Agent Orange,

May I start by thanking you for helping me to open my eyes to the cult of AA. I have finally won the battle with alcoholism through the use of medical science, not 12-stepping nonsense. Here is a description of how I did it (summarized, believe it or not).

I spent decades as an alcoholic and years trying to quit. Initially I tried quitting on my own, then I got caught up in AA. While in AA, I had my worst drunken blackout experiences, during what they call relapses. I tried over a dozen times times to stop, but failed every time. I doubted their method from the very beginning. Eventually, I turned to a psychiatrist and tried a variety of medications over a year, none that were quite effective. My psychiatrist eventually prescribed me what he considered to be the least effective drug he had, Naltrexone.

As usual, I studied the drug online and stumbled on a treatment method called "The Sinclair Method" which appeared to be used widely and successfully only in Finland. I thought: Oh great, another costly recovery program that ultimately does jack-squat. I kept looking for the catch, but I couldn't find one. You take an inexpensive, patent-expired generic drug (Naltrexone) that blocks opiate receptors (Naltrexone) one hour before your first drink, then drink as you normally would. That's it. Apparently, the learned behavior of alcohol abuse is "burned" into your brain via the endorphin reward system. This is not the same as the buzz that alcohol gives you; those are other receptors. The Naltrexone blocks the reward circuitry and the brain eventually "unlearns" the behavior over a long period of time. Dr. Sinclair and the Combine Study (published in JAMA Vol. 295 No. 17, May 3, 2006) claims it takes a few months for this "pharmaceutical extinction" to be effective. The result being that one starts drinking less and less as the behavior is unlearned. It should follow an exponential decay curve as the study and Dr.Sinclair have published. It boasts a 78% efficacy rate per the studies. By the way, I told my so-called AA buddies after finding out about this medical method telling them that Bill W himself had spoken of a day that medical science may one day have a cure. I went to a meeting to say this and I was immediately silenced and physically removed from their meeting (which I now know was illegal). Not one of them has spoken to me since.

I then talked to my psychiatrist about The Sinclair Method (TSM) and he said he had no experience with it, but it made scientific sense to him. Plus Naltrexone is non-addictive and is relatively benign when not taken in large dosages. So he prescribed it and had me give him periodic progress reports. As with all the other methods and drugs I had taken, I did not believe or have much hope that this method would work at all. As I began this treatment, which was essentially living my normal life of go to work, drive home, take a Naltrexone, wait 1 hour, drink, and then pass out or go to sleep, I found an online forum that had just started. (You can edit the site name out if you need to). The website is http://www.thesinclairmethod.com. There is a similar sounding site that is a pay recovery website, but this one is not. No money is ever exchanged. There are no meetings. There isn't even a chat room. You just post your experiences or ask questions there only if you want. So, I registered and continued the TSM treatment, recording the number of drinks consumed per week and "conversing" via forum posts with others about their experiences. This started in early 2009, when few in the US had any experience with TSM and nobody on the website knew anyone that had done TSM treatment. Time seemed to go slowly; there seemed to be no significant decline in drinking levels.

Finally, one of the first forum members that began earlier than the rest of us started drinking less and less and less and after 7 or so months of treatment was down to US NIAAA guidelines for moderate drinking. It worked for him. Soon others followed, one by one. Then to my astonishment, TSM worked for me. I really never believed it would happen. For me, moderate drinking took hold in 5 months, light drinking around 11 months, and then abstinence in month 17 - without ever trying to stop. Now that I have graphed it over 19 months, the curve is a classic exponential decay curve with a correlation coefficient of 0.825 (1.0 being perfect correlation, 0.0 being no correlation). Like the others at the forum that were "cured" (and we debate about using that word), we no longer wanted to drink or drink much at all. Almost all who were cured then left the forum, some never to return, because they had their lives back again. Some of them pop in occasionally to say hello to new ones, but it is rare. I stayed barely involved for a while since there was hardly any of the originals there anymore. I am waiting for the next person that is "cured" to take the reigns. I have become a little more involved recently since there are only a few dozen of us active on the forum. The site admin rarely says anything. He just keeps the spam off the forum and that's about it. I am just a member, not even a moderator there.

The facts as we have experienced: The TSM treatment is not perfect. In our non-scientific test group on the forum, our efficacy rate appears to be less than 78%, by how much, we don't know. In most people it appears to work. In some people, TSM works partially and goes no further; these people are mostly very happy about their improved lives nevertheless. And then there are those for whom TSM seems to have no effect. Although they are a minority, they tend to actively hang around the forum longer. Fortunately, we had one of them become cured after well over a year (glad they stuck around).

I thought I would give you all the above background information in order to tell you of an over-the-top publicity stunt I thought of performing. There are only a few hundred people that are engaged actively in TSM (in English) and we have tried various means to tell others. But people believe what they want to believe. AA or other 12-stepping cults remain the entrenched treatment of choice, even among physicians who should know better. The JAMA article cited above should have gotten their attention. It didn't. Newsweek just did an article on it. Who reads Newsweek anymore? So this stunt is one that goes against every fiber of my being. That stunt is to burn the AA big book and post it with a narrative on YouTube. Here is most of my first post about the proposed stunt on the forum in italics:


I was throwing out some ineffective treatment books this morning, when I came upon my AA big book. Yes, the divinely inspired tome to spiritual enlightenment brought to us by His prophet Bill Wilson (whose likeness may not be depicted in any form). Instead of throwing the book away and contaminating my local recycle center, I thought I would save the book so I could video it being destroyed by my shotgun and then post that video on YouTube with commentary, of course. Then came another wild thought!

It occurred to me that with the recent Quran controversy and the ridiculous amount of media attention it received, that when a product/service gets notoriety with any publicity (good or bad) as many business owners know, it is almost invariably good for "business". The key, of course, is the media attention. It's free advertising.

This shocking idea popped up in my head today.

How about if all of us TSMer's go to several local AA meetings where we are not known and buy several AA big books over the course of a week or so. Then, contact our local media outlets that we will be having a book burning somewhere (everybody hates those), where we will legally burn the AA Big Book that has ruined and killed so many lives, when there are viable medical solutions with much higher efficacy rates available, such as TSM.

The event could be held on July 25, the anniversary of Naltrexone's original US Patent #3332950 in 1967, or January 17, the US FDA's approval of Naltrexone as an alcoholism treatment in 1995. I personally prefer January 17, since it is sooner and it is when the US FDA legally recognized Naltrexone as a medical solution for alcoholism.


Since the above post, we have decided to do the stunt on YouTube first, with a special burning of Chapter 5's "cunning, baffling, powerful" drivel. And I will save the one page where Bill Wilson speaks of a day when medical science may find a cure.

Well that's about it... I want people to know about the Naltrexone TSM treatment, even if it is a shocking stunt designed to make people ask "Why would these people hate AA so much that they burn their book, but save that one page?"

"78%) reduced successfully their drinking below a level of increased risk for mortality and morbidity, or at least halved their alcohol consumption from what it was to begin with."...

...Bob, love ya man, and I love the idea and attitude, but I don't know if an organized book burning is the thing. Youtube is one thing. anyway, I really think the sad truth is this:
Nobody Will Care I seriously doubt you'll be the first to burn the small book.