Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

[Otter]

Hi all

One of our own has had a paper published in a peer reviewed journal. It is a self case report on his addiction and how he treated himself successfully with Baclofen, published on Friday:

Suppression of alcohol dependence using high-dose baclofen: a self-case report - Thomas - 2012 - Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry - Wiley Online Library

:goodjob:

[DrBibber]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

thanks

thanks for this link, :goodjob:

[spacebebe01]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Interesting read, great news I hope for helping get baclofen accepted by doctors.

[fennel]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Wow, I didn't know he runs a treatment clinic. Good for him!

[eight days a week]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

fennel;1266036 wrote: Wow, I didn't know he runs a treatment clinic. Good for him!

I think you mean 'jolly good for his bank balance' at the rates he charges!

Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, his 'expert knowledge' has mostly been gleaned from others, and an awful lot of it from here.

And having been in touch with him during part of the period described in that paper, some of it doesn't ring quite true.

Anyone know much about this journal? I used to research info from the most respected for a medical charity fifteen years ago. I've never heard of it, but quite possibly it's a new one.

Sorry Phil - you're a good guy at heart I really believe, and I wish you all the very best on a personal level. I just call what I see, rightly or wrongly.

And I do tend only to pop on here (very, very rarely) to question stuff these days, but there is an awful lot of nonsense on here imvho.

Best wishes to all, anyway

[Otter]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Nonsense?
I just looked at your posts, eight. I suggest anyone reading your post looks at your other posts first before they bother doing what you say, particularly your post about someone paying respects to Amy Whitehouse:

"What does RIP mean? What else can the dead do? Is it a Christian thing"

I think that says it all. That is your idea of coming here to question things.

That is what is driving a lot of people, including Olivier Ameisen away from here.

The problem with this forum is that it is largely just a free for all with no moderator.

Other Med forums are just for people who want help with their own particular medication and its side effects. Here you get a "cross insemination" which may be good in some ways, but in other ways can be very damaging to people, particularly those treating their condition with Baclofen because they are the ones with anxiety problems who don't need this kind of nastiness in their lives when they come here for peace of mind.

I suggest anyone who wants to succeed with Baclofen and wants a supportive forum with a great moderator goes to Baclofen Forums dot org which is non profit and where you will find a peaceful and kind approach to this treatment.

This forum, lest anyone forget, is entirely a profit based commercial forum promoting the use of L-Glutamine which is sold here, along with other products through affiliates who pay for their advertising on this forum. Part of the attraction to this forum may indeed be its "free for all", Jeremy Kyle approach by a lot of people, but is that therapeutic and is it really worthwhile at all? Is it really helpful to undermine someone who is actually helping people right now to find treatment and get well. It is also becoming impossible to find the useful threads becuase a lot of people who were doing this are gone, eg, loOp, me, and there are a lot of doctors who no longer contribute here, eg., Ameisen, Bill P., Dr. Phill.

Great work Eight. You are contributing to the establishment of other forums and the reputations of good people who leave here and dedicate themselves to proving you wrong. One day someone will say "RIP MWO" because it has been killed off as a useful forum for people wanting treatment advice when there are now so many other routes both for getting Baclofen and for getting useful advice and support given out in a considerate and pleasant manner. MWO is now being referred to on other forums as "No Way Out".

MWO has now entered the beginning of a new, terminal phase. It is becoming "redundant". In time it will go back to what it once was, a place for people using the 1950's approach to recovery, the 12 steps, and alternative therapies. Those who want to find a real way out for "anxiety based" alcoholism will go to their doctor and get a prescription for Baclofen and that will happen because of "doctors" like Phill who have published papers about the medication, set up counselling services, given their time, freely in many cases, to Baclofen users, and also to supportive forums; not because of posts like the one above.

This forum has become "ill". I would say, "Get well soon MWO" but I no longer feel that way about the place and there are good people elsewhere who are doing the job better than this forum. Just look around and you will find them.

Best wishes all who come here looking for hope. You will find it, maybe here, maybe somewhere else, but it is out there, now.

[ThreeDogNight]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Hello, Otter.

I am sorry if there are issues with this thread and with Baclofen in particular, but I do not believe that this forum has become obsolete. Not everyone gets sober using Baclofen, and for some of us, the forum has been a huge factor in our becoming and/or staying sober. I got sober through rehab and the 12 steps, after fighting it for so long. I take Paxil for anxiety, and have not suffered any anxiety since starting it in November. Don't have any side effects and sleep really well.
The people here on the forum have been an excellent support system for me, and I read/post several times a day.
I haven't bought any of the supplements through this site, but have been taking some of them for a long time--before I found mywayout. It doesn't bother me at all that the advertisers are making money from their products. We don't pay anything to use the forum and we have a choice in which products/methods we use.
Thanks for listening.
TDN

[GingerDust]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Otter;1266817 wrote:
The problem with this forum is that it is largely just a free for all with no moderator.
Actually the problem with "this forum," the meds forum, is that there were people (your friends), certainly a great many screen names, trying to milk what they saw as a cash cow (MWO). This is a large website with a large population of people using different methods to achieve sobriety. The greed problem has only existed on the meds forum, the one you insist on inhabiting.

Other Med forums are just for people who want help with their own particular medication and its side effects. Here you get a "cross insemination" which may be good in some ways, but in other ways can be very damaging to people, particularly those treating their condition with Baclofen because they are the ones with anxiety problems who don't need this kind of nastiness in their lives when they come here for peace of mind.
I don't think eight days post was "nasty." Your post sure is though.

I suggest anyone who wants to succeed with Baclofen and wants a supportive forum with a great moderator goes to Baclofen Forums dot org which is non profit and where you will find a peaceful and kind approach to this treatment.
I do not care if you advertise other forums here. I care that you knock this one because it is does not tolerate advertising from badly behaved charlatans and lunatic owners of clandestine drug labs.

Part of the attraction to this forum may indeed be its "free for all", Jeremy Kyle approach by a lot of people, but is that therapeutic and is it really worthwhile at all?
Obviously, a great many people in recovery find it helpful. You are not one of those people. Since you also are not in recovery, I am not surprised that this forum does not meet your wants.

Is it really helpful to undermine someone who is actually helping people right now to find treatment and get well.

You mean your friends who want to make money from people who post to MWO? Yes, I think it is very good to "undermine" those people, and I am very grateful that the moderators have put so much effort into protecting the people who post here from that sort of thing.

It is also becoming impossible to find the useful threads becuase a lot of people who were doing this are gone, eg, loOp, me, and there are a lot of doctors who no longer contribute here, eg., Ameisen, Bill P., Dr. Phill.

And what happened? The meds forum became a peaceful place for people in recovery to offer each other mutual support. That is what this forum was intended to do. Also, I might point out that you cannot consider yourself to be one that left since you still quite an active poster here.

You are contributing to the establishment of other forums and the reputations of good people who leave here and dedicate themselves to proving you wrong.

If you are referring to yourself as "good people," please feel free to go and dedicate to your life to proving someone else wrong. MWO is better off without you and the trouble that you insist on inflicting, such as this thread.


One day someone will say "RIP MWO" because it has been killed off as a useful forum for people wanting treatment advice when there are now so many other routes both for getting Baclofen and for getting useful advice and support given out in a considerate and pleasant manner. MWO is now being referred to on other forums as "No Way Out".

Go to those places! Enjoy yourself, revel in it. There is no reason for you to be posting here, criticizing this forum, is there?


MWO has now entered the beginning of a new, terminal phase. It is becoming "redundant". In time it will go back to what it once was, a place for people using the 1950's approach to recovery, the 12 steps, and alternative therapies.
Oh, now Otter has a crystal ball and he is making predictions using a fictional history of MWO. MWO never had anything to do with "traditional" recovery or 12-step programs.

Those who want to find a real way out for "anxiety based" alcoholism will go to their doctor and get a prescription for Baclofen . . .
Please take your fantasy and run with it, and keep right on running away from here, the place you detest so much. I'm sure that seeing the abundance of people on other meds threads and in the GD area who found your precious baclofen protocol to be impossible, yet find sobriety anyway, must be terribly depressing to you. So, please go. You would be so much better off.

This forum has become "ill".

I think this forum has become healthy, and the quality of the posts and the people making those posts is testament to that. There are no battles, no constant advertisements from your friends, no crazy drunken posts (except those made by your friend, and they are quickly deleted), nobody trying to profit from others misfortunes, just a bunch of people in recovery exchanging candid experience and offering each other support. That is what this forum was supposed to be all along. It never was intended to be your personal playground, your personal forum for promoting your own theories and gimmicks or those of your friends.

So, go. Goodbye. I hope you got out of MWO what you wanted, and I hope you get whatever you are still looking for somewhere else. Obviously, the considerable time you have spent here has ceased to be anything but destructive to MWO. So, go, and peace be with you.

[Otter]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Yes, I agree it still serves a purpose for people here using it as a support forum and that is what it should return to being. I specifically mention people suffering from "anxiety" based alcoholism because many here don't see themselves as suffering from that type of problem. The baclofen treatment is not being served as well as it could because it is an anxiety based treatment and the negative comments don't help their anxiety and a lot of these people have left. My prediction is still the same, that it will take over the field and will make other treatments obsolete.

What Phill did by writing that paper is what people wanted him to do when he was here, tell his story, and he was criticized for not doing it and when he does, in a way that can be taken seriously by other doctors, and not a forum post, we get someone insulting him because of things that happened when he was drinking and in recovery. We all know the story. It is time to move on.

I used to live near Buffalo and when I drove down the Main Street there at the end of the day and the shutters came down on the store fronts and I drove past gun shops and liquor stores I felt afraid. I feel the same here with the vigilante attitude towards highly qualified professionals who have come here and been harassed off the boards by people like you.

Here is your own description of your attitude about yourself and others here. From one of your own posts:

"Just a note to dumb Americans like me who might be puzzled by the discussion."

I have never said that Baclofen is the only way to recover from alcoholism. What I have said is that it is the only chemical which addresses the underlying anxiety disorder of anxiety based craving and because of that it will be used by doctors who understand the significance of that development, over other chemicals that don't do the same thing.

I won't go in peace any more than I drove out of Buffalo other than with an enduring sense of fear and sadness at the passing of a place that lost its heart.

[Otter]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

You know, actually, why bother.

[arsenic]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

I wrote a long, detailed reply, but it got lost in the posting. WTF, the administrators here really should hire some IT guy to fix the logistics of this site.

Basically, as a lurker here researching medical approaches to alcoholism, I think that Otter doesn't know what he is talking about. I mean - vitamin D, demylination, amygdala (duh: all behaviors go thru the brain),

Otter, you are spending way too much time scanning the Net for research reports with no clinical applications, and coming up with multiple tin-foil headgear theories. You are scientifically illiterate, and even the laymen here can call you out on it.

You are correct, though, in that these are mostly support forums. That's good, since social support is important in treatment. Eyeballing the posters, it seems like less than 10 (maybe 5) are doing well (average 2/day and 5 days/week or less). It is possible that all the other many successes stop posting and went on with their lives. Also possible is that the non-posters quit because baclofen didn't work. To the true believers, it didn't work because they didn't follow protocol or because they didn't tough out SE's - rather circular reasoning.

Look, nobody knows whether high-dose baclofen works or not long-term (>1 year). It works for some percentage (25%) just like any other remedy (AA, multiple vitamins, doing nothing at all). The nice thing about an unproven therapy is that people can feel on the cutting-edge, defying the Man, and the close camaraderie of a gnostic fellowship.

[mario]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

GingerDust;1266957 wrote: Actually the problem with "this forum," the meds forum, is that there were people (your friends), certainly a great many screen names, trying to milk what they saw as a cash cow (MWO). This is a large website with a large population of people using different methods to achieve sobriety. The greed problem has only existed on the meds forum, the one you insist on inhabiting.



I don't think eight days post was "nasty." Your post sure is though.



I do not care if you advertise other forums here. I care that you knock this one because it is does not tolerate advertising from badly behaved charlatans and lunatic owners of clandestine drug labs.



Obviously, a great many people in recovery find it helpful. You are not one of those people. Since you also are not in recovery, I am not surprised that this forum does not meet your wants.



You mean your friends who want to make money from people who post to MWO? Yes, I think it is very good to "undermine" those people, and I am very grateful that the moderators have put so much effort into protecting the people who post here from that sort of thing.



And what happened? The meds forum became a peaceful place for people in recovery to offer each other mutual support. That is what this forum was intended to do. Also, I might point out that you cannot consider yourself to be one that left since you still quite an active poster here.



If you are referring to yourself as "good people," please feel free to go and dedicate to your life to proving someone else wrong. MWO is better off without you and the trouble that you insist on inflicting, such as this thread.



Go to those places! Enjoy yourself, revel in it. There is no reason for you to be posting here, criticizing this forum, is there?



Oh, now Otter has a crystal ball and he is making predictions using a fictional history of MWO. MWO never had anything to do with "traditional" recovery or 12-step programs.



Please take your fantasy and run with it, and keep right on running away from here, the place you detest so much. I'm sure that seeing the abundance of people on other meds threads and in the GD area who found your precious baclofen protocol to be impossible, yet find sobriety anyway, must be terribly depressing to you. So, please go. You would be so much better off.



I think this forum has become healthy, and the quality of the posts and the people making those posts is testament to that. There are no battles, no constant advertisements from your friends, no crazy drunken posts (except those made by your friend, and they are quickly deleted), nobody trying to profit from others misfortunes, just a bunch of people in recovery exchanging candid experience and offering each other support. That is what this forum was supposed to be all along. It never was intended to be your personal playground, your personal forum for promoting your own theories and gimmicks or those of your friends.

So, go. Goodbye. I hope you got out of MWO what you wanted, and I hope you get whatever you are still looking for somewhere else. Obviously, the considerable time you have spent here has ceased to be anything but destructive to MWO. So, go, and peace be with you.

100 per cent ginger.

[spacebebe01]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

I have used MWO meds forum as my support network since I stopped drinking around 4 months ago. I have found great support here from friendly people who are doing the same thing as me, trying to stop drinking. I use meds because none of the other methods worked for me in the past and I continue taking meds because I want to stay sober. I very rarely see anyone trying to sell anything on here and resent the fact that you call it a joke Zenstyle. Not that Im bothered what you think of it but because you could be putting people off coming on here who would benefit from the help and support they would get. I have found my own way out and it is working for me and this forum has played a massive part in its success. I would love to think that one day doctors will be able to take treatment for alcoholism seriously, using all the meds and treatments availble and save lives and prevent a whole lots of misery by doing so. This day may well be a long time coming or even never but I choose to remain optimistic and live in hope. Its only by having that attitude that I didnt give up on stopping drinking years and and still alive and now sober. If anyone is in a position where they can help that happen then I applaud them for doing so.

Every one is entitlled to there own opinions and should be free to vioce them. I dont see why there has to be so much nastiness and bickering on here. As for looking back though someones previous posts to criticise what they have said in the past I think is ridiculous and pathetic and why would anyone want to do that apart from wanting ammunition for an argument.

Most of use are here to find our own way to overcome alcohol addiction and help others while doing so. If this forum is not for you please dont come on here to try and put others off coming here who may be looking for help they need.

Anyway thats enough of me on my :soapbox: I do wish we could all be friends but then again I also wish I could win the lottery, as I said I choose to be optimistic

[terryk]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

arsenic;1267420 wrote: I wrote a long, detailed reply, but it got lost in the posting. WTF, the administrators here really should hire some IT guy to fix the logistics of this site.

Basically, as a lurker here researching medical approaches to alcoholism, I think that Otter doesn't know what he is talking about. I mean - vitamin D, demylination, amygdala (duh: all behaviors go thru the brain),

Otter, you are spending way too much time scanning the Net for research reports with no clinical applications, and coming up with multiple tin-foil headgear theories. You are scientifically illiterate, and even the laymen here can call you out on it.

You are correct, though, in that these are mostly support forums. That's good, since social support is important in treatment. Eyeballing the posters, it seems like less than 10 (maybe 5) are doing well (average 2/day and 5 days/week or less). It is possible that all the other many successes stop posting and went on with their lives. Also possible is that the non-posters quit because baclofen didn't work. To the true believers, it didn't work because they didn't follow protocol or because they didn't tough out SE's - rather circular reasoning.

Look, nobody knows whether high-dose baclofen works or not long-term (>1 year). It works for some percentage (25%) just like any other remedy (AA, multiple vitamins, doing nothing at all). The nice thing about an unproven therapy is that people can feel on the cutting-edge, defying the Man, and the close camaraderie of a gnostic fellowship.

EDIT: *I* know that baclofen works >1 year, and I'll leave it at that. -tk

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Dr. Phillip Thomas' Paper Published

Nah, account is still there. S/he just deleted all those posts. You're up early.