Otter- how can you tell SF is not an alcoholic? I'm thinking maybe I'm not an alcoholic either.
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There is a diagnostic criteria called DSM 5 which is used to determine when someone is suffering from AUD. This is it: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publicatio...et/dsmfact.pdf
Of course, anyone can say that they have felt they suffered from almost any of these effects but the more of them one has the more serious the problem and each symptom can be felt in different degrees.
From what I know of SF, he carried on working, driving, conducting business even internationally. He contacted the clinic in Savannah and wanted to try Baclofen. He was only an out patient there and went there insisting on getting baclofen to help him cut back his drinking. Sounds like he was just a heavy drinking businessman and was able to check his drinking effectively with baclofen.
Then, he seems to have developed an intense need of some kind or got a contract to disturb internet forums. I think he sees himself as some kind of hero who is going to save humanity but he has no idea what he is doing and has no scientific or medical training at all.
I think he is probably Narcissistic and definitely a sociopath. He's a sort of Peter Pan type, boy who never grew up, doesn't take responsibility for anything he does and doesn't understand why he doesn't get along with people and annoys them so much.
I think the notion of "alcoholic" is redundant now. If one has this Ameisen type gaba-b dysphoria or anxiety-craving, then one has a real neurological problem. It might, however, be caused by ongoing and long term stress, or it might be organic, like from a stroke or some other organic illness of the brain. If it is caused by drinking itself then baclofen or any treatment which allows one to stop drinking for any time may be an answer. The brain then recovers with the reduced drinking. If it is an organic problem, then baclofen might have to be continued for longer or for life, at some level. I think the fact that baclofen works for Alzheimer's and autism is showing that there is an underlying neurological problem but it is too early to say what it is.
I just think SF has some deep seated psychological problems, from what he has said and his behaviour, that his drinking never got to the point that he was at rock bottom or anywhere near that and he just talks from the point of view of someone who hasn't suffered from real full blown alcoholism to the point it was killing him.
Bear in mind that my wife had this problem after a stroke affecting the same part of her brain as Ameisen describes as being associated with anxiety so she had a serious, life threatening condition. Then there are people who have liver disease and are dying, and can't give up the drink. I think that it is dangerous and insensitive to start lecturing people on here and to the public that these other drugs offer help when they don't. There is so little support out there for baclofen treatment and it is such a revolutionary treatment that SF is really playing with fire and hugely upsetting a lot of people who had serious AUD and recovered with baclofen when nothing else worked.
That is what is disturbing about him and what makes him a sociopathic character. He has no feelings for anyone but himself and he doesn't care who he hurts. He only does this to give himself a sense of worth, thinking it is helping people but the primary motive is selfish, self centred and uncaring to anyone, particularly other users of this forum, alcoholics or anyone affected by alcoholism. He only deals in abstracts, not real solutions which have been proven to work. He is in a fantasy world where any idea is "great" if he can find some tiny support for it. He isn't clever enough to discern between good and bad medicine or science, can't see why some of these treatments are doomed never to succeed, doesn't understand the immense cost of getting a drug licensed in the US and doesn't understand that the people he speaks so highly of, like George Koob, at the NIIH, actually are supporting the French initiative to get baclofen licensed.
All in all, he is a bad, mad, crazy mixed up man with nothing better to do with his time than annoy people while his dad runs the family business. I see now that he also has a drone business. I suppose his dad bought him a drone and now he sees a huge business opportunity for himself, taking photos of people sunbathing naked in their back gardens and stuff like that.BACLOFENISTA
baclofenuk.com
http://www.theendofmyaddiction.org
Olivier Ameisen
In addiction, suppression of symptoms should suppress the disease altogether since addiction is, as he observed, a "symptom-driven disease". Of all "anticraving medications used in animals, only one - baclofen - has the unique property of suppressing the motivation to consume cocaine, heroin, alcohol, nicotine and d-amphetamine"Comment
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heds- can you describe further the "physical tension type"? My neck, shoulder and back muscles seem to be saturated with accumulated tension.Comment
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Interesting, there is no completely safe level of regular alcohol drinking, England’s chief medical officer Sally Davies warned today as she unveiled new consumption guidelines for the UK. This is good news for those of us choosing to be completely abstinent, there's now science supporting that approach. It puts alcohol much more in line with smoking as a health impediment. Its good to see government taking a lead on this and supporting a much healthier attitude towards booze and abstinence. Moderation is no longer seen as the ideal, but rather abstinence.
England’s chief medical officer has defended tough new drinking guidelines, insisting that the updated advice is not scaremongering but based on “hard science”.
New tough alcohol guidelines not scaremongering, says chief medical officer | Society | The Guardian
From now on, men and women should all aim to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, and should spread their consumption evenly over two or three days rather than drinking every day or in one protracted session.
14 units equates roughly to a bottle and a half of wine, or six or seven pints of medium-strength beer.
A report by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said experts warned that middle-aged people should be advised there was no safe level of alcohol consumption.
The new British guidelines also state that drinking any level of alcohol raises the risk of a range of cancers. The government’s advice is that “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe”. Three pints of beer a night considered for 'binge drink' limit. The new guidance says evidence that alcohol, such as red wine, is beneficial for health "is considered less strong than it was". The benefits of alcohol for heart health only apply for women aged 55 and over - and only when wine is limited to around two glasses a week - the COC report found.
Here's the reports:
Guideline: You are safest not to drink regularly more than 14 units per week, to keep health risks from drinking alcohol to a low level
Explanation (from ‘Summary of the proposed guidelines’)
13. Long term health risks arise from regularly drinking alcohol over time – so it may be ten to twenty years or more before the diseases caused by alcohol occur. Drinking regularly over time can lead to a wide range of illnesses including cancers, strokes, heart disease, liver disease, and damage to the brain and nervous system.
14. This advice on regular drinking is based on the evidence that if people did drink regularly at or above the low risk level advised, overall any protective effect from alcohol on deaths is overridden, and the risk of dying from an alcohol-related condition would be expected to be around, or a little under, 1% over a lifetime. This level of risk is comparable to risks from some other regular or routine activities.
15. The expert group took account not only of the risk of death from drinking regularly but also the risk of suffering from various alcohol-related chronic diseases and cancers. The group also carried out analyses to test the robustness of their conclusions and considered carefully the uncertainties in the available research. They took account of all these factors in their advice.Comment
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Interesting, there is no completely safe level of regular alcohol drinking, England’s chief medical officer Sally Davies warned today as she unveiled new consumption guidelines for the UK. This is good news for those of us choosing to be completely abstinent, there's now science supporting that approach. It puts alcohol much more in line with smoking as a health impediment. Its good to see government taking a lead on this and supporting a much healthier attitude towards booze and abstinence. Moderation is no longer seen as the ideal, but rather abstinence.
England’s chief medical officer has defended tough new drinking guidelines, insisting that the updated advice is not scaremongering but based on “hard science”.
New tough alcohol guidelines not scaremongering, says chief medical officer | Society | The Guardian
From now on, men and women should all aim to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, and should spread their consumption evenly over two or three days rather than drinking every day or in one protracted session.
14 units equates roughly to a bottle and a half of wine, or six or seven pints of medium-strength beer.
A report by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said experts warned that middle-aged people should be advised there was no safe level of alcohol consumption.
The new British guidelines also state that drinking any level of alcohol raises the risk of a range of cancers. The government’s advice is that “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe”. Three pints of beer a night considered for 'binge drink' limit. The new guidance says evidence that alcohol, such as red wine, is beneficial for health "is considered less strong than it was". The benefits of alcohol for heart health only apply for women aged 55 and over - and only when wine is limited to around two glasses a week - the COC report found.
Here's the reports:
Guideline: You are safest not to drink regularly more than 14 units per week, to keep health risks from drinking alcohol to a low level
Explanation (from ‘Summary of the proposed guidelines’)
13. Long term health risks arise from regularly drinking alcohol over time – so it may be ten to twenty years or more before the diseases caused by alcohol occur. Drinking regularly over time can lead to a wide range of illnesses including cancers, strokes, heart disease, liver disease, and damage to the brain and nervous system.
14. This advice on regular drinking is based on the evidence that if people did drink regularly at or above the low risk level advised, overall any protective effect from alcohol on deaths is overridden, and the risk of dying from an alcohol-related condition would be expected to be around, or a little under, 1% over a lifetime. This level of risk is comparable to risks from some other regular or routine activities.
15. The expert group took account not only of the risk of death from drinking regularly but also the risk of suffering from various alcohol-related chronic diseases and cancers. The group also carried out analyses to test the robustness of their conclusions and considered carefully the uncertainties in the available research. They took account of all these factors in their advice.Comment
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curious whether benzos relieved it (setting aside the downsides of benzos for the moment)?Comment
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also, what dosage of bac seems to do the trick for you?Comment
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Lex- you sound like a medical person with your line of questioning.
I've not used Benzos much just occasionally for sleep and had mixed success with them, so can't say much more. They did seem to make me cognitively drowsy which is completely different to baclofen which allows me to stay sharp and focused whilst being relaxed. In fact I can get the medical benefits from baclofen relieving my anxiety even if I decide to drink a lot of coffee. Its been several weeks now and I'm up to 80-100mg, I intend to go further perhaps 150mg.
Here's a link: benzo.org.uk : Benefits and risks of benzodiazepines in anxiety and insomnia, Professor M Lader
"The benzodiazepines seem to be useful and powerful anxiolytic agents and are generally accepted as such, at least in short-term usage. Unfortunately, close evaluation of the available data shows even this efficacy to be surprisingly limited. One meta-analysis from Australia examined 81 studies mainly of benzodiazepines in anxiety, as compared to a placebo, and in some studies, to no treatment at all.(3) Useful therapeutic effects were apparent in the meta-analysis but half of this improvement was placebo-related, i.e. non-specific. A large number of short-term trials (up to 28 nights) attest to the effectiveness of benzodiazepines in the treatment of insomnia.(4) Thus, they shorten time to sleep onset, usually prolong sleep time, and reduce the number of arousals in the night. These effects can be seen both with objective EEG recordings in the sleep laboratory and subjectively with rating scales completed each morning. Although these two sets of data correlate at a notoriously low level, the rating of "a good night's sleep" usually reflects infrequent nocturnal arousals. The effects generally wane beyond 28 nights and even before that time."Comment
-
Interesting, there is no completely safe level of regular alcohol drinking, England’s chief medical officer Sally Davies warned today as she unveiled new consumption guidelines for the UK. This is good news for those of us choosing to be completely abstinent, there's now science supporting that approach. It puts alcohol much more in line with smoking as a health impediment. Its good to see government taking a lead on this and supporting a much healthier attitude towards booze and abstinence. Moderation is no longer seen as the ideal, but rather abstinence.
England’s chief medical officer has defended tough new drinking guidelines, insisting that the updated advice is not scaremongering but based on “hard science”.
New tough alcohol guidelines not scaremongering, says chief medical officer | Society | The Guardian
From now on, men and women should all aim to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, and should spread their consumption evenly over two or three days rather than drinking every day or in one protracted session.
14 units equates roughly to a bottle and a half of wine, or six or seven pints of medium-strength beer.
A report by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said experts warned that middle-aged people should be advised there was no safe level of alcohol consumption.
The new British guidelines also state that drinking any level of alcohol raises the risk of a range of cancers. The government’s advice is that “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe”. Three pints of beer a night considered for 'binge drink' limit. The new guidance says evidence that alcohol, such as red wine, is beneficial for health "is considered less strong than it was". The benefits of alcohol for heart health only apply for women aged 55 and over - and only when wine is limited to around two glasses a week - the COC report found.
Here's the reports:
Guideline: You are safest not to drink regularly more than 14 units per week, to keep health risks from drinking alcohol to a low level
Explanation (from ‘Summary of the proposed guidelines’)
13. Long term health risks arise from regularly drinking alcohol over time – so it may be ten to twenty years or more before the diseases caused by alcohol occur. Drinking regularly over time can lead to a wide range of illnesses including cancers, strokes, heart disease, liver disease, and damage to the brain and nervous system.
14. This advice on regular drinking is based on the evidence that if people did drink regularly at or above the low risk level advised, overall any protective effect from alcohol on deaths is overridden, and the risk of dying from an alcohol-related condition would be expected to be around, or a little under, 1% over a lifetime. This level of risk is comparable to risks from some other regular or routine activities.
15. The expert group took account not only of the risk of death from drinking regularly but also the risk of suffering from various alcohol-related chronic diseases and cancers. The group also carried out analyses to test the robustness of their conclusions and considered carefully the uncertainties in the available research. They took account of all these factors in their advice.Comment
-
Interesting, there is no completely safe level of regular alcohol drinking, England’s chief medical officer Sally Davies warned today as she unveiled new consumption guidelines for the UK. This is good news for those of us choosing to be completely abstinent, there's now science supporting that approach. It puts alcohol much more in line with smoking as a health impediment. Its good to see government taking a lead on this and supporting a much healthier attitude towards booze and abstinence. Moderation is no longer seen as the ideal, but rather abstinence.
England’s chief medical officer has defended tough new drinking guidelines, insisting that the updated advice is not scaremongering but based on “hard science”.
New tough alcohol guidelines not scaremongering, says chief medical officer | Society | The Guardian
From now on, men and women should all aim to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, and should spread their consumption evenly over two or three days rather than drinking every day or in one protracted session.
14 units equates roughly to a bottle and a half of wine, or six or seven pints of medium-strength beer.
A report by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said experts warned that middle-aged people should be advised there was no safe level of alcohol consumption.
The new British guidelines also state that drinking any level of alcohol raises the risk of a range of cancers. The government’s advice is that “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe”. Three pints of beer a night considered for 'binge drink' limit. The new guidance says evidence that alcohol, such as red wine, is beneficial for health "is considered less strong than it was". The benefits of alcohol for heart health only apply for women aged 55 and over - and only when wine is limited to around two glasses a week - the COC report found.
Here's the reports:
Guideline: You are safest not to drink regularly more than 14 units per week, to keep health risks from drinking alcohol to a low level
Explanation (from ‘Summary of the proposed guidelines’)
13. Long term health risks arise from regularly drinking alcohol over time – so it may be ten to twenty years or more before the diseases caused by alcohol occur. Drinking regularly over time can lead to a wide range of illnesses including cancers, strokes, heart disease, liver disease, and damage to the brain and nervous system.
14. This advice on regular drinking is based on the evidence that if people did drink regularly at or above the low risk level advised, overall any protective effect from alcohol on deaths is overridden, and the risk of dying from an alcohol-related condition would be expected to be around, or a little under, 1% over a lifetime. This level of risk is comparable to risks from some other regular or routine activities.
15. The expert group took account not only of the risk of death from drinking regularly but also the risk of suffering from various alcohol-related chronic diseases and cancers. The group also carried out analyses to test the robustness of their conclusions and considered carefully the uncertainties in the available research. They took account of all these factors in their advice.Comment
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Lex - your line of questioning seems like you have a medical background ?
I have not used benzos much, only occasionally to help with sleep with mixed results. I'm sharp and alert and relaxed with baclofen, on the other hand benzos make me drowsy. I've been taking baclofen for a few weeks now, titrating up to 80mg slowly, expect to go up to around 150mg.
Here's something on benzos:
benzo.org.uk : Benefits and risks of benzodiazepines in anxiety and insomnia, Professor M Lader
"The benzodiazepines seem to be useful and powerful anxiolytic agents and are generally accepted as such, at least in short-term usage. Unfortunately, close evaluation of the available data shows even this efficacy to be surprisingly limited. One meta-analysis from Australia examined 81 studies mainly of benzodiazepines in anxiety, as compared to a placebo, and in some studies, to no treatment at all.(3) Useful therapeutic effects were apparent in the meta-analysis but half of this improvement was placebo-related, i.e. non-specific. A large number of short-term trials (up to 28 nights) attest to the effectiveness of benzodiazepines in the treatment of insomnia.(4) Thus, they shorten time to sleep onset, usually prolong sleep time, and reduce the number of arousals in the night. These effects can be seen both with objective EEG recordings in the sleep laboratory and subjectively with rating scales completed each morning. Although these two sets of data correlate at a notoriously low level, the rating of "a good night's sleep" usually reflects infrequent nocturnal arousals. The effects generally wane beyond 28 nights and even before that time."
"Whether these unequivocal short-term benefits as anxiolytic and hypnotic agents continue into the long-term remains a subject of controversy. A further complication is the problem of relapse on discontinuation, which could be interpreted as continued efficacy. This must be distinguished from rebound or withdrawal, evidence that the benzodiazepines were acting merely to suppress discontinuation effects.(5) Of course, apparent long-term efficacy might be, and in many cases probably is, a combination of them both. Thus, the frequent observation that many long-term benzodiazepine users claim continuing benefit cannot be taken at its face value.
One important study involved chronically anxious patients who were being treated with benzodiazepines for 6, 14 or 22 weeks. They were then transferred to placebo for 18, 10 and 2 weeks respectively.(6) In some patients, the switch to placebo was accompanied by withdrawal reactions. The incidence ranged from 43% in patients who had been taking a benzodiazepine for more than a year before entering the study to only 5% in the short-term users. Furthermore, in those patients who did not develop withdrawal reactions, the switch to placebo was usually attended by a worsening of anxiety symptoms. The variability between patients is high but these data can be interpreted as showing that long-term use, although probably maintaining some efficacy, also involves an appreciable risk of inducing dependence.
In another study from this group the long-term treatment of chronic anxiety with the benzodiazepine clorazepate was compared with the effects of the non-benzodiazepine, buspirone.(7) After double-blind placebo substitution, the clorazepate-treated patients showed increased anxiety levels and some developed typical withdrawal syndromes: no such phenomena were seen in the buspirone-treated group. In a more complex study,(8) 210 psychiatric outpatients (71 GAD; 74 PD; 65 dysthymic disorder) were treated with either diazepam, dothiepin (a tricyclic antidepressant), placebo, cognitive/behaviour therapy, or a self-help procedure. All treatments were given for 6 weeks and withdrawn by week 10. By 6 weeks, the initial efficacy of diazepam had waned and by the end of the study period, patients treated with diazepam were actually worse off than those on placebo and the other treatments."Comment
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Lex - your line of questioning seems like you have a medical background ?
I have not used benzos much, only occasionally to help with sleep with mixed results. I'm sharp and alert and relaxed with baclofen, on the other hand benzos make me drowsy. I've been taking baclofen for a few weeks now, titrating up to 80mg slowly, expect to go up to around 150mg.
Here's something on benzos:
benzo.org.uk : Benefits and risks of benzodiazepines in anxiety and insomnia, Professor M Lader
"The benzodiazepines seem to be useful and powerful anxiolytic agents and are generally accepted as such, at least in short-term usage. Unfortunately, close evaluation of the available data shows even this efficacy to be surprisingly limited. One meta-analysis from Australia examined 81 studies mainly of benzodiazepines in anxiety, as compared to a placebo, and in some studies, to no treatment at all.(3) Useful therapeutic effects were apparent in the meta-analysis but half of this improvement was placebo-related, i.e. non-specific. A large number of short-term trials (up to 28 nights) attest to the effectiveness of benzodiazepines in the treatment of insomnia.(4) Thus, they shorten time to sleep onset, usually prolong sleep time, and reduce the number of arousals in the night. These effects can be seen both with objective EEG recordings in the sleep laboratory and subjectively with rating scales completed each morning. Although these two sets of data correlate at a notoriously low level, the rating of "a good night's sleep" usually reflects infrequent nocturnal arousals. The effects generally wane beyond 28 nights and even before that time."
"Whether these unequivocal short-term benefits as anxiolytic and hypnotic agents continue into the long-term remains a subject of controversy. A further complication is the problem of relapse on discontinuation, which could be interpreted as continued efficacy. This must be distinguished from rebound or withdrawal, evidence that the benzodiazepines were acting merely to suppress discontinuation effects.(5) Of course, apparent long-term efficacy might be, and in many cases probably is, a combination of them both. Thus, the frequent observation that many long-term benzodiazepine users claim continuing benefit cannot be taken at its face value.
One important study involved chronically anxious patients who were being treated with benzodiazepines for 6, 14 or 22 weeks. They were then transferred to placebo for 18, 10 and 2 weeks respectively.(6) In some patients, the switch to placebo was accompanied by withdrawal reactions. The incidence ranged from 43% in patients who had been taking a benzodiazepine for more than a year before entering the study to only 5% in the short-term users. Furthermore, in those patients who did not develop withdrawal reactions, the switch to placebo was usually attended by a worsening of anxiety symptoms. The variability between patients is high but these data can be interpreted as showing that long-term use, although probably maintaining some efficacy, also involves an appreciable risk of inducing dependence.
In another study from this group the long-term treatment of chronic anxiety with the benzodiazepine clorazepate was compared with the effects of the non-benzodiazepine, buspirone.(7) After double-blind placebo substitution, the clorazepate-treated patients showed increased anxiety levels and some developed typical withdrawal syndromes: no such phenomena were seen in the buspirone-treated group. In a more complex study,(8) 210 psychiatric outpatients (71 GAD; 74 PD; 65 dysthymic disorder) were treated with either diazepam, dothiepin (a tricyclic antidepressant), placebo, cognitive/behaviour therapy, or a self-help procedure. All treatments were given for 6 weeks and withdrawn by week 10. By 6 weeks, the initial efficacy of diazepam had waned and by the end of the study period, patients treated with diazepam were actually worse off than those on placebo and the other treatments."Comment
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Heds22 -again, I think that it would be most helpful if you sent a PM (communicated) with Otter or Terry K directly. I am sure that they have all of this information and will be more than glad to share with you.Comment
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Why do "expect" to go to "around" 150 mg? What brand of benzos are you taking? Just curios.Originally posted by heds22Comment
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Originally posted by heds22My psychiatrist joked that she can see me talking to (other) professionals repeating, "It's Gaba-b, people!!!" Because, of course, it is. That's one of the things that makes baclofen unique.Originally posted by heds22
It's been a long time since I've recognized or felt the physical anxiety, and how baclofen relieved it. Glad it's having that effect for you. When it first happened for me I was amazed.
Also, I found some of the stuff you posted about benzos informative. If I'd read it before, I don't remember when. Do you have a source?
They do have their place, and I'm eternally grateful for finding a pDoc who will prescribe them. I take them irregularly, for sleep or for extreme anxiety. I have two different kinds for two different purposes. Interesting to note the various time frames for different applications that are mentioned in what you quoted. It almost sounds like the wiki page...
Anyway, hope that bac continues to work so well for you. Take good care of yourself!Comment
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