Newbie and not finding TSM success. :(

[Otter]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

Here's when baclofen or Nal should be used

[empyr3al]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

Thanks, for sharing and your input. The first line you wrote here "den of destruction" is a great sentence. In all honesty, I think I'd be ok socially being alcohol free, but I'd be even better moderating. If I could just drink socially and keep it to a couple, like the gal in "one little pill" does. Who knows if I'll some day be capable of that. I hope. If not I may need to take another route. Time will tell, I guess.

I agree. Yet who you socialize with, or what your den of behavior is determines your success. You will (usually) experience some anxiety regarding alcohol while you take these first steps (misnomer) and they could be masked by withdrawal from an antidepressant. Getting back at Zoloft, there will be a withdrawal if you switch meds no matter what. That can be confused for alcohol withdrawal by you and your doctor. Do you think you need the Zoloft? I was pretty high strung and analysed everything while switching between medications. Specifically T/Brintellix and Mirtazapine.

I hate to say its true about the one is not enough and too many is never enough if you go all out abstinence AA belief. Something like that in AA. Blah blah.

Keep coming back (to this thread) because I'm curious how NAL works out for you and what you chose to change.

Thanks for the video [MENTION=12219]Otter[/MENTION]

[Bodhi]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

I agree. Yet who you socialize with, or what your den of behavior is determines your success. You will (usually) experience some anxiety regarding alcohol while you take these first steps (misnomer) and they could be masked by withdrawal from an antidepressant. Getting back at Zoloft, there will be a withdrawal if you switch meds no matter what. That can be confused for alcohol withdrawal by you and your doctor. Do you think you need the Zoloft? I was pretty high strung and analysed everything while switching between medications. Specifically T/Brintellix and Mirtazapine.

I hate to say its true about the one is not enough and too many is never enough if you go all out abstinence AA belief. Something like that in AA. Blah blah.

Keep coming back (to this thread) because I'm curious how NAL works out for you and what you chose to change.

Thanks for the video [MENTION=12219]Otter[/MENTION]

I'm certain I need Zoloft. The 2 times I've tried to go off of it in the last 20 yrs was absolutely disastrous. Anxiety through the roof. I was crawling out of my skin.
I've had the flu lately so that's dialed me back. Although, I'd not recommend it. 😒
Another product that I've been using for anxiety and other is CBD oil. I'm finding really good results with it calming and settling nerves and I wonder if it's helped my cravings. I've read some people use CBD oil to stop smoking (cigarettes). Perhaps the same could be useful for alcohol.
Just a thought.

[empyr3al]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

CBD or cannaboids are a no go for me, but totally up to you to persue. CBD would make my life paranoid in a kind of paradoxical way. Antidepressant withdrawal is really bad and some describe it like flu. I know my experience was like that.

[Bodhi]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

CBD or cannaboids are a no go for me, but totally up to you to persue. CBD would make my life paranoid in a kind of paradoxical way. Antidepressant withdrawal is really bad and some describe it like flu. I know my experience was like that.

CBD is not THC. There is zero anxiety & paranoia with CBD. It's legal in 50 states and used for anxiety, chronic pain and sleep issues. People give it to children. It's safe and widely used medically. THC, on the other hand is what gives you a "high" and can make some feel paranoid & anxious. I literally would recommend it to my grandmother. It's helped w/my anxiety & possibly cravings immensely. I'm learning more about it all the time: CBD Oil Benefits: Cancer, Pain, Anxiety, and More

[empyr3al]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

Hrm Bodhi that leads to huge interest for me. I'm at a conflict where tetra hydracanibinol makes me paranoid and confused and pushing 30+ % THC in weed makes it absolutely insane to legalize. If it is balanced out then the drug makes sense but has been bastardized by people just wanting to go temporarily insane. As an extract I could see it being useful. Unfortunately in Canada its been abused and I want no part of legalization. Now throwing out the baby with the bath water makes no sense so I am still curious.

[Bodhi]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

Hrm Bodhi that leads to huge interest for me. I'm at a conflict where tetra hydracanibinol makes me paranoid and confused and pushing 30+ % THC in weed makes it absolutely insane to legalize. If it is balanced out then the drug makes sense but has been bastardized by people just wanting to go temporarily insane. As an extract I could see it being useful. Unfortunately in Canada its been abused and I want no part of legalization. Now throwing out the baby with the bath water makes no sense so I am still curious.

Im with you on the THC (high & paranoid) effect. I also don't believe in throwing out the baby w/the bathwater. I'm finding it an amazing & calming supplement. People literally can take it and go to work. There is no high, but there is some mental clarity and calmness that comes with it. I feel like everyone should know about it! Here are some other sites that I found useful:

Cannabidiol & Hemp CBD Oil for Anxiety

CBD Oil for Anxiety - How To Take & Benefit from CBD Oil

How Cannabidiol (CBD) Works for Treating Anxiety | Leafly

Ive just order my first kit. It's supposed to be very clean. There are also tinctures if that's more appealing.

Vape Bright CBD Vape Pen - Review, Ratings & 2% Coupon Code - 217

[Otter]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

I always drank because I enjoyed it. I could take it or leave it. I liked having a drink with dinner and out socially, and maybe at lunch. Over the years it became a fixture until I looked back and couldn't remember a day when I had not had a drink in the past 25 years. I also had a lousy job which gave me huge stress on Sunday, just thinking about Monday morning. I would go out for a drink on Sunday night with a friend and we'd have a few pints. I then would be a bit groggy on Monday, making it worse, on only three pints, so I then started to wonder whether the constant drinking was causing me anxiety and I started to taper off a bit and set a limit of a couple of pints. The stress didn't go away but I didn't get the lousy feeling I had when I drank three pints. It was years, though, since I ever got any real buzz from alcohol. It was just a drink. If I had too much, more than three pints or two glasses of wine in a sitting, I would feel sick, so there was no risk of my developing any kind of problem with alcohol. I can't tolerate it in large amounts. But, I decided eventually to just try tapering off because it was impossible to avoid social situations where I had to drink. The only meeting places where I lived were pubs. In the end, I did reduce and events in my life led me to cut back drinking hugely, but then I realised that I was drinking when I felt stressed and that no amount of alcohol made me feel drunk, tipsy or happy. It simply reduced my anxiety for a while.

This tapering off lasted 5 or 6 years after drinking as an adult into late thirties.

With hindsight, I now think that many people like drinking, like the buzz of it. However, I think that wears off over time, no matter how much you drink. Maybe it's like anything you enjoy, that the novelty wears off, and a lot of people may just quit or don't get into trouble with drinking all their lives because they have no anxiety related illness, so even though they don't get much of a buzz, they enjoy it as a drink.

Where this leads me is back to the split I think there is in the alcoholic community between people whose drinking is in the nature of my drinking, that it started for social reasons and enjoyment, but they don't have that illness that Ameisen had, and people like Ameisen, and my wife, who have a need to drink due to overwhelming neurological anxiety which just won't let up. Each needs a different response, but it's important to keep in mind that it may be the case that these two drugs simply don't work for all types of alcoholism but that for some people, this is actually an underlying and very serious neurologically based problem which needs a specific drug, whereas for others, using something to help slow down the drinking by deadening the enjoyment receptors, as Nal does, allows them to consciously move towards abstinence. And, like in my case, when I found it wasn't fun to drink, I just wanted to knock it off and not spend so much money on something that gave me no enjoyment, like it used to. I made the mistake with my wife of thinking her alcoholism was motivated in the same way as mine, so I tried to get doctors to prescribe nal and campral. They didn't work. I suggested she smoke cannabis. She said she never enjoyed alcohol, that she only took it to reduce her anxiety, which had been crippling all her life. I just couldn't figure it out. When I read Ameisen's book, I realized his illness was the same as my wife's and baclofen worked for her.

Where I am going with this is that there is most definitely an underlying condition which makes people who have this anxiety drink to excess and become addicted, and it has nothing to do with their drinking for enjoyment. It may also be that different people have different levels of anxiety. Some anxiety may be situational, and be a result of lifestyle or events, and when these change they can stop drinking. But, for those with a real illness, there needs to be a diagnosis, treatment with the correct drug, and support from the medical community. They need a bracelet on their arm which describes them as having a neurological condition and what drug they take for it... because it's no good if my wife were to relapse, in a situation where I was not around, to be shoved into the wrong treatment because a doctor simply said "alcoholic" and applied whatever treatment or non-treatment regime was flavour of the day in whatever place he was. This is, in fact, what happened to us just over a year ago when my wife's daughter, who has no interest in her mother's treatment decided that she would hire a psychiatrist to see my mother at hospital when her stomach had collapsed and she was starving to death. I knew my wife was starving to death over a period of months and losing her factulties gradually. But, the DIL and the shrink, just said "alcoholic", "baclofen doesn't work", who does this guy think he is...f off and do what the shrink says. I wheeled my wife out of the hospital after she recovered from a coma, had her gastric band removed, got her back on her own medication, ie., baclofen, and she's been fine ever since. Had she been left to these people, she would have relapsed and maybe even died. It's nice, though to get to a point where she knows that it works for her so it really doesn't matter for her or for anyone who has taken baclofen for many years whether other people are skeptical, or wether medical professionals continue to ignore this treatment. It's sad for all those they fail to help, but I have done about all I can to alert people to this problem, my wife is well, and I have an ordinary life, which I did not have before this treatment came along.

[Bodhi]

Re: Newbie and not finding TSM success.

Otter, thank you for sharing your incredible story and insight. I'm so glad to hear your wife is doing well and that Baclofen worked for her. I have a brother who sounds like your wife. I think he could oerhaps benefit the way she does/did. I'm going to look into Ameisen's book. I myself drink more like you do. Social, habit, not crazy amounts, but more than I'd like. I'm just sick and tired of being sick and tires. Hangovers suck. Cravings are annoying. Nal is working okay for me and CBD curbs my anxiety. Best of luck to you and yours. You're doing great.