Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

[Otter]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

onequart;1466831 wrote: Wow! The vitriol against even the mildest doubters. This from someone who posts he does not take bac and was never an alcoholic.

I just read a book about Scientology (prob. still on the NYT best seller list), and some of you really seem to be on the same level as grasping level-3's.

No double-blind studies? Tsk, tsk. Because it works? Sorry, that doesn't fly.

And no, I am not golf master, for all you conspiracy-theorists.

This is nonsense. First, you are wrong about me.

Secondly, you are wrong about double blind trials. Many licenced drugs are used off-licence for new indications.

If a rare disease affecting only a handful of people responds to an off licence use of a drug which can save their lives, your analysis suggests those people are expendable because the cost of a double blind trial would never be justified by the profits to be made selling the drug to the few people who need it. That is why there are guidelines on off licence which require doctors to use drugs off licence if the patient consents and benefits outweigh the risks.

Those of us who actually know what we are talking about find it frustrating to have to keep coming back to points like that which we have made, over and over here for years to allay fears and to help people get prescriptions and find doctors who will help.

You and your misinformed, ill thought out posts put people in danger of suffering real physical harm by not seeking appropriate medical help for a very real and treatable medical condition.

What is your purpose coming here? If you want to heap ridicule on people go to Bluelight and post with all the head cases over there.

[onequart]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

Otter;1467101 wrote: Actually, that statement is inaccurate. The rate for spontaneous recovery from alcoholism without intervention is about 5% which is the same level as recovery through AA involvement.

Then there is the point made by Joan Larson and Bill Wilson that these people are not "recovered" at all, but go through life nursing an illness which doesn't go away because they stopped drinking. OQ, you really should get your facts straight, or better, just don't bother.

Total nonsense. The spontaneous recovery from alcoholism - however defined - is much higher than 5%.

Absolutely wrong.

[Otter]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

No it isn't. Read the statistics.

5 % is all it is.

A.A. Secrets

" That is, in any randomly-selected population of alcoholics, approximately five percent per year will finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they will just quit drinking. And the Harvard Medical School says that 80% of those successful quitters do it by themselves, alone, without any "treatment program" or any "support group".
If we subtract the normal spontaneous remission rate for alcoholism of five percent per year from A.A.'s claimed success rate of five percent, we get zero for A.A.'s real effective cure rate."

Now leave us alone and stop trying to harm people by causing alarm and stopping them getting help through misinformation.

[Xadrian]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

onequart;1467381 wrote: Total nonsense. The spontaneous recovery from alcoholism - however defined - is much higher than 5%.

Prove it!

[Colin]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

Just ignore him and he'll go away. Don't you all have nothing else to do?

[onequart]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

Otter;1467385 wrote: No it isn't. Read the statistics.

5 % is all it is.

A.A. Secrets

" That is, in any randomly-selected population of alcoholics, approximately five percent per year will finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they will just quit drinking. And the Harvard Medical School says that 80% of those successful quitters do it by themselves, alone, without any "treatment program" or any "support group".
If we subtract the normal spontaneous remission rate for alcoholism of five percent per year from A.A.'s claimed success rate of five percent, we get zero for A.A.'s real effective cure rate."

Now leave us alone and stop trying to harm people by causing alarm and stopping them getting help through misinformation.

I will leave this alone if you will stop with your pseudo-scientific claims and complete inability to separate fact from anecdotes. You are causing harm with your completely wrong interpretation of the literature and outre claims for bac.

Every interventional study on alcoholism, yes including bac, shows success (as defined by each study protocol) of 25-60% for the *placebo* groups. Is that the success rate at 10 years? Of course not. Just like we don't know the success rate for bac at 10 years. Or even at 3 months.

Are there 10 people here who take more than 30 mg of bac/day, drink at or below official guidelines, and have real jobs (that won't allow sleeping in your office as needed)?

I am happy to leave the users here to support each other; what I can't stand the incessant bogus claims and scientific fraudulence perpetuated by the likes of you. You have to be pretty far out there to conclude that any bac doubters are guilty of killing all those poor souls (alcoholic and non-alcoholic).

BTW, the OP which launched all this stuff merely said that bac didn't worked for him and people should be leery of it. You are the one who got worked into such a lather. Take your own advice and take some bac. I am sure that it will work some of the time, but not all.

[LadyLush]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

This is getting absurd!

Otto, take the last 10 people on this site over the last year that took on Bac. 8 out of 10?
No frickin way.
I drink due to anxiety and Bac helps me with that. Am I sober, NO. Has it helped? Yes. Am I cured? No way in hell.

Come on everyone!

LL

[onequart]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

I am about done with this thread. The OP - some doctor - related his own unsuccessful experience with bac and opined that there is a danger in pushing it strongly in the absence of good proof of efficacy. I doubt that high-dose bac is physically dangerous, aside from the risk of acute withdrawal. Rather, the danger is in the risk of self-harm, losing your job, driving impaired, and physical immobility while zonked.

Many of you have stated that bac has "cured" them, on the threshold of doing so, or at least helps with their anxiety. That's fine, and I am sure that the support and camaraderie here have help many, if not with alcoholism itself, then in their day-to-day functioning. There is a lot to be said for that.

I don't believe that there is any good evidence that baclofen - high or low dose - treats alcoholism better than the usual CBT/psychosocial support given placebo study participants. A big weakness in most studies is the brief period of follow-up. The rational answer is to have large-scale, long-term studies with high-dose bac, not to state illogically that double-blind studies are not only not needed, but complicit in the murders of all those bac-deficient unfortunates.

The claim that bac worked for one person, or 100 persons, in a relevant population of millions (alcoholics) is not proof of anything, but an impetus for controlled studies. I would have thought that this would be obvious to any educated person, including the intelligent posters here. Your doctor doesn't prescribe bac to you because of lack of efficacy, not because of some scheme to profit from sending you to rehab.

I wish some of you would calm down and think about this a bit, laying aside your own emotional investment in bac. As for a few, well, carry on.

Not being in an enlightened state, I will of course respond in kind to any posts of a personal nature.

[StuckinLA]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

onequart;1468097 wrote: I am about done with this thread.

Awesome. We can't wait.

[onequart]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

StuckinLA;1468106 wrote: Awesome. We can't wait.

When it comes to tenure review in the arts and social-sciences departments, is it a plus or a negative to be totally ignorant of the scientific method?

Loved your stories. Can you post a few more anecdotes? Preferably while you are taking more than 80 mg/day of bac. Thanks.

[StuckinLA]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

onequart;1468112 wrote: When it comes to tenure review in the arts and social-sciences departments, is it a plus or a negative to be totally ignorant of the scientific method?

Why, do you need a job?

[onequart]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

StuckinLA;1468123 wrote: Why, do you need a job?

I have a very good one now (tenured), thank you.

I have been on a few tenure committees myself, but in real science fields. It seems to me that my arts/SS colleagues - some, not all - consider real scientific thinking to be a negative in hiring for their departments. I thought you might have an insight. Guess not, and sorry I asked.

Edit. I am sorry. I just read your thread and realize that you are just some grad student with no chance of getting a real job. Good luck.

[terryk]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

StuckinLA;1468123 wrote: Why, do you need a job?

onequart;1468131 wrote: I have a very good one now (tenured), thank you.

I have been on a few tenure committees myself, but in real science fields. It seems to me that my arts/SS colleagues - some, not all - consider real scientific thinking to be a negative in hiring for their departments. I thought you might have an insight. Guess not, and sorry I asked.

Edit. I am sorry. I just read your thread and realize that you are just some grad student with no chance of getting a real job. Good luck.

onequart;1466946 wrote: I don't know what you are talking about. It's hard to hide identities on the Internet. I am tired of conspiracy-theorists conflaging all non-bac-enthusiasts into one person. Just for the heck of it, it took me 20 and 30 minutes to find the real names and addresses of 2 of the stalwarts of this forum. Why don't you guys do the same and stop with the conspiracy stuff?

In just what fantasy world do tenured academics spend hours trolling support forums, arguing incessantly with, and googling the real names and address of, its members?

Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.

Looks like you had a really fun Saturday (evening?) here...I'm off to bed.
-tk

[onequart]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

terryk;1468141 wrote: In just what fantasy world do tenured academics spend hours trolling support forums, arguing incessantly with, and googling the real names and address of, its members?

Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.

Looks like you had a really fun Saturday (evening?) here...I'm off to bed.
-tk

Tenured.

Thank you for all your contributions. TerryK? Why don't you get your son/grandson/neighbor kid to find out everything about Terryk? If it takes more than minutes, you should ask for your money back. No one is spending hours googling anyone else; my point is that it is trivially easy to identify most posters.

[StuckinLA]

Baclofen nearly destroyed my life

onequart;1468131 wrote: I just read your thread

Well at least you did something useful today.

G'night, Quart. And best of luck to you, too!