So all I'm back. It has been 3 years since I declared myself cured. That lasted for a long time. In fact Nal worked so well for me that if I even look at or smell my preferred drink of red wine I gag to this day. However, like many before me I got complacent. After a couple of years I started having the occasional glass of white wine without taking Nal. Bad idea. I'm up to 3 white wines a day.

So I just ordered Nal again and hope that I can extinguish my thirst for white wine as well as I did red wine. Unfortunately I was not a quick responder. It took me 17 months on Nal until I saw any decent recovery. I hope it doesn't take so long this time.

I think the reason some of us who are cured make the mistake of drinking without Nal is because it really does work. At some point you do stop getting the pleasurable alcohol effect while using Nal so if you want that you have to drink without Nal. However, that never ever works. There are two choices after cure on TSM...abstinence or never ever drink without Nal. Those are the rules and I plan to follow them. Woo Hoo!

Half a glass I am sorry that you have to start TSM again, although awfully glad that you have it as a tool available to you.

But I am REALLY glad that you posted to remind some people who are struggling after many months of compliance how long it can take. Also the importance of compliance. We all need to hear it.

I hope you get there much more quickly this time.

Thanks again, Newlife

Hi Half a Glass

Thank you for coming back, I think your story is important, and I also think that you know what to do, have done it once, so can do it again.

From the anecdotal evidence on here it seems the main reason for relapse is exactly what you describe - drinking without nal.

I can't say I remember any pleasureable effect from alcohol! I simply enjoyed the escape and bit of self-harm that drinking gave me (by self-harm it often felt I was drinking as a direct reaction to feeling upset and a 'I'll show em how much I hurt' attitude) and became physically and mentally addicted to it.

I think your story is very important as well. In fact I was just thinking last night, I wonder what it would be like to be cured and after say 5 years or so drink with out NAL again. We know what the book says and in fact that is why I take the term 'cured' with a grain of salt. I'm going on my 8th week and was a very fast responder. In fact it was pretty much over night for me. I went from 13-15 drinks a night down to 3 within literally one night but... I know for a fact if I took a drink right now without the NAL I'd be back to chasing.

From what I gather from reading the research. If you are 'cured' then you have completed the process of extinction and the neural networking in your brain has physically been rewired. So the synapses and receptors that receive the endorphin have basically had so little use over time that they have weakened to a point where they have gone away. So by drinking again you are now reinforcing that system once again and beginning to build the neural pathways back again. So according to that model you probably wont have as hard a time as you did when you first started it 5 years ago. It's sort of like your brain went back in time to when you first started drinking your half glasses and began to learn how to become an alcoholic. But there is something else the researchers don't quite understand. They know we are born with this ability to be predisposed to learning alcoholism at a high rate but there is still something else going on behind the scenes that once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. I think that the 'cure' is not really the cure for alcoholism but rather the cure for the chronic cravings and daily thoughts about alcohol. The alcoholism rather is treated with a medication.

But your story is important because we have to always be vigilant and remember that we are by our very nature super learners and it won't take much of the learning process to revert back to where we were.

Ocean, I am curious. Do you still drink? How often and how much? Newlife

1. It will not take as long

2. Yes, those are the rules. Someone once mentioned it's like being a diabetic or something. For the rest of your life you must take a pill if you want to drink. Some of us find that 1/4 pill is all that is needed as a maintenance dose, once one is cured.

3. I hope you read this posting Guapo!

I did !!

Dear 1/2 glass,

Thank you for posting! This is a good reminder and lesson learned from somebody with more experience with TSM. I am always wandering about the long run of TSM. It is good to know that I always, always need to take my pill!
It seems I am a very quick responder, so it makes me underestimate the success I have booked so far. Even though I know that without the pill it was unthinkable for me to go AF as long and as much as I do now. In a way it is going too effortless for me to realize what is happening.
And after reading Guapo's post few days ago about drinking sometimes without a pill it already planted a little seed in my wicked alcoholic mind of 'maybe in the future I can do without'.
Thanks for reminding me that I can not!

Sorry for the confusion. I was responding to the post earlier in which the writer was concerned that drinking once without NAL might be catastrophic. My experience was that it was not a setback or catastrophic.

Following the rule and taking the Naltrexone is indeed important, and I do that almost always.

Stopping the NAL completely is almost certainly going to result in a return to the drinking days of yore.
That would be a bad idea.

My guess is resuming TSM will work well for Half a glass.

Hope that helps.

YEah since I started going on 8 weeks today I have 2 or 3 drinks a night. The most I have had was 5 and that was only one night. I've had a few nights of 4 as well. So probably an average of 3. It's still very new to me. But I was drunk every night prior to TSM for months at a time. And I mean black out drunk anywhere from 11-16 drinks a night.