Indifference.

[Bruunhilde]

Indifference.

Bleep, excellent job, first booting the AL now the smokes. I'm proud of you. Next you'll be training for a marathon, and eating five meals a day, losing weight in spite of yourself.

:goodjob:

[redhead77]

Indifference.

[QUOTE=bleep;1115001]Baclofen didn't reduce my smoking - on the contrary, I was smoking more than ever whilst taking baclofen!

Ditto for me. I told you, I've never been a heavy smoker. I only smoked if I drank alcohol. That was mostly in the evenings, so I would go the whole day without a cig. Unless, I started boozing earlier, then I would smoke earlier and more. I mean a hard core smoking day for me, would have been 10 cigs. Usually, I had 5 or less. I got up to a pack on my higher doses of bac. I'm well under a pack now. I'm not drinking to smoke now, which irritates the hell out of me. I smoke because I like it sober. Jeez!

I am jealous and proud of you bleepster. I guess I should try the cold turkey thing for more than one day. It's just so hard.....whine, whine. :upset: I wonder if it helped you got through the first days in a different location. They say the first 3 days, are the hardest.

[bleep]

Indifference.

Well that's the thing about the mountains - we walked all day in to the middle of nowhere, where obviously there are no shops or anything like that, and deliberately didn't take any smokes with us, so the first 3 days were forced abstinence. The really tricky bit is walking out of the mountains, and seeing your packet of smokes sitting on the dashboard! This has screwed me up in the past, so I made sure there were no cigarettes waiting for me when we got back.

Now I just have to put up with Mrs Bleep puffing away. She always thought she would be the first to stop, so she had laid down a whole host of rules regarding what would happen to the smoker when one of us stopped, which have now been applied to her. I'm loving it! She doesn't appreciate the irony yet.

If I start running, I'll have myself put down. I find it a terribly boring way to spend my time.

Thanks all for the cheering!

[tiptronic_ct]

Indifference.

bleep;1115878 wrote:
If I start running, I'll have myself put down.

:H:H:H

I'm still struggling with nicotine, so your situation is very encouraging. I just cannot seem to get my head around the fact this smoking as deadly as alcohol - the really serious consequences seem to lie far in the future and the old argument of "it won't happen to me" is very convenient.

Good going and keep it up - it gives me hope!

[bleep]

Indifference.

The non smoking is going well, nearly three weeks so far. During the second week, my head felt like it spinning all the time, and I thought I was going mad. At the time I put it down to baclofen, as I was consistently on 300mg's for the first time in a long while, but looking back, I think it was actually nicotine withdrawal as well. Very unpleasant stuff indeed.

I think it was actually a combination of baclofen and nicotine, so I decided to reduce my baclofen. I went to 210mg's, which for me is simply not enough. I didn't go on a bender, but I definitely started boozing again, which is something I want to avoid. and it is so easy to avoid with the correct dose. Unfortunately, 300mg's, which seems to be my average dose for indifference seems to wallop me, so I'm aiming at 400mg's today. Luckily I seem to be able to shift my dose around with abandon.

I can already feel a difference. At todays increased dosage I feel much better. It is definitely something to consider if you are struggling with the SE's at a particular dose - just go up past it.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Indifference.

bleep;1120217 wrote:
I can already feel a difference. At todays increased dosage I feel much better. It is definitely something to consider if you are struggling with the SE's at a particular dose - just go up past it.

It's so counterintuitive that I still have trouble with that one, when I know that you are absolutely and completely right. I experienced it time and time again, and yet hesitate to go up to 240mg because 220mg seems like it's too much.

Thanks for the reiteration. I needed to hear that.

Sorry about the smoking. I mean Congratulations! :H Really. Wow. I was just being a jealous ninny.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Indifference.

Going through a bit of bleep withdrawal. What's news with you?

[bleep]

Indifference.

Not much, it must be said. Still wanting to smoke, that doesn't seem to change, alas. Very indifferent at 390mg's, but it costs too much at the moment, so I'm going to creep back to 300mg's and see if it still feels funny.

The high maintenance dose is due to the fact that I have chosen to moderate, I'm fairly sure. If I was abstinent, I am certain I would be able to take much less baclofen. Something to think about when deciding what to do after indifference.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Indifference.

Actually, bleep, there's a lot of food for thought in there.

I'm pretty sure that I couldn't take less bac (200mg/day) right now, and not drink against my will. I wonder what's habit, meaning so ingrained that it's a default reaction, and what's choice. Drinking 1/2 a beer is a choice right now. For sure. But actually opening the beer is habit, it's my default. soooo....

Your decision to moderate? What does that mean exactly? You still want to party? But on your terms? I dunno. That makes me nervous. (what doesn't make me nervous??? :H) Perhaps this thing takes some time, is all I'm suggesting. Perhaps when choice is restored, at least physically, we still have the default habitual thing. Wine when cooking, beer at the barbie (or whatever South Africans call the event that means you're cooking and eating outdoors. omg. that was rich.)

I do wish you could find a place and stick to it, in terms of mgs. But that, for sure, is just Ne. Except for this: It's chemistry. elementary. Up/down and all around changes the equation pretty dramatically. Even for someone who is clearly not as affected as many of us. (methinks that you might actually be truly anomalous in this way. Truly.)
xoxo
Edit: Also, how's your mood?

[bleep]

Indifference.

Hi Ne,

There is a lot to respond to there, and I will, but it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll get to the majority of your post tomorrow. A lot of it is actually very interesting stuff that I have been wanting to discuss, so it's all good from that front.

Let me deal with the easy-to-answer ones quickly - I have discovered that 300mg's is the level which under normal circumstances for me allows indifference to booze. I'll go into detail what this means to me later. Irritatingly, this time around, when I got to 300mg's it kicked me in the head, so I tried 100mg's lower, which was fine from an SE point of view, but not from an indifference point of view. Then I tried 400mg's, which was fine from both points of view, but given my current supply issues was an untenable dose.

So currently I am trying 350mg's which seems to be working nicely, and is a semi compromise given my supply issue. I agree with you that it would be great to just sit at a level for a while, but I really do seem to be very lucky in that I can alter my dosage by large amounts at will with no harmful effects on my mood or side effects. I know that titrating up my mood was dose dependent, but that no longer seems to be the case.

I will get to the remainder of your post tomorrow...

[bleep]

Indifference.

I'm not sure how to word this post. I want to talk about why I moderate rather than abstain, a decision that a lot of people seem to think is foolish. I disagree, obviously. To start with, I suppose explaining what moderation means to me would be helpful.

Most nights, I'll have half a glass a wine. Depending on how that sits, I will have another glass, or not, and that is normally it for the night. Occasionally, the second glass will go down nicely, so I'll have a third, but that is pretty rare. Some nights I won't have anything, but it's not through a decision or choice, it just so happens that I don't have any that night, for whatever reason.

On the odd night, I will make a plan with mates to go out to the pub, and on days like that I will reduce my baclofen intake a little which increases the chances of having a few beers successfully. I have noticed that the next day it will also seem like a good idea to go out, but I am aware that this is just a result of playing with the dose, so I resist until normal service is resumed. I generally also get horrendous hangovers from relatively mild sessions now, so that helps to slow things down. This happens maybe once a month. Also, what I now regard as a session would be less than I used to consume on a random Tuesday night by myself.

Drinking now doesn't occupy any space in my thoughts, which is why this post has been so long in coming. I have just stopped thinking about it. The thirst that used to power me has disappeared, and that is what indifference has come to mean to me. I drink instead of abstaining because I like drinking. I never got to the stage of hating booze, but would have if I had gone much further. I hated what it did to me and how I reacted to it, but that is all gone now. The strange power that booze had over me is gone. I feel I am able to take the good from drinking, and leave the shit, for the first time.

The reason I say that I think this interferes with my maintenance dose and keeps it higher than it could potentially be is because booze is always a factor under this scenario. I am convinced that if I decided to abstain I would soon stop thinking about alcohol altogether, and would be able to reduce from 300mg's. How far, I have no idea. In fact, whether that's even true or not I have no idea, but it makes intuitive sense to me.

For many years, I used to lament about drinking like a normal person. Now I can. I am also reminded of Mr A, who I think was the first person that Dr Ameisen treated apart from himself. His aim was social drinking on a nightly basis to cope with the demands of his job, if I recall correctly, and I think he achieved it pretty much perfectly.

I'm aware that this is not the most popular response to indifference, but it works perfectly for me and I am very happy with the way things are going. I'd be interested to hear other points of view from people who have reached indifference and who approach it in a different fashion. Also from those who are approaching indifference - what you think it might mean to you? Are you planning on abstaining, and why? Is there any need to anymore?

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Indifference.

Morning, bleepster.
I'm going to start a thread this morning about this. I hope you'll share those sentiments, or better, that exact post, to kick it off.
thanks for your thoughts.
Ne

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Indifference.

Where's Bleep?

[Murphyx]

Indifference.

I don't think he's been around since his trip to the gym. I do hope he didn't overdo it.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Indifference.

:H
That's NOT funny.
:H