Luna, I think that's a very promising development. Your first AF in 6 months!

The whole point of Nal is giving alcoholics control where previously they had none. It's still up to us to exercise that control.

It sounds like your AF day was a worthwhile experience. Continue experimenting with effort and see how much you crave/miss alcohol when you take an AF or limit your drinks.

This is just the thread I needed at this moment. I am so glad I stumbled upon it! I am at the 6 month point, and I think I need to start trying harder. I see now that I can't rely on the pill alone, I have to exercise the control it has given me. And it HAS given me more control, at least in having more AF days.

I didn't succeed or indeed even try to have another AF day on Tuesday. Tomorrow I'm going to a party at a bar where I know I am going to have a fair amount of beer. Sunday would be a good candidate for an AF day. I think I'll try one then.

Jerry - thanks for the bit of sanity. I'm new here but this post I'm replying to is so encouraging to me. Hell...i'll repost it just in case:

path,
i had a very similar experience about two months ago. i was roughly 5 months into TSM at that time. i began to have strong cravings earlier and earlier in the day, whereas prior to this i had been pretty good about waiting until 4 or 5 for my first drink. in my pre TSM days i was often an all day drinker. it occurred to me that if the craving is there, there is extinction to be done, so i decided to just roll with it-take the nal and drink if i felt like it, whenever. for maybe a week i started at noon (and as you said, units went up dramatically due to a longer time period of drinking, and i did get very worried initially) but then with just a bit of effort began to hold off longer. in a few weeks i was back to 5 o'clocktails but the really good news is that after going through this spike and change in patterns my units began dropping dramatically and have stayed low since. i'm also finally having more AF days than drinking days, including a ten day stretch AF. eskapa says one should drink in all the old familiar ways, places, moods, etc. so i think it's possible that if day drinking was part of one's routine there is benefit to repeating it with TSM. it sounds slightly insane-i remarked to jim during this period that "drink as you normally would" was not sounding like such a bright idea-but now i'm glad i did. pre TSM i could continue a pattern of all day drinking for months on end. with nal i lost interest in it pretty quickly. considering how my units dropped off after this i guess it was an extinction burst.
so don't worry, you're certainly not alone with this experience.


I am 'expanding', it seems, to pre TSM levels here in my 2nd week. But what you describe above tells me that I just need to be patient! Imagine that...me being patient. (As u probably have not read another recent post of mine, I am approaching pre TSM levels here in my 2nd week..and am getting worried.) Thanks Friend....MontclairNJ

Like MontclairNJ, I'm under 2 weeks into TSM. I really loved the early 2010 posting "MONTHS IN AND NO RESULTS? TRY A LITTLE BIT OF EFFORT", and I'm going to do that. Right now, I am going easily with urges, but CURRENTLY find that after the first 3 units, I don't have much interest..some, but not like the old "topping off" the glass so it was never empty and opening the second bottle so it was ready in advance. AF days have been so rare for me in the past several years, I will see if it happens naturally in the next few weeks, and if not, I will "add a little effort" and make it happen.

When I think about what WE are all doing, we show enough discipline to take a med that we know will reduce a pleasurable experience. I bet nearly all of us have the discipline to try AF. I am trying not to set too many goals, and not set them too high at this point (thanks to suggestions from the "saints" Jude and Vincent!), of course we all have goals or we wouldn't be doing this---I will consider myself cured when I naturally have at least 3 AF days per week, and when I drink socially, like my normal friends, 1 - 2 drinks.

Thanks for the clarification on units! I've built my spreadsheet to track. You are all so inspirational! Thank you.

Pre TSM Avg 70u week (all wine)
Week 1 24 u (and a LOT of HOPE!)