Baclofen vs. the power of routine

[CaptnHaddock]

New here, been lurking for a few weeks -- great source of information, thanks to all the posters.

Been on Baclofen for 4-5 months now, went up slowly from 30mg to 120, then down to 90 because the side effects were too much to handle.

A little background: I'm 52. I guess I'd be categorized as a "high functioning alcoholic": I'm CIO at a respectable and fairly successful company, never drink during the day on week days, but drink myself to oblivion every night (one or more bottles of red wine). Alone.

Since I've hit 110-120 mg, I've found it difficult to cope with the SEs at work -- afternoon drowsiness, uncomfortable buzz (reminding me of my early experimentations with GBH as a recreational drug), and quite surprisingly, stimulant-like effects in the evening, to the point where I think it makes me smoke and drink more than before I started the treatment.

Forgot to add -- I'm in Paris, so the meds are prescribed by an addiction therapist. He recommended I titrate down until SEs fade away, so I'm down to 90 for now.

After 4+ months, I'm in a quandary. The SEs are preventing me from upping the dosage (I don't wan't to lose my job), and if anything, I drink (and smoke) more now than I ever did.

The posts on this board make me want to hang on to the treatment, but I'm wondering if the whole Baclofen story isn't misrepresented, i.e., you up your dosage and one day, bingo! you're sober... the miracle switch. What about some serious work while you undergo your treatment, to force yourself to change your daily routine, from ?get back from work, buy wine, cook dinner, drink yourself silly every night? to ?do something else so you?re not tempted to get that bottle??

Of course, changing that routine is incredibly, tremendously difficult. But maybe Baclofen is not what enables you to do that, although I initially thought it was. Any opinions on this?

[Fred_The_Cat]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

CaptnHaddock;1684522 wrote: New here, been lurking for a few weeks -- great source of information, thanks to all the posters.

Been on Baclofen for 4-5 months now, went up slowly from 30mg to 120, then down to 90 because the side effects were too much to handle.

A little background: I'm 52. I guess I'd be categorized as a "high functioning alcoholic": I'm CIO at a respectable and fairly successful company, never drink during the day on week days, but drink myself to oblivion every night (one or more bottles of red wine). Alone.

Since I've hit 110-120 mg, I've found it difficult to cope with the SEs at work -- afternoon drowsiness, uncomfortable buzz (reminding me of my early experimentations with GBH as a recreational drug), and quite surprisingly, stimulant-like effects in the evening, to the point where I think it makes me smoke and drink more than before I started the treatment.

Forgot to add -- I'm in Paris, so the meds are prescribed by an addiction therapist. He recommended I titrate down until SEs fade away, so I'm down to 90 for now.

After 4+ months, I'm in a quandary. The SEs are preventing me from upping the dosage (I don't wan't to lose my job), and if anything, I drink (and smoke) more now than I ever did.

The posts on this board make me want to hang on to the treatment, but I'm wondering if the whole Baclofen story isn't misrepresented, i.e., you up your dosage and one day, bingo! you're sober... the miracle switch. What about some serious work while you undergo your treatment, to force yourself to change your daily routine, from ?get back from work, buy wine, cook dinner, drink yourself silly every night? to ?do something else so you?re not tempted to get that bottle??

Of course, changing that routine is incredibly, tremendously difficult. But maybe Baclofen is not what enables you to do that, although I initially thought it was. Any opinions on this?

I went through your dilemma exactly for about a year. Thinking bac would do the work for me, I kept drinking and kept miserable until I had to tell myself enough's enough. Around New Years Eve I made a plan which has been very successful: make a commitment to another person for most nights of the week that I could not back out of to go drink alone. This was:

Monday: personal trainer appointment
Tuesday: music lesson
Wednesday: more gym
Thursday: volunteering with cats

Friday, Saturday Sunday, off

I did this in the midst of tapering off of abilify, and I'm convinced that it was the only thing that got me through. By April I had a sext worthy body, much better music skills and tons of data overages from flirtatiously sending cat videos to women. I'm now with someone and very, very happy.

My dosage went from 75 mg to 50 mg, which was unthinkable a year ago.

Take heed though-

When I started becoming romantically involved it was overwhelming on many, many levels. My habits suffered, and then I found time to slip in more evenings to drink. I also got very bad with money. We usually think of being tempted to drink by bad disruptions like a death, divorce or job loss, but good things can lead us astray as well. I've not had to up my dosage, but adjusting to good things can have some unexpected consequences.

[CaptnHaddock]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Great story. What eventually compelled you to change your routine (ie, start with a personal trainer, music lessons, etc.)? Just some feeling of "I've had it"? Was it induced by Baclofen? If not, what motivated you to change your pattern?

[Fred_The_Cat]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

I'd actually gotten my drinking under control by that point, but felt a huge void. I spent way too much time alone on the internet and was overweight. I had also become fully aware that that the cocktail of medications I was on was demotivating me into oblivion- something just had to change.

Baclofen did not cause it, but definitely enabled me to get to that point. Before bac, I blamed all of my problems on alcohol. When I phased alcohol out of the picture, I realized which problems were caused by alcohol and which were still around because of medication, inactivity, etc.

And I know this thread is not about antidepressants or psychiatric meds and I do not intend to make it into one- but the best motivation of all was when I was finally off of abilify and suffered the most crushing anguish I've ever felt. Meds numb your sense of pride, drive, emotion and being to where you are unaware of how miserable you actually are. It takes feeling the full extent of the pain to make you want to crawl out of your pit.

[Fred_The_Cat]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

I'd actually gotten my drinking under control by that point, but felt a huge void. I spent way too much time alone on the internet and was overweight. I had also become fully aware that that the cocktail of medications I was on was demotivating me into oblivion- something just had to change.

Baclofen did not cause it, but definitely enabled me to get to that point. Before bac, I blamed all of my problems on alcohol. When I phased alcohol out of the picture, I realized which problems were caused by alcohol and which were still around because of medication, inactivity, etc.

And I know this thread is not about antidepressants or psychiatric meds and I do not intend to make it into one- but the best motivation of all was when I was finally off of abilify and suffered the most crushing anguish I've ever felt. Meds numb your sense of pride, drive, emotion and being to where you are unaware of how miserable you actually are. It takes feeling the full extent of the pain to make you want to crawl out of your pit.

[CaptnHaddock]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

OK, you lost me there for a bit --I'm not taking any meds outside of bac, so it's a little difficult to relate. But I see your point, your meds are a metaphor for the routine I can't seem to detract from.

Thing is, routine starts to get hard-wired in your brain. Think rat in a cage with pleasure-inducing drug at its disposal.

[Fred_The_Cat]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Read the book "Eat That Frog". It's about forming productive habits at work, but the principles are really basic enough to be applied anywhere.

I also read "The Power of Habit", but would not recommend it as an action plan. It's more about habits than directly confronting them. The one nugget of wisdom I got from it was that people who are ultimately successful in breaking bad habits work on one thing at a time and their successes accelerate- people who try to change everything at once crap out and give up really fast. They call this the "keystone habit".

Also realize that when it comes to productive behaviors, the rich get richer. If you've got to exercise for 45 minutes monday night, you have to eat healthy enough not to crash your workout and will save money by cooking for yourself, will sleep like a rock and have an endorphin rush that beats the hell out of drinking. If you went to the bar 2 hours monday night you destroyed your body with greasy food and alcohol, blew $20, got a shitty night's sleep that will haunt you tuesday and make you even less likely to pick up any slack you took on monday.. you get the picture.

I would say that seeing a personal trainer twice a week is the absolute best place to start. If you can afford alcohol, you can afford to pay someone to make you exercise. Period.

[guapo]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Look up urge surfing, and read books to put alcohol in a whole different light. Such as kick the drink easily by Jason Vale. Those sorts of things create a paradigm shift in your mind, and once alcohol is viewed differently, it sure helps you along the path to getting it under control.

Kind of a can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing but overtime the difference in viewpoint can be stunning.

[guapo]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

To put it a different way, it becomes difficult to see reasons to drink excessively, and very easy to see reasons not to.

[CaptnHaddock]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Thanks guys! I'll get on Amazon right now. This board is invaluable.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Hiya Captn and welcome to the forum.

There are a couple of schools of thought about this. Basically, you could wait for baclofen to do all the heavy lifting. That's what I did. I don't think there's any way I could have done it if I had a demanding job.

The other alternative is to put some muscle behind the medicine. I mean that literally and figuratively. Making the decision to find other things to do that physically wear you out or replace your habit is a really good place to start. I concur with Fred about the personal trainer. I did it, too, and also fell in love with exercising. I think of all of that as dopamine-enhancing. I have no idea if that's exactly what's going on, but anything that makes you feel good and look good...is good.

I also agree with guapo that changing the mind game is really important. I'm not suggesting that abstinence is the immediate goal. I am suggesting that understanding more about what alcohol does and why you actually hate it is a pretty good place to start. (I really, really wish I had done more of that when I was titrating up.)

Hang in there. I think you'll find that it's both time and milligrams that make this a winning proposition, and if you can't do gobs of baclofen (which is probably a good thing, honestly) then you just have to give it a little longer. (It's not endless though!) Don't give up.

[Lostinspace]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Hi Captn. Ne summed it up pretty well, that there are two ways of going about reaching freedom from alcohol obsession with bac. I very recently decided that working on habit needs to be a major priority right now. But, I also have been experiencing MUCH lower cravings at 120 mg, which makes working on the habit piece a lot easier.

I think in your case, what makes it so difficult is that you've found no relief yet on the dose you're on, and can't yet go up in dose because of side effects. It's never too early to start building new habits - you'll have to do this eventually, anyway. But be kind to yourself if you find it nearly impossible at this point. You may have to wait until the SEs subside enough to begin titrating up again before you find it easier to work on completely revamping your routine.

Hang in there and jkttdp, as they say. You'll get to where you want to be sooner or later.

[kronkcarr]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

Hi Captn,

When I started baclofen I'd only read Dr Ameisen's book and didn't know about this site. My dr had no interest in bac but scripted it for me at 30 mgs to start. My titrating was slow and I did have SEs. 80 mgs was as high as he'd let me go.

My biggest issue too was drinking at home alone--usually 3/4-1 1/2 bottles of wine. I just did not bring wine into my home. In the beginning I struggled with it but it was a huge habit I changed at the start. I did meet others for drinks. Two drinks was perfect as 3 put me to sleep.

Prior to baclofen I'd had therapy through the years and I had hobbies so this helped a bunch. For me baclofen was not a magic pill in the sense that it made everything better. I slowed down and wasn't in my morning fog and started looking at the world around me. I got lots of insights early on and this helped me so much. I saw people and their behaviors clearer. I got better at my work.

As an aside, Fred, I hear you about the stresses of having a relationship. My anxiety about them was probably the main reason I drank (other than habit).

[spiritwolf333]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

CaptnHaddock;1684522 wrote: Been on Baclofen for 4-5 months now, went up slowly from 30mg to 120, then down to 90 because the side effects were too much to handle.

After 4+ months, I'm in a quandary. The SEs are preventing me from upping the dosage (I don't want to lose my job), and if anything, I drink (and smoke) more now than I ever did.

The posts on this board make me want to hang on to the treatment, but I'm wondering if the whole Baclofen story isn't misrepresented, i.e., you up your dosage and one day, bingo! you're sober... the miracle switch. What about some serious work while you undergo your treatment, to force yourself to change your daily routine, from “get back from work, buy wine, cook dinner, drink yourself silly every night” to “do something else so you’re not tempted to get that bottle”?

Of course, changing that routine is incredibly, tremendously difficult. But maybe Baclofen is not what enables you to do that, although I initially thought it was. Any opinions on this?

Hi Cap -Good post -good point -great question.

Are you and/your therapist following the baclofen/alcoholism trial studies going on in France (about to be completed -1st phase, I think)? Do the majority of treatment doctors in France now consider baclofen a first line treatment protocol for alcoholism or is it still up in the air with the medical community?

As you state, some habits/routines are extremely difficult to break -even when these habits are not chemically addicting. I have no experience quitting alcohol while taking baclofen and still drinking. My only experience was stopping the intake of alcohol -taking baclofen, and then feeling a lot less physically or mentally challenged to drink alcohol. The baclofen did not eliminate my thoughts of alcohol -only the onslaught of cyclical thought cravings. (Routine craving thoughts stopped after about 6 weeks af). Baclofen did not/does not alter the way that I perceive things. Baclofen helped/helps me to stay calmer and more quickly regain a more rational perception. (Of course, just not being intoxicated helps a lot with this as well -lol)

[neophyte]

Baclofen vs. the power of routine

hey captn, increased drinking when going up in baclofen is common, this is because baclofen prevents the release of dopamine (feel good chemical) when drinking. Our alcoholic brains want to scratch the itch so to speak, so we drink more.

This is my theory, but as we go higher more and more of the pleasurable dopamine releasing is taken away and at a certain point it just doesnt seem worth it any more. When i finally reached my switch I had 30 days sober at 170mg but started drinking again heavily but not every day afterwards. each time i drank i regretted it, but i still had that craving. Eventually i was able to string some sober days without full on white knuckling it, then on new years day i had a glass of wine and it tasted terrible.

perhaps you could try something similar. being sober, at least some of the time, will help you see the switch better.