Hmm. If you get along with Kava, I wonder if Baclofen would be of help. It's actually been used for detox in place of benzos. In France, it's a treatment for AUD. You start out at a low dose and work your way up to over 100 mg, until you become indifferent to alcohol. Then you back down slowly and find a maintenance dose. Like benzos, you can't just quit suddenly, you have to be tapered off them. Do you take days off of the Kava?

Congratulations on navigating the Holiday Season AF!

JoeSixPack, I have absolutely zero cravings for alcohol, so I don't really need Baclofen. This sounds weird, but just a single Naltrexone can "break the spell" of alcohol for me. If I add motivation to the breaking of the spell, then I'm able to go AF for long periods. I'm very motivated now due to marriage problems, being back into weight lifting, and wanting to change careers (which involves study, etc...).

I can do without Kava, but I have really found it a benign substitute for alcohol (as opposed to, say, Xanax). It will be good for special occasions and even for more regular "happy hour" drinks. It definitely is relaxing and causes a temporary (but milder) change of perspective like alcohol, but it wears off and causes zero hangover or crappy feeling. It also doesn't awaken the beast within (it's pretty self-limiting, meaning it would be hard to binge on it). I'm drinking it about three times a week right now.

B, could you clarify something for me? I at one time read back fairly deep into some of your posts and the thing that strikes me if my memory is accurate is that you've never followed through with the actual procedure of TSM. Right? Namely, for a period of five months drink two or three separate times per week (extinction episodes) and unravel the coils of learned addiction. Instead, you 'break the spell' not so different from aversion therapy through a revulsion to NAL. That seems to last for about a year and then you resume drinking. Why not actually eradicate the addiction through the tried and true procedure? I would think it's exhausting always bouncing dualistically back and forth is all...

Also, have you explored the MJ option? Perhaps a tad complicated with your profession, but workable in the right set of circumstances.

MJ option? Not sure what you mean.

Also, I'm not sure what to say about the "extinction" and "addiction" thing. It's very much a philosophical question because, really, we're talking about subtleties and maximum subjectivity. I started the "protocol" four years ago this month, but it worked so fast that I didn't really feel like drinking, so I only went through a few pills...started drinking without Nal several AF months later, got bad again, took two Nal January three years ago and went 16 months completely "addiction" free (i.e. no effort required, minimal thoughts about alcohol). Chose to drink again once I moved to Florida, which eventually led me back into very bad drinking...recently got motivated to stop again, took 1/2 Nal, and now have one month AF under my belt with, again, zero cravings or effort involved.

I'm not offering answers, only my experiences with Naltrexone. Without Naltrexone, my life would likely be very bad right now (although, maybe not...I just never could stop drinking before Nal). My further thoughts from my experience...

**Extinction is a state of mind but, even per Dr. Sinclair, it's merely the state you were in prior to your first encounter with alcohol. What led me and you to drink way back then? Who knows? So, to say that I wasn't really "cured" because I chose to drink again doesn't make sense in light of the fact that EVERY DRINKER was once "cured" (i.e. non-addicted) and yet chose to drink that first drink. I could follow the protocol for a year and I can almost guarantee you that it would "feel" no different than what I feel today (how could it?). So, back to your question, there is no "once and for all" with alcohol, IMO. Meaning, it will always remain a possibility and option for everyone of us here.

**I don't feel averse to alcohol, just Naltrexone. But, even still, aversion to alcohol would be much more powerful than the more neutral, "indifferent" state of being "cured." Every addict was once indifferent to their drug of choice.

**I can't emphasize enough how big a part motivation plays in all this. So, while "the beast" is an irrational part of our brain driving us to drink, our own will plays a necessary role. I feel like, right now, I'm back to where I was pre-Florida and will be able to maintain my abstinence as long as I want. But, to get here, I really had to (a) have a good reason to stop (for me, this is all relationship and self-improvement related) and (b) really work into it -- via meditation, listening to lots of motivational speeches (I like the cheezy ones on youtube, type "motivational speech"), reflecting on why I want to stop drinking, reading things that inspire me, etc...). Once I felt (a) and (b) were there, I took the Naltrexone to quiet the beast -- that's the easy part, really.

**I also want to reiterate my "wispy curtain" analogy -- that the space between being a dysfunctional drinker and completely abstinent is more like a curtain than a brick wall. It's easily passed through with little to no "drama."

Bardo, by the way...

All this is hard to articulate, I know, but what is YOUR subjective experience of being cured? What would you liken it to? Are you 100% abstinent and, if not, how can you claim that you're indifferent? If you are abstinent, do you think there would be circumstances in which you would turn to alcohol again? Just curious, not trying to be argumentative, but I had a deja vu that we've had a similar debate before.

To clarify I'm actually not assuming there's inherent permanence per say to one's deaddicted self post extinction. That would be a pretty bold assertion. At any time circumstances might be such that one decides to resume drinking unprotected. The posit I'm ultimately making I think is if the process of deaddiction is respective of the 30 years of Dr. Sinclair's research then it's reflective of Sinclair's foundational assertion that alcoholism is a learned behavior intensifying through repetition and exposure over time. With appreciation of course to genetic pre-dispositioning. So from a Pavlovian point of view this unlearning should be occurring over a longer duration of time much the way it was learned. Therein I just don't see how you could be deaddicting your brain with three or four extinction episodes. This is pure conjecture, but could you have a better quality of extinction if you follow protocol? I think there's a correlation with meditation. The practitioner who's sat many sesshins is hands down going to have a more stable and deeper practice then the meditator however gifted who's only sat three times.


I resumed drinking after a year of abstinence in order to begin TSM. From the onslaught I had an organic control over alcohol. No cravings, obsessions or abuse. That was a good place, but the fact of the matter is after repeated extinction episodes something definitely kinda flashed at five months. I can only describe it as complete indifference. A sense of peace. My intention was not to achieve abstinence. In a way quite the contrary. I wanted to be able to have a drink socially. Ya know, be normal. So how do I drink now? It seems I'm usually having a cocktail every three months or so. See, I don't like drinking on Naltrexone particularly much. It's fine, I can get a bit more relaxed/enhebriated, but I don't really like it and I definitely don't care for the taste much anymore. Reminds me a lot of being a young boy where maybe Dad's drink has a mysterious smell, but it would be gross when he gave me a sip. As such it was not a particularly big draw most of the time yet every now and again I would double check and have another sip. Nope, still yuck. When I characterize myself as cured it's respective of this state I'm at after reaching extinction - cool boredom (another meditation correlation and achieved through continued, repetitive practice) . I don't know what else to describe it as. So people get real caught up on the word 'cured' linguistically, but if say your aunt Jean claimed her cancer had been cured during chit chat at the dinner table I don't think you'd raise an eyebrow. Instead you'd prob think, "yeah, she's cured. That's excellent". Because she is cured. All her symptoms of illness have been extinguished. That's separate from the fact there could be a cancer recurrence later.

Good answer, thanks. Using the Zen analogy, I suppose it's the difference between the "sudden enlightenment" of the Rinzai school versus the "gradual enlightenment" of the Soto school. I like Soto Zen and Rinzai TSM.

But, point well taken.

Interesting. A straw man argument. I didn't mention anything about enlightenment just training the mind. In any event I don't think they become unenlightened every other year. Anyway, I'm a Tibetan practitioner of the Kagyu lineage. The Zen stuff was catered to you! You should check out Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche as despite being a reincarnated Tulku and crazy wisdom guru he also suffered from undiagnosed AUD in his mortal form if you will. He ultimately died from cirrhosis of the liver. Well wishes. You definitely have stirred thought in me over the last year and I thoroughly enjoy reading your updates.

I think enlightenment is an apt comparison with being "cured" (at least the less esoteric understanding of enlightenment as you would see in Zen) -- what else is it but a change of mind / perspective towards reality? The New Testament concept of "metanoia" (conversion = "change" - meta "mind" noia) is also a very useful comparison. TSM literally changes the mind at the neurological level. Again, I also believe we have to make an effort to also change our mind in order to "activate" the TSM (or the power of Naltrexone for those of us who don't really follow TSM per se).

That's also why I've always argued that TSM "does its thing" relatively quickly -- recall that the famous mice in Sinclair's experiment were all cured in about 5(!) treatments of Nal+1 Hour+Alcohol. Some of the people here over the years have gone through hundreds of Nal+1 Hour+Alcohol and are still waiting to be "cured." I just can't buy that there's anything else going on in the brain after dozens (at most) TSM drinking sessions in the average human. It's there, it just has to be grabbed.