Resetting my baclofen useage - as its gone a little awry

[adam777]

Hi All,

I've been on Baclofen for about 2 1/2 years now. At first I went AF for four months and then would drink when out at dinner with friends (moderate amounts). Overall my drinking is way (WAY) better than it was before baclofen and I am lucky enough to have a doctor here in Malta that prescribes me a reasonable dose (which I supplement myself from online purchases).

About a year ago I developed major back pain issues (real agony, completely debilitating), when I cut back on the baclofen on doctors orders the pain subsided (I was taking 140mg a day then in two doses of 70 at time).

Then I went down to 50 gradually until the pain subsided and the drinking crept back into my life. I can feel the booze in my system even on the bac and whilst the effects are not what they were without bac they are not unpleasant. It wasnt long after that my Bac useage became intermittent, I would take 100 one day, 70 the next, 150 the next... I wasnt thinking about the Bac and only when I looked back on my behaviour did it occur to me what I was doing.

So, now here we are. I am taking 100mg a day (two lots of 50) and am still drinking, about three bottles of wine a week, and I'd like to go AF again.

So....has anyone got any experience of resetting their bac useage to attempt to get back to a maintenance dose that works. Of course I have to play my part as well and say No more often, I've been relying on bac to do all the work to moderate my alcohol use and I need to help out as well.

So if anyone has any words of advice I'd be very grateful, thanks in advance for your time.

[Molly78]

adam777 - no-one has replied to you, which suggests that none of us has been in quite the same situation, not that no-one's interested!

Personally, I think that 3 bottles of wine a week (for a male) is brilliant, sounds like a good balance, as a female I aim for the equivalent of 2 bottles a week. If you've got down that low, I'm not sure that you need to "reset your baclofen usage" - more that you need to reset your lifestyle. I found that that once the craving had gone, alcohol intake was more habit than anything else - end of work day "you deserve it" type of thinking, which is really difficult to eliminate (at my age, anyway, after 4 decades of drinking!). You haven't given enough info about how you drink to know whether this is the case for you.

I was interested to hear about your back problem. A combination of misuse of bac-plus-alcohol has left me with a chronic, progressive spinal problem, which retrospectively was entirely avoidable. The cumulative info on this site about how to use bac could have helped me if I had had access to it 5 years ago.

I hope someone will be along with more helpful comments soon.

[neophyte]

adam, these forums are a bit quiet but over time ive seen a few members mention that they have gone on and off bac maybe moore than once. From those posts, the switch dose stays the same the second time round. that said congrats on only drinking 3 bottles of wine, when i was tritating up, i was struggling to not drink 2 bottles of wine a night. I found that forced abstience can help you find your switch a bit earlier, white knuckle so to speak, a month of sobriety while edging the dose higher.