Have been dealing with life-long issues (father one-armed paranoid schizophrenic, mother bipolar crazy Catholic, and brother homeless for decades). Have been abusing multiple 24 pack cases of Miller Lite every week for many years.

Managed to finish 4 different college degrees including masters and am currently working in IT. Have been struggling to keep girlfriends and am still single and no kids at just over 40 years old. Before current job of nearly 10 years, I struggled to maintain work. Fortunately, this job has been forgiving of my odd attendance [I've had nervous sleep issues all my life due to family circumstances]. Currently, I am not fired yet, but recently company moved to a micromanagement Agile Dev Ops model, and my luck may be running out. I also have high liver enzyme count from blood work.

Thanks for listening. Just noticed I left out some pronouns in my sentences. My only friend seems to be light beers since I have been nervous and socially awkward my entire life. Have to do something before my health and job fortunes turn for the worse. May have 30 good years left if I'm lucky so need to do something now.

Best to all,
cavey

Hi, Cavey. You're in good company. I was driven and high functioning until 2010 when I found myself out of work. Then it seemed all bets were off. There were other factors of course, but it lead to a pretty remarkable descent. TSM transformed my life beginning last November. I never thought it would be this good. Ever. A big part of my drinking was rooted in social discomfort. I'm an introvert, but with a little sauce you might not guess that. I stopped taking benzos when I began TSM. All my panic attacks and what have you vanished. You should def get going with this. Let us know how we can help. There's another forum named, Options Save Lives that is more active these days and a further resource. Cheers.

Thanks Bardo! I did check out "Options Save Lives" per your suggestion. Will keep accountable on progress and spend time reading both sites.

Cool. If you haven't already be sure to read through these:

http://optionssavelives.freeforums.net/thread/369/sinclair-method-hints-tips

http://optionssavelives.freeforums.net/thread/645/mindful-drinking?page=1&scrollTo=6921

Update:

So I don't have naltima yet (expected two weeks), but I wanted to prove I can get a head start without it for my own pride. In the past, I have gone alcohol free before for months (especially after two cousins died, one from liver failure). After work got difficult, I ended relapsing back to inordinate number of beers every day.

This time I want the help of naltrexone, but I want the initial pride in saying I got motivated before it as mentioned.

I went from over 10+ Miller Lites per day to two per day for the past 3 days. I substituted with iced green tea and Gatorade. So far so good. I ran 3 miles each day for the past 2 days and don't notice the shortened breath anymore [when I was chain drinking and hit a brick wall at 2 miles].

Thinking I can train for the New Jersey marathon or at least half marathon.

Now we are free.

Alcohol free for past 24 hours, and on a whim decided to join a 10k (6.2 miles) winter run challenge to prove my return to energy from drinking less was not a fluke. At this time last week I was habitually drinking 10-15 beers per day and struggling to run 2 miles each day.

I ran past the finish line and didn't collect the medal and ran further toward 7 miles at my car. This is an extended mano-a-mano fight between me and alcoholism.

Note River Pharmacy hasn't sent me the naltima yet. I wanted the pride to feel I can do this with or without naltrexone as I've gone months abstinent before. I want to feel that the pill has my back in not relapsing but wanted to feel the responsibility for my recovery.

Good show! Keep working the conscious aspect of it and build that up. When you do start TSM, you only need one drink per session to get the effect, so if you can do without the others so much the better.

This is the last year you'll be slaving under the bottle, Cave!

Thanks Joe!

I am on 86 hours (sounds better that 3.6 days ) alcohol free. I ran 7 miles Friday, 13.5 miles Saturday, and 7 miles Sunday. Many people have asked me about withdrawal, and I told them since I've been exercising regularly for years and am in decent physical shape, the withdrawal may not be as noticeable to me. What was noticeable is hitting the brick wall (can barely breathe) at mile 2 as a chain drinker, whereas now can run 7 miles on a dime.

This morning before work was another test. I usually drink beer before going to work, but today I didn't since I wanted to keep the AF streak alive. Hope the naltima arrives soon.

I ordered 120 from River Pharmacy and 120 from alldaychemist to see which one arrives first.

I think it usually takes 2-3 weeks and this time of year it could be a bit longer. Did River show them in stock, or backordered?

Joe, since this site was down for a bit, I posted on the other site the following. I am using some redundancy with the two sites to make sure I stay on track, accountable, and talking every step in my cognitive power to defeat alcoholism.

Jan 21:
I was going to answer "joesixpack" from thesinclairmethod.com on a question, but that site seems down in DNS.

Whereas the 120 from River Pharmacy will arrive next week, the alldaychemist 120 pill package needed postal signature yesterday at my home, so a USPS pick up slip was left. Since I knew I would be getting the naltima at 6:30 am this morning at the post office, yesterday after 120 straight hours AF and over 7 miles jogging each day, I decided to have a drink to remember the "before TSM" feelings.

Sure enough, after grabbing the Miller Lite, I returned back to my old habits and kept on drinking the "awww, ice old refreshing ..." especially with work stress on my mind from a bad network problem downing transaction systems.

DAY 1 TSM! -- This morning, after getting the naltima, taking the pill, and waiting the obligatory 1+ hour, it was indeed amazing. I drank half a beer before work and threw the other half away feeling "meh" at the beer, which I used to be in the camp, "It's a sin to throw away good beer". Normally before work I would end up drinking 3 beers before leaving the house just to feel numb enough to face the dreadful world. Quite amazing today -- At work through every little discomfort or anxiety, I did not feel the "reach for the beer" reflex all day. Have dry mouth but that may be me partially drinking too much coffee and not enough water.

Sorry for another typical retelling of a common experience on naltrexone, but sure enough, this will save my liver and my life.

Thanks again everyone!

Jan 22:

Thanks wfp3, same thing happened today. At first I wasn't going to take the pill since I didn't have any desire to drink today, but I did the test again.

Took the pill, waited one hour, tried drinking a Miller Lite and this time only slowly sipped 1/3 and poured 2/3 down the drain and didn't even feel any sense of losing damn good beer. The nervousness and impulse to go get a drink on every little discomfort of the day is gone. I dare say for me that it has a calming effect in that sense [although it may be a confluence of exercising a lot and sleeping very little due to working too much], but I'll read more around here to check if people think of it as an anxiety pill as well.