Most of it would have been gone in 15 minutes with my first cigarette, pre-Nal. Nal and mindfulness, a great combination.

A great story on RadioLab about addiction, medications (like Naltrexone) and the struggle.

(42 minute audio stream)

http://www.radiolab.org/story/addiction/

This episode we take a sober look at the throbbing, aching, craving desire states that return people (again and again) to the object of their addiction … and the pills that just might set them free.

Reporter Amy O’Leary was fed up with her ex-boyfriend’s hard-drinking, when she discovered a French doctor’s memoir titled The End of My Addiction. The fix that he proposed seemed too good to be true. But her phone call with the doctor left her, and us, even more intrigued. Could this malady – so often seen as moral and spiritual - really be beaten back with a pill?

We talk to addiction researcher Dr. Anna Rose Childress, addiction psychologist Dr. Mark Willenbring, journalist Gabrielle Glaser, The National Institute of Health’s Dr. Nora Volkow, and scores of people dealing with substance abuse as we try to figure out whether we're in the midst of a sea change in how we think about addiction.

Wolfie: I am old timer here on the forum and haven't been around that much lately. But I just read your post and wanted to weigh in that I am SO HAPPY about your progress. And the fact that you did so well on a vacation. It really sounds like the nal is working for you. Hope you keep taking it and NAL ON, as we used to say.....

Newlife

Week 8

I've had a bad cold, so don't give me too much credit for a low count. But this week's numbers looked like this:

0, 2, 0, 5, 5.5, 0, 0 (Total 12.5)

A party on day five would have easily been 10-15 drinks, but with my Nal it was easy to pace through a few beers and cocktails over a 5-hour shindig. Day four, my friend's dog died, and white wine was flowing through a sad evening.

I've had the same 3 beers in my fridge for over 2 weeks now. Which is totally weird as, in the past, any loose beer cans wouldn't make it through a night in my house.

Even with much fewer drinks, I haven't felt more energetic like I would have expected. Maybe it's the cold, but I've had a lot of headaches, and general malaise. Hard to get motivated to do things. Often, people report some sort of emotional bounce or energy boost after quickly lowering drinking. Maybe I should start working out more to replace my free time. The snow here in DC hasn't helped me feel too enthusiastic about being out and about either.

Otherwise, all is well.

Wolfie -

Maybe angle for a Alcohol Free weekend per the book, then go exercise on the 3rd day. That'll release endorphins and your receptors will be much more sensitive so you will start to "learn" that exercise is desirable.

How's your relationship with your doc working out. Is he TSM aware?