My Naltrexone Journey

[boozer]

Stellar, I to have been on Nal 50mg for about 3 weeks now. I must say am disappointed in the results so far.Hope someone out there has some suggestions for us. The second week I really thought it was making a difference.From what I have read IT can take many weeks to work. Good Luck and keep posting.

[crown86]

Boozer and Stellar,
Are you doing the sinclair method or taking the naltrexone daily for cravings? From what I read there are poor results with taking naltrexone daily. For me tommrrow will be a month and naltrexone has obliterated my tolerance. Especially this week where it was trigger central with relationship issues to have 20 drink nights. I am estatic with my results so far. I am doing the Sinclair method.

[boozer]

crown86 I am not following the Sinclair Method just taking 50mg at 4.00pm daily (1-2 hrs before drinking) I have discussed the SM with my GP He wants me to give him as much info as I can get on the matter,as he has not heard of it. I have read quite a bit about the SM and don't really see why taking the tab everyday, 7 days a week 1 hr prior to drinking or not drinking should make any difference. I have about 3 days AF a week without cravings and have done for years.My GP claims he has cured many alcos by simply following the directions that come with the drug. I know I still need to do more research on this matter but feel I should follow my GPs advice at this stage. Thanks for your post keep in touch I really need to get this beast off my back.

[crown86]

Ok guys and gals I havent posted my daily progress in two weeks. I have been keeping a journal with day by day results but got kinda sloppy and lazy with the holidays and the break up of my engagement for the millionth time. The actual units were probably around 4-5 drinks per day since my last post. Which for me are nothing short of miraculous. My fiance dumped me on December 16th over me getting a dog, well the one kind of dog she supposedly hates a german shepherd. She told me they hate kids pregnant women are highly agressive and not good family pets. As a suprise for xmas my sister got me a shepherd named "roscoe" 1yr old. He is has all the basic training down house broke sit stay etc and loves frisbee. He LOVES my neice and nephew...my nephew pulls his tail and rides him and Roscoe loves it. My fiance did not live with me and would not move in with me way prior to the dog even prior to booze being a real problem...I don't think she felt for me the way I felt for her when it came down to it.

With a break-up and the holidays man o man would I be drunk. This is the first time in 42 years I did not decorate my house. LOL usually I am a christmas nut two trees decoration blah blah blah. Our family celebrates Xmas eve..It has always been held at my house during my adult life. Well there is a first for everything. Was held at my sisters this year because of my break-up I just couldnt do it - say depression. LOL. My mother passed away last year was missing the hell out of her this holiday, missing all the big family christmas's of the past plus a break-up with a girl I wanted to marry - The Perfect Storm for booze.

Pre-TSM these two weeks would have been a goddamn disaster and one big blur. I would have drank every day and night 20+ drinks stayed drunk all the time day and night - drink pass out wake up drink pass out losing all track of time and days. This would have been a big binge that lasted a couple or few weeks and would have been chaulk full of bizzare incedences due to my drunkeness. The depression from the events coupled from the drinking would have had me back to suicidal thoughts and why the hell am I even here. The guilt at the end would have been insane and LOL what does any great alcoholic do with guilt...LOL DRINK THE GODDAMN GUILT AWAY and the cycle continues. Yes this was the perfect storm to possibly send me on a 3 week bender or so. Being the good alcoholic I am I cope with booze and we all know how well that works in the long run.

I am on my hands and knees LITERALLY thanking God everynight I found the sinclair method. I have not managed to get passed more than 5 drinks in an evening and I did not drink during the day at all. I did drink everyday for the last two weeks but like I said due to my event /drinking triggers I AM SO F-ING HAPPY with 1. only drinking at night and 2. not being able to get passed 5 drinks in a setting.

TSM -Christmas Present:
Last night xmas night I was at my sister's house and she had a couple mutual friends over. I had 2 mixed drinks and 3 beers. One of her friends said lets have a real martini and not that crantini foo foo stuff your making. LOL I was ALWAYS the first to pass on anything foo foo. So I was like HELL YEAH Time for a real deal martini gin and vermouth and olives. Mind you I had five drinks in me already in a 4 hour period was in a great mood bsing with people and I LOVE to drink and get drunk - I made the martinis for me and the other guy complaining about me making foo foo...LOL..Call me out? Gotta love the macho bravodo bullshit of a male alcoholic...OK I sat them down and he sipped his I went to sip mine caught a wiff of the gin and out the goddamn door I ran hurling all over the yard. Never even got it to my lips. My buddy followed me out laughing at me and I am outside puking and I mean yaking hard ( sorry to be gross) I am telling him how awsome this is. I told him I am loving this nausea. We go back in and I dump my martini in the sink got a coke and drink those the rest of the night. I was usually the guy who threw up on like mabey 18+ if I ever did throw up which was rare, but even after I got sick I was always like ok good the stomach is clear keep drinking. Nausea would never stop me. Same thing tonight, Saturday night, but didn't get sick I had 5 drinks from 6pm to 11pm and was starting to get sick. I knew if I had another mixed drink I would be sick again. I switched to beer but found myself clutching to the can and not drinking it just to be social with company.

I used to drink my whiskey, scotch, vodka,gin Straight. On the rocks and LOVED the taste of each and everyone of them like grandma's homemade cookies. I loved to get drunk and loved the taste. I had a thing if your gonna get good booze like Crown Royal, Grey Goose Etc DON"T KILL IT with coke or cranberry..get cheap booze for that. those spirits are meant to be poured over ice and enjoyed straight with no mixer, mabey a splash of water. I went through a phase of Gin and jus a splash of water...LOL my friends thought I was nuts and so did alot of bartenders. Gin is some rocket fuel.

I have gone to bed every night realatively sober..well sober enough for me that Naltrexone is a miracle. I was feeling sick from 4 drinks on xmas eve an quit but man did I want to keep going. But I just couldn't..can't explain it. Yep these night I have had five I have had a buzz, but again it's that "clear" buzz people talk about. I did nothing out of control have nothing to regret and can remember absolutely everything in the last two weeks which based on the holidays and a break-up...I still can't beleive I got through this Holiday not being plastered for 2 weeks.

I still have pain from the break-up like any normal person would, stress with the economy etc...BUT the big difference is booze is no longer destroying me with depression and keeping me in a dark hole of pure hell which makes matter a bizallion times worse. Things are not great right now but they are not hell on earth either. I can clearly see I have options and things to be thankful for etc. In short I'm in a half way decent position to getting my life back and am motivated to do so regardless of the pain I feel from a break-up. This break-up and the holidays would have derailed till easily Febuary before I got off the bottle enough to half way feel a twinge of motivation but then I would drink all over again and continue the cycle.

I know it in my bones in the end TSM will save my life from an alcoholic death and all the hell that comes before it.

[Jon184]

Thanks for posting
my results have been amazing
went from 70 plus units/wk to 21 first week!

[crown86]

Jon

Glad to hear your units are way down. Thats awsome. The best part I am sure you are aware of is how easy natural and sub conciously this is occuring.

The amazing thing to me is I'm slowly losing all ability to drink hard liquor be it straight or mixed and like I have said previously I LOVE THE TASTE of any hard liquor straight. Gin scotch rum whiskey blends liquors that are 80 proof any thing 80 proof straight. I LOVED the taste and LOVED to be drunk.

It's amazing I am primarily drinking beer. Thats how I started in my alcoholism. I will never forget in my late 20's I took a girl out to dinner who didn't drink and I thought I was sophisticated and ordered a scotch on the rocks and could barley drink it. But man o man did I come full circle. I got to the point I hated beer...it was filler..an wine..to me that was for women unless it was homemade, nite train or whats the price a quarter twice whats the word thunderbird...LOL yep got some as a joke one time with an old chilhood friend and forgot how potent the stuff was and then continued to buy it for spell. Was funny I live in the high dollar part of town would have friends over they would ask if I had aany wine..I was yeah I think so look in the freezer...they were like the freezer? I was yeah the freezer and please leave it in the paper bag it's better that way.

I am finding myself getting very Nauseaous on hard liquor after 2. It seems to be continuing which I am loving getting sick from it. Sounds nuts I know but the stuff has gotten me into hell on eath. I still want it, addiction insanity, but when I go to drink it I get sick to my stomach like when I took the woman out to dinner in my 20's. Not antabuse sick, which I have zero experience with jusy what I have read and heard , but a natural nausiousness like when I first started just dabaling in the hard stuff.

I am now primarily drinking beer which is very odd and funny for me. I used to play the moderation game of ok I will only drink beer because the hell starts with anything hard and straight and this would never last. Whiskey or any hard liquor has a so much better buzz and can take me to a black-out land of oz that beer can't even come close to no matter how many I have. It's like I am playing the old bullshit moderation game naturally like I really can't get hard liquor down.

I still romantize the bottle and turn to it for all the same reasons before like happy sad mad or glad and when I am with someone or by myself. But the turning is not a complete swan dive in. The bottle is becoming very inaffective. I am hoping in the next few months I will stop turning to and romatizing the bottle. Time will tell. But I am happy as hell with Liquor making me ill and tolerance obliterated.

The best part about naltrexone and the sinclair method is it is occuring to me "naturally" all I do is adhear religously to take natrexone one hour prior to drinking and the pill does the rest. I was recently reading a post on the TSM site and a guy was like why am I taking a pill to kill the pleasurable effects of alcohol. I thought brother you have not yet suffered enough. I will ALWAYS have this pill on my person till the day that I die. I have 4 in my wallet, two in my car, and plan to ALWAYS have these amounts in these places. I WOULD NEVER DRINK WITHOUT NALTREXONE. I guess you have to stare hell in the face and live in it for awhile to grasp it. I felt really bad for the guy posting, almost like he's kinda in hell or why would he be on a site about quitting but he has zero clue I think of the road the bottle takes you on. Thank God for naltrexone and TSM and me not being THAT guy.

[afterfive]

Thanks, crown86, for sharing your experience with Naltrexone. It really works. But I ran into some side effects.

I read Roy Eskapa's book, and obtained some Naltrexone. I began taking it in the afternoon. The second evening was eye-opening. I was on my third beer. A realization hit me: this tastes like water [no, it wasn't light lager either]. I'm getting no buzz from it at all. Same result on the fourth beer: it goes down like water; no warm glow; no pleasant buzz in the head a few seconds later. When it became obvious that no amount of further drinking would give me any buzz, I stopped for the evening.

Unfortunately, I also woke up at 4 a.m., with my mind just fizzing. At first, this was mildly pleasurable. It was stimulative. But after three or four nights of waking up at 4 a.m., I was a sleep-deprived zombie. I had to stop the Naltrexone, just so I could get a night's sleep.

This insomniac side effect may be just my peculiarity. I've found that almost any substance that alters mood, metabolism or serotinin -- be it SAMe, St. Johns Wort, Naltrexone, SSRIs, or whatever -- interferes with my sleep. I started taking my Naltrexone dose in the morning instead of the afternoon, but I still couldn't sleep at night.

No question, Naltrexone does what it's supposed to do. By locking up the brain's opioid receptors (which also respond to alcohol), it eliminates the buzz one expects from a drink. Without any pleasure or reinforcement from drinking, you stop because it's useless. This worked for me, and reportedly does for a majority of people (85% or more).

Sadly, I just couldn't tolerate the insomnia I experienced on Naltrexone. So now I'm embarking on the My Way Out approach, with kudzu and Topamax. Good luck to all on Naltrexone therapy. Having experienced its effectiveness myself, I think it's a promising approach for most people if they can tolerate Naltrexone.

[Lo0p]

afterfive, you are not at all the only one to experience insomnia. A lot of us did. However, this side effect goes away rather rapidly, usually within the first week or two. It is very short-lived, as are all side effects of naltrexone that people report. If you'd like to read and research about The Sinclair Method I recommend this website: thesinclairmethod.com • Index page It has MUCH more information than the book.

I'd hate to see you make a potentially life changing decision without first knowing all of the facts. Namely, that the side effect you are experiencing is very likely to disappear within a week if you continue.

edit: It's also likely that half of it is caused by the fact that you are drinking less.

[Cinders]

AfterFive,

I also want to add that almost all of us suffer insomnia when we quit drinking anyway. It is a side-effect of stopping the drink.

It goes away with time. It is worth waiting it out because when you do sleep again, you really truly sleep.

Cindi

[crown86]

Afterfive

Yep my friend I COMPLETELY know the insomnia your talking about. I was like a zombie for days..This side effect of insomnia went away after a week to 10 days. It was the worst insomnia of my life.

I am with Loop and his comments reagrding the insomnia. And also agree with Cinders. It seems either way we are going to pay a price for what we have done with alcohol. No way to avoid the taxman on this one.

For me I looked at it like well I spent many nights passed out on my kitchen floor, passed out half slumped over in a chair, or even been woken up in my front lawn by a neighbor walking their dog. Can't exactly say I slept like a baby. I am a high functioning alcoholic so after these passed out nights I still got up and functioned as I needed to the next day. If you want to dance you have to pay the band was my attitude.

I figured I will just plow thru the insomnia with naltrexone and was TOTALLY PREPARED even if it did last to keep the TSM going. My attitude was if this continues this might be reason enough not to drink. No buzz as before, weird clear buzz, and being a zombie I started thinking why drink.

I was in such a hellish place I had to do something, and AA was not going to be the way for me. I had done AA for 10 years in my youth and KNEW it was not going to be for me.
I had made up my mind for a FULL TILT COMMITTMENT to TSM after reading their forum and the book The Cure for Alcoholism. It made perfect scientific sense.

The bottom line to me was TSM full committment whatever the side effects and really to me the side effects of alcohol - liver disease,heart disease, destroyed relationships with family friends and lovers, lost oppurtunity's, depression to suicidal levels, and OH THE GUILT and all the rest of what alchol brings. The insomonia looked like a good choice to tolerate and the lesser of two evils.

Either way my friend, I hope MWO works for you, or TSM if not only saying this because you experienced the success of TSM, or anything at all as long as it works for you.


Goodluck and wish you the best in whatever method you decide on.