Abstinence Challenge

[Juan BH]

Abstinence Challenge

I liked your joke, but humor is hard to convey on a message board Lo0p! You would likely make a fine gigalo, but my guess is that it's not in the cards for you.

[skullbabyland]

Abstinence Challenge

Awww Loop I'm sure it was funny, maybe ya just had to be there. Haha

Skullbaby Day 7 AF

[skullbabyland]

Abstinence Challenge

Hey Neo- to answer a question you asked (in another thread?), I do have a fair amount of experience in my thread regarding Antabuse and Baclofen. I credit these tools together with any success I'm having (which is substantial at this point). I did definitely ask my MD first, as you should. Go back and read a bunch of my progress thread for the past ccouple months for more, if you're interested.

EDIT- just saw that you've hit your switch. I'd be interested to hear more, about cravings at your dosage, side effects, thoughts/habits, Antabuse, etc. Anyways, awesome Neo! Glad to hear it

[skullbabyland]

Abstinence Challenge

neophyte;1581203 wrote: Day 4 AF

Skull, I totally agree about needing something to spark your mind. I find that exersize can help. its hard to motivate yourslef but once you start doing something, you get that endorphin hit and the rest of the night seems a lot easier. I've got an exersize routine im going to follow that will have me doing exersize of some kind every night.

Neo- I'm doing something very similar. As a fellow fitness nut, thought you might want to follow along and/or chime in. If so- I'm journaling all about my fitness journey here- https://www.mywayout.org/community/f6...s-3-81463.html

[neophyte]

Abstinence Challenge

hey Skull,

Like i sad before i think i have hit my switch so i dont think ill go the Antabuse route, I realise now in hindsight that although my cravings had decreased, i still had days where i decided to drink if i had an excuse e.g. a day off work tomorrow, lets get plastered. The switch just kind of feels like that voice in my head to tell me to go drink is gone, its almost like i've reverted back years ago where drinking was truely a choice, probably 10 years ago. My alcoholism progressed like this:

Age 16 - drunk at a party, over did it and was violentnly ill, made an ass of myself
17 - drink every now and then when i can get it, but was not able to buy, never craved it, was an avid weed smoker and user of party drugs (mdma, amphetamines, psychedelics etc)
18 - able to buy booze, my social group partakes in either smoking weed or drinking
19-23 - pretty much teh same continues except now i can't smoke anymore because of intense anxiety it causes. I usually just drink socially now. started getting panic attacks around this time and started taking zoloft which helped.
24 - started my career and my social anxiety was a constantly reminding me that it was going to hold me back in my career. cant go a weekend without drinking, cant go to a party without drinking. socail life revolves around booze. i now start drinking occasionally during the week. though i dont crave everyday
25 - start drinking daily, i knew all the dangers of long term drinking, im a big nerd when it comes to drugs and medication. but i started drinking anyway, i justified that it helped with my social anxiety because it made me blunted the next day and i woudlnt obsess over minor things, i also believed i could quit anytime (HA! famous last words). In reality i was of course justifying a terrible decision which lead me down to where i am today.
25-29 - cannot go a day without a drink, tried to quit drinking a few times using benzos to taper off, always end up failing due to cravings. at 28 i tried again to taper but i went overbaord with xanax trying to taper, i was just replacing booze for xanax and i ended up addicted to about 6mg a day. I had to taper off over about 6 months, scary as fuck. I resumed drinking once tapered off, but something in me had changed due to the benzo abuse, my GAD was worse. I was waking up in terror every morning with crippling anxiety, attacking shadows when awoken suddenly, startled easily. booze at night gave me temporary relief and the mornings the fear set in, it really was horrible. For some reason, even in this state, i decided to change jobs and i completely freaked out and came back to my old job after 3 weeks. Coming back was very hard and caused me massive anxiety, i drank more to compensate. I realised however that my anxiety was largely due to the booze and rock bottom for me was my career fuck up and the sever anxiety which caused me nearly to off myself. i knew now i had to do something about booze. i scoured the net about medications and therapy. found out about baclofen and here i am now. anxiety is much reduced and i feel like i dont need alcohol anymore. Some people hit rock bottom in a variety of ways, in one way im thankful that it was my mental health as thats fixable, physical health problems can kill you

anyways, sorry for the rant to answer your questions...

For cravings - when i started baclofen, i noticed my cravings went down 4-6 days after each dose increase. like a light dimmer. I did most of my 33days AF at 175mg, i didnt think too much about alcohol, but i did abuse benzos and some psychedelics during that time, i still wanted to get high in some form, it wasnt a switch. Right now cravings wise i dont really have any, though i think i might go a bit higher just to make sure. Part of the reason for that is that i still use Codeine. i have managed to taper off my usage somewaht but i still do enjoy the little buzz twice a day from it. I read about one case of a guy in france who stopped self administering codeine due to baclofen, so im hoping i can do that also.

side effects - they peak when i go up in dose and tend to go away completly after about 2 weeks on a given dose. My side effects are day time sleepyness, night time insomnia (constantly waking up), i also get restless leg type symptom but only in my hip flexors.

thoughts/habits - thinking has changed for sure. i dont tend to indulge in fantasies anymore. i would often day dream of yearning my life to be a certain way, dreaming of wealth, sex and even violence. one of my ways of falling asleep is to play out how i would perform the perfect murder and evade the cops. i would also put on waht i would call "mind movies" id play out a situation in my head and get lost in it and fall asleep, it was a technique i used to stop looping thoughts about things in my life when i would awake from a anxiety when drinking. sometimes i try to play these mind movies or those old thoughts and i just dont hold on to them, my mind just wanders in different places, i guess maybe this is stuff that "normal" people think off

It's still early to call out my switch i guess, especially given what happened the last few weeks and my lapse where i passed out on the floor. i think however this new level of indifference is a big change.

I'm not sure where to go from here, i was looking to increase the bac further to know ive nullified the alcohol addiction for sure and to stamp out the codeine usage. i was also looking at switching Anti depresants to tackle my GAD more effectively or adding buspar to zoloft, or switching to Effexor like you did. I found that my anxiety at this last bac increase has been much improved. Though im cautious to admit that as well. I fear as well that i might be bipolar type 2 and this might be a minor hypomania phase. I'm going to see a shrink soon for a diagnosis.

[neophyte]

Abstinence Challenge

hey skull,

as for fitness my routine is kinda similar except i do bjj instead of yoga, i love the grapplers high after a good workout. i do starting strength for my weights routine. ive been lifting a while but i found that this routine was the most effective than doing body splits in more typical bodybuilder routines.

my routine is this

mon - weights
tues - bjj
wed - weights
thur - bjj
fri - weights
sat - bjj
sun - some light cardio, usually a bike ride

exersize does make a world of difference, im looking forward to getting my muscle and strength i lost after all this abuse

[Cassander]

Abstinence Challenge

neophyte;1581203 wrote: Day 4 AF

Skull, I totally agree about needing something to spark your mind. I find that exersize can help. its hard to motivate yourslef but once you start doing something, you get that endorphin hit and the rest of the night seems a lot easier. I've got an exersize routine im going to follow that will have me doing exersize of some kind every night.

Hi neo -- congrats on your success. Speaking of "sparking your mind" and exercise, have you read the book called "Spark" which is about sparking your mind and exercise? I know you are in oz where there is no amazon, but here's the amazon link, anyway: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain: John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman: 9780316113519: Amazon.com: Books

Cassander

[Lo0p]

Abstinence Challenge

I guess you people only respond to "real" shit or crap that has "substance" instead of jokes on this thread. Fine, here you go:

https://www.mywayout.org/community/f2...ise-39134.html

This is what I did when I was cured. The healthiest part of my body was my mind:

https://www.mywayout.org/community/f2...nds-42543.html

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Abstinence Challenge

What's bjj?

I missed the joke initially, EPB. Plus, it's not a bad idea. (kidding. really. don't do that. Find a nice girl and all that stuff. It's fun to slide gently into middle age. ok, that's bull shit. I'm moving on, now. )

[neophyte]

Abstinence Challenge

Loop - damn nice gains, especially in such a short time period. whats your routine, diet and supplementation look like?

I think i remember reading somewhere that baclofen like ghb another gaba-b agonist increases the secretion of growth hormone during sleep. What are your thoughts on that Loop? I certinly found that i was able to go up weight quicker and im keen to see how my results fare now.

neva - bjj is brazillian ju jitsu. its basically a martial art where you wrestle with other guys/girls on the ground in pyjamas, very addictive

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Abstinence Challenge

A sport that can be done in pajamas! Nice.

[skullbabyland]

Abstinence Challenge

Loop and Neo- thanks for all the info, links, etc. Sounds like we're all of similar mind when it comes to training, etc.

Day 8 AF

[StuckinLA]

Abstinence Challenge

Ne/Neva Eva;1582525 wrote: A sport that can be done in pajamas! Nice.
skullbabyland;1582616 wrote: Sounds like we're all of similar mind when it comes to training

Yes, we are!!

[skullbabyland]

Abstinence Challenge

StuckinLA;1582630 wrote: Yes, we are!!

Cool. Stuck, what's your training regimen like?

[skullbabyland]

Abstinence Challenge

Day 9 AF