Progress thread for ne

[Spellers]

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[lex]

spellers i hope your cardiac issues resolve. my thoughts are with you. lex

[Spellers]

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[terryk]

The problem is, Terry, that anyone with basic IT skills can do a literature search & show the results. The interpretation of the studies is more complex, & probably if you gave the same results to several professionals you would get several different conclusions.

Questions to consider are: how many in the study, what population are they drawn from, what age, how long did they take the treatment. what were their underlying conditions, the list is endless. For instance all the participants in the bac studies you show are disabled, most significantly so. To extrapolate these results to a healthy population is misleading at best.

And at the end of each paper is usually a suggestion about what more needs to be done eg "It would be useful to look at these patients again in a year" or "further studies are needed with higher numbers of participants". No researcher ever assumes his results are definitive.......whereas you are presenting these papers as "proof".

Sorry to be pedantic (again) but it starts to feel a bit like being bullied when every comment you make is met with a barage of "studies" which prove it's nonsense. I'm not the only one who has been treated this way, I imagine Spellers felt intimidated as well. And actually it was her clinician who knows her case her background, her predisposing factors, who raised the possibility of bac causing the problem. This has more weight in my view than any number of papers pulled off the internet.

I'm not saying literature searches aren't useful, but using them to tell people their concerns are stupid or invalid is not helpful.

Molly, I apologize that my response to your post made you feel bullied and invalidated - that was not my intention.

I understand that the scoliosis studies I cited would not extrapolate exactly to a healthy population. That is why I offered the caveat "nearly all of the patients mentioned in the literature were being treated for spinal cord injury, MS, or CP - so it might be hard to recognize, in those subjects, adverse effects attributable to baclofen that might blend in with the symptoms of the affliction for which baclofen is prescibed in the first place (for example, scoliosis)." Still, in this very specific population (the only one available), I tried to be objective by quoting one study that had an negative relationship between baclofen and scoliosis, and one with an affirmative relationship.

It is true that I added bold text to the articles to draw attention to the pertinent parts, maybe I should have bolded this one instead:

Can high-dose baclofen cause scoliosis in patients with normal spines, or exacerbate it in those with a propensity to develop it? I don't know. Molly's argument that baclofen reduces muscle tone in the spinal column in a way that could cause, or increase, curvature to develop seems at least *plausible*.

-tk

[terryk]

Hell, I've only wanted to discuss my own personal situation for support and discussion - not presenting myself as a case study - and yet have felt my experience is being suppressed by the attitude on here.

Spellers, I've replied to your posts here.

[Molly78]

Well Terry, I admit I missed the reference to my particular case among the overwhelming glut of information & technicalities in your posts! I also tend to miss the caveats, as I suspect many people do.

Thank you for your replies. I do feel less belittled now by your acknowledgement of my particular possible SE, & I understand that you post with the best of intentions. However, using pubmed in this way (which you mention in another post, & which I realised you were doing) can produce a massive amount of information from which, as I said in a previous post in this thread, can be read in many different ways by different people, depending on what they are looking to "prove". To the uninitiated. the results look as though you have all of science at your fingertips & have given the definitive answer! And most people on this site understand very little about research, some have read nothing more scientific than Ameisen's book. For them, you are the god who comes down from above & answers all questions! The phrase "blinded by science" comes to mind.

That said, we do need someone who is prepared to do this sort of thing - as Spellers has said in a different thread, she would prefer to have a life or some such sentiment! So please carry on. Maybe a bit less bolding of your points & a bit more bolding of the caveats?:happy2:

[Ne/Neva Eva]

I'm glad that all got cleared up.

I have some updates, I suppose. Things are going really well at school and at home. I still love the hospital I'm in, and working in the Emergency Department in general. I'm going to apply for a job there. Unfortunately, they're only hiring for nights and I'm not sure that's the best thing for me to do since I have been so recently so depressed. Doesn't sound like the best option. Still. I really like it there, so we'll see. I'm talking to my pdoc about it.

I've decided to titrate down on baclofen, probably all the way to 80-100mg and then titrate back up again. I was at 420mg (my original switch was 320mg) and still drinking. Though it was less, and it doesn't seem to be affecting my life dramatically, my goal is still abstinence for awhile and then drinking only occasionally.

I think there is too much chaos, and anxiety in general, in my life for me to really wrap my mind around not drinking. The chaos comes from trying to clean up all the little messes I made when I was depressed and opted out of life. The anxiety has to do with school and some other things, much of which is subconscious I think.

I figure there are those of you who think I'm making up excuses to drink. Whatever. For the rest of you, the ones that know that baclofen works or are hoping that it does, you'll understand my decision. If you don't, I hope you'll ask.

In the meantime, I'm still very, very focused on doing well in school. This week is midterm, so there's A LOT going on and it's stressful. And silly me committed to some other stuff, too. I'm also very eager to get the new forum up and running. I thought it could wait, but I'm thinking it needs to happen sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, the guy who is doing it for me is very busy and hard to reach. I told him Dec/Jan. Hopefully we can move that up to Nov/Dec.

I hope you guys are doing well, ignoring the bull shit on the forum, and still taking the damn pills. They work.

Sending out love.

[dundrinkn]

Hey Ne,
Glad you like the hospital work. Sounds scary to me.

I am dragging big time. I might be headed toward depression. Fuck me! I do not need that right now. I also appear to have a slight sinus infection so that could be it as well. My ex is getting married in the next week and having a big fucking week-long event with lots of family (hers and mine). I thought I was cool with it, and in most ways I am. I like the guy she's marrying. It all means that I am less on the hook for leaving her. It's all a good, happy thing. But I am pissy about it all the sudden. So there's that...

I feel like I just want to go to bed. I've contemplated drinking just to give me some energy, but decided to try Dayquil instead. No luck so far. Might have to actually get my heart-rate up to try and counter that blahs.

I have a dog trainer coming tomorrow. I'm sure she'll tell me I'm inconsistent and it's all my fault that my dog is a fucking mess. I really just want someone to come and fix the fucking dog. Make him behave and not be so damn neurotic. Argh.

Still taking the pills -- though I can't seem to keep the leg pain at bay. I don't want to just keep going up on the GabaP because that works for a while, then it just seems like I need more for the same effect. So not sure what to do about it. Just hanging in because I don't think there is any way in hell I'm going to be able to not drink forever.

OK. That was chipper. Only slightly more elevated than the slug fest happening elsewhere on the board.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Have you thought about just going to bed?

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Dun, Given your lack of response, I suppose that was not as helpful as I thought it was going to be? Ha.

All well here. I'm taking 280mg. I am sleeping through the night, without medication, for the first time in I can't even remember how long. I hesitate to blame my sleeplessness on the baclofen, especially because 280 is still such a high number. But nothing else has changed.

I'm still drinking, obviously, but it isn't affecting my life to the point where I can't function. Don't get me wrong, though, the booze has got to go. I figure I've got another month or so of titrating down and then back up again.

School is going really well. I've got to write my resume in the next two weeks to apply at the hospital where I'm doing my internship. Friday was crazy and I loved it. With one exception...It's heartbreaking to see one of us come in and not get any, or much, help. One woman came in, swearing she'd just had two airline bottles of vodka and a whole bottle of cough syrup, but her BAC was 0.23. And though she initially denied drinking regularly, she finally said she drank every day. They held her in a safe room, with nothing to look at except 4 blank walls, for 6 hours, until she was deemed sober enough to talk to a counselor. Who then gave her the name and number of another counselor to call when she was released. It's kinda heart breaking, isn't it?

I still want to save the world, y'all. Or at least our people in the world. Some day...

[dundrinkn]

Actually, it was good advice. I did go to bed that day. I still haven't had anything to drink. Haven't felt like yet. I am at that itchy point in the process where I just feel really unsettled and like something is off or missing. But I can't figure out what it is. So I am going to stop trying and just relax for the day.

So happy for you that you're excited about the job prospect. Sounds like you've got a plan with the going down and BAC up. And really happy you've got the depression monkey off your back. That must be a huge relief.

[Mentium]

Don't want to stray too far off topic in this thread but can someone explain the reasoning behind titrating down and then up gain? And is it based on medical experience or for that matter the experience of people here? I've seen several references to the process.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Oh, I'm glad Dun. Sorry about the hole, though. I know what you mean.

Mentium, there isn't and never has been a theme for this thread. It amuses me (and bums me out sometimes) that no one posts on here anymore.

My original switch, in Feb '11, was 320mg. I stayed sober and happy about it until Dec when had been taking 80mg for about 4 months. Big mistake.

I started titrating up a while ago, and got to 420mg. I don't know about you, but I don't want to take that much baclofen for a long time. Even though it definitely slowed my drinking, I was nowhere near indifference. So I just decided to straighten out some other things in my life that are creating stress and (perhaps) increasing my desire to drink so much so that I needed too much baclofen. Or something. It doesn't really make sense when I type it all out.

I guess I just decided that I would rather drink for the moment and try to use other tools and then titrate back up, hopefully not needing to take as much.

I have to point out that even though I'm drinking daily, and it's still against my will (meaning I'd rather not drink at all) it isn't really negatively affecting my life at the moment. Other than the fact that drinking sucks. And it's expensive. And keeping me from losing weight. And keeping me from having a lot of energy to get stuff done. And it's just stupid to drink when I don't really want to, but don't know how else to deal...

You get the picture, right? In other words, I'm right there with you. The difference is I know what indifference is. I know the pills work. I know it's like magic when it happens. And you don't know that yet. But if you keep taking the damn pills, you will. And I'll get back there and join you in a little while.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Oh, and obviously it's not based on anything except my own...whim. And logic. If that sounds logical at all. ha.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

I'm at 280 and plugging along. Actually drinking less (though I'm not counting, really) but I think that's because I'm busy. Not sitting in my study studying or spending all my free time on MWO!

Hope all is well out there in MWO-land.