Feeling Lost - need some advice (Alcoholism).

Allan, The Sinclair Method is an effective treatment (the only medical treatment available that can actually work long-term).

Abstinance-based treatments often fail as the body is physically dependent on alcohol and will continue craving alcohol for years, even after a person has stopped drinking. By blocking the opioid receptors and then drinking, the body can be reconditioned to not crave alcohol.

The drugs used do not spoil the taste of alcoholic drinks or stop a person enjoying the social atmosphere or even prevent that person from getting drunk. It simply allows them to control the level at which they drink in the same way as a person without an alcohol problem, Most people who use The Sinclair Method successfully find that they reach a point where they drink only occasionally and there is nothing at all wrong with a person enjoying social drinking sometimes. Some people stop drinking altogether after using The Sinclair Method. A far greater percentage of people (78%) either stop drinking or drink in a controlled way after treatment with the Sinclair Method compared to less than 10% who use any other treatment method.

One of the 'arguments' against The Sinclair Method is about the moral issue of drinking alcohol. There are some cultures in which the consumption of alcohol is unacceptable. However, it is considered perfectly ok, as long as it is controlled, in many cultures and it is unfair if some people are excluded from this activity by a medical condition which was never their own fault. It is therefore an effective and legitimate treatment.

Each person should consider what is best for them, but nobody should dictate what method is best (or worst) for another person. My view is that if AA helps a person, that is what they should use, if Rehab does, they should do that. Unfortunately, champions of other treatment methods rarely accept The Sinclair Method as a legitimate treatment choice. I can't help wondering if that is an inability to let go of principles they have followed for many years or simply a problem with the fact that The Sinclair Method has, by far, the best success rate and is therefore a risk to the existence of others once the world has fully woken up to it.

None of the above is aimed at you personally as your comment was simply pointing something out, but I felt I needed to ensure that potential Sinclair Method candidates weren't put off by some idea that it simply ruins the activity of drinking (as that isn't quite accurate).

I'm very glad you overcame your own issues

Hi Ya Paul

No doubt your heart is in the right place, but you have to be careful about pushing a treatment which gives those who obviously shouldnt be drinking. The belief that its ok if you take this pill.

Slowburnstar has already reported very serious internal problems along with a miriad of anxiety related disorders prior to drinking. To believe that these disorders and internal problems will disapear along with her anxiety after taking a pill is pure fantasy.

PTSD and other related anxiety disorders are hightened when alcohol is withdrawing from the body. Causing anxiety symptoms to increase, which leads to self medicating with alcohol untill it is in your system 24/7.

The paradox with what you are saying as well as what i have read about TSM is that pills given (opiate blockers) prevent you from recieving the pleasure you once felt when drinking which in turn stops it from becoming habitual. That is great for many problem drinkers? however when you cross the threshold to dependency you very rarely drink through habit or pleasure.

You drink through nessecity, you drink to function, you drink so you dont have to face the withdrawal symptoms which range from anxiety, depression through to seizures 10x more powerful than epileptic seizures and even death. So in short how do opiate blockers prevent drinking through fear and nessecity? When their job is to supress pleasure?

"Trust me many long term alcohol dependent people have not known pleasure through drinking alcohol in years".

Its good that you are so pssionate about alcohol missuse and TSM as it seems to have worked for you. I hope you will research (AWS) alcohol withdrawal syndrome with as much verve? The disorder was first bought to light in 1952 by a British nobel prize winning biologist. I wonder why its use as a diagnosis has been deliberately suppressed for so many years??? In the UK anyway.

Keeping up your good work Paul all the best.

Allan

 

Thanks for your reply Allan. We do not push The Sinclair Method for all of our clients. Some cannot do it as we cannot advise some people to carry on drinking due to their health. We always do a Liver Function Test before proceeding with The Sinclair Method and we won't prescribe for it if a person's liver is too badly damaged or if there are other health reasons why they should abstain totally.

What I do mostly is alcohol detox. It is a scandal how the NHS neglects people who need this, or tries to get people to reduce slowly using a drinking diary ... it just doesn't work for the vast majority of people who are alcohol-dependent. Detox works, but it doesn't help people remain out of trouble, long-term, which is where The Sinclair Method fits into our treatment options.

I don't think there is a lack of knowledge in the UK about Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome, or a suppression of it. Until a few years ago, GPs were prescribing medication for alcohol detox. However, this wasn't being done in a safe way and people were being given bottles of Librium with no supervision and the risk that they could take the whole bottle AND drink, which could be fatal. Quite rightly, this practice was stamped out and there are very few GPs that will give medication for detox. Unfortunately, the new way is to send people to the local drug and alcohol team who keep people waiting months and, even then, don't offer alcohol detox to many of their clients. This has effectively meant that alcohol detox has become unavailable on the NHS in the majority of areas.

One of the things which is said about TSM is that it can be done without an alcohol detox. However, we have concerns about that. What if we gave a person Naltrexone or Nalmefene when they were drinking a bottle or more of vodka a day and this stopped them wanting to drink? The danger of them going from a bottle a day to two small glasses is that they could go into serious withdrawal. We therefore detox the majority of our clients before offering TSM.

With regard to the 'pleasure' that opioid receptor blockers prevent. This is not a conscious pleasure. As you say, many alcohol-dependent people don't enjoy drinking anymore, but drink because their body tells them that they need a drink. At the extreme end of the scale, we see people sleeping on park benches, it is impossible to believe that they get a reward from drinking which makes that more appealing than living in a  warm house without alcohol. But alcohol dependence isn't logical because that addiction is a physical illness, not a life choice. Those who actually don't like the taste end up stopping drinking completely very quickly after starting TSM because they don't enjoy the taste and their body doesn't urge them to do it anymore, once they reached the point of pharmacological extinction.

The ultimate aim of TSM, when we use it with a client, is to give them the choice back of whether to have a social drink or not and to protect them from getting back into difficulty on any occasions that they do.

Hi ya paul

Your email has put my mind at rest as to the professional way you work. However your understanding of concious and subconcious needs whether they be pleasurable, fear, or physical nessecity are somewhat lacking. Your comments regarding alcohol dependence not being "logical because it is a physical ilness" is a contradiction in terms.

It is because it is physical/biological that it can be logically explained (AWS). Again in reaching physical dependency a persons jurney may have started subconciously through self medicating an anxiety disorder or through a spychological disorder. Both of which TSM does not address on its own. Whilst TSM may deal with the physical it does not deal with the MIND which is a totaly different entity.

The person on the park bench you were refering to was me. And my reward for drinking was knowing i survived another morning without a seizure. Living in a warm house without alcohol was the last thing on my mind. Seizures caused by AWS, although i was incorrectly diagnosed as being epileptic.

I am not arguing with you in an attempt to change your beliefs, so i ask that you dont try and change mine. Which are education and knowledge, that everybody should have the right to know of the effects of ethanol withdrawal, and the spychological and physical damage it causes us and the people around us prior to consuming alcohol. This will also help people realise early on that they may be falling into the dependency trap. I dont believe swapping one drug for another (opiate) solves the real issues surrounding alcohol misuse/abuse.

I hope we can agree to disagree, and as you said in your first reply. Everybody is different and will find their own way.

No, I have no desire to change your view, Allan, as people find their own solution (hopefully) and you clearly have.

Obviously, in the relatively short posts I have written, about the very complex theory of addiction, cannot possibly cover everything we do and I accept that there are psychological issues that often need adressing too. I am a qualified Mental Health Nurse which is how I got into this area of practice in the first place.

What i have a problem with is the idea that every person who has an addiction imposed that on themselves through poor choices. MANY people use alcohol (or drugs) to deal with traumatic events in their life. Not all of them get into serious difficulty. One person may spend a few days or weeks getting drunk to deal with a broken relationship and a large number eventually realise that is not the answer and have no problem stopping. Some (those who, in my view, have a physiological pre-disposition to alcohol addiction) find they cannot stop and the alcohol becomes the primary problem, preventing them from dealing with other issues in their life.

Self-medicating for things like anxiety and depression is common but as you know, alcohol CAUSES anxiety and depression, so the cycle has to be broken.

Because of society's attitude to alcohol addiction (and that of many health care professionals) more psychological damage is caused to a person who is made to stand up and talk about their shame and waht a terrible person they are. This, in my view, is scandalous. You wouldn't tell people to stand up and say 'I am Paul and I have cancer. I have done this to myself and I have hurt my family with this illness which is entirely my fault. I am a terrible person and I have made all the people around me suffer.' Yet this seems to be an acceptable way of treating people with alcohol addiction (another physical illness, NOT a lifestyle choice).

This is the point of view from which I work. If people need to stop drinking, they get a detox to make that safe. Then, if appropriate for them, they are offered TSM, the requirements of which are ongoing support through which any psychological issues can be dealt with.

I have to say, though, that the relief in people when told 'this is not your fault, you have a medical condition which has got you into this mess' often results in tears from people who have been told for years that the problem is all their own doing.

While explaining that they are not to blame for the problem occuring in the first place, they DO need to recognise that it IS their responsibility to find a solution and we simply help them to do that.

Good to have the discussion with you, Allan. I never have an issue with people having different views to me

Hi Ya Paul

Good to talk to a professional who has such passion for his work. I totaly agree with your sentiments above and believe our intentions are the same. Which is to help those crying out for help.

As for me i spent two years studying for a BSc in Pschology Science. I was fine when it came to writing papers on nurons and biological processes anxiety etc. However when it came to studying alcohol misuse/abuse i was disgusted with the amount of misinformation and rubbish which was being taught to young impressionable soon to be professionals.

The final straw came when i was asked to wright a paper for a world renound nurologist into causes of Epileptic seizures. This is where i came across a paper from an American nurologist. After a study in his own clinic he discovered 75% of his adult patients who were diagnosed epileptic were actually suffering from AWS.

I found another study conducted by the (MOD) ministry of defence in 1954 where they injected young new recruites with Ethanol! in an attempt to create what we would refer to as dutch courage. The experiment was suspended after 7 to 12 hours after 75% of the young lads suffered massive Ethanol withdrawal seizures.

This is where my belief in education and knowledge comes from. As you said it was not my thought i became dependent on alcohol or anybody elses. However the cover ups and misdiagnosing of epilepsy certainly contributed to it. The drug money for Epilepsy, not including anxiety disorders is worth around £20 billion in the UK alone.

Reading about AWS certainly changed my life. I began to understand why i drank so much. I also began to understand about perception. If your perception of something is that it is OK everybody else does it? then its difficult to abstain. However if you logically realise that you are not like everybody else; and that, that something makes you physically and or mentally ill then you must be allergic to it. Makes abstaining so much easier, its this logical knowledge and perception of MIND which has now helped me to abstain for more than 9 years now.

Please keep in touch i enjoyed talking to you and learned something as well. Which is always good.

Allan

I wish you all well in my humble opinion the only way to stop drinking is with AA help it can only do you good to see how others just like (and in many cases worse than your good self) have found how to get their lives back with willing help from like mlnded folk if I can help I will be back from AZ in November. Love Rob

Hi Ya Rob

Wish you well too, im glad AA worked for you? to tell the truthe you could have told me you managed to abstain by hopping on one leg for 6 months? it wouldnt have mattered as long as it worked for you. However it is a bit presumtious to suggest that AA has helped many more people in a worse condition than myself? when you have no idea of the situation i was in, the diagnosses i was given, the losses incured, the amount of months i was given to live etc etc. But all that is irrelivent? you should know by now that everybody who is in the position where they are crying out for help has reached or nearly reached the very bottom for "them". And everyones situation at that point is equally as painful, serious and bad, regardless of what end of the misuse/abuse spectrum you consider them to be. Hope you enjoy AZ.

Allan

 

Hello Paul. I have worried about my alcohol intake for a while, and think it's partly OCD and Social Anxiety (I have been diangnosed with BPD) that makes me speed up my drinking in a social environment, while I will sip slowly on a glass of wine at home. I come from a family of alcoholics, (generational) so am not at all surprised that it rears its head when I am under prolonged stress or anxious. I am 48, show no physical signs of alcohol abuse, and have been off anti-depressants and benzodiazepam for about a year now, after eight years of living in a fugue. On advice of a new friend, he suggested that I cut our drinking completely. That would be 48 hours ago. Aside from consuming way too much coffee, I have no physical symptoms and I used to drink every day (About 1-2 bottles of wine, or 4 draughts, depending. 

I have researched alternatives, and want to know if Nalmefene is available in South Africa?

Sorry to bust in on another conversation, but I'm new here. *) 

Welcome Tania

I am not sure about the availablity of Malmefene in South Africa. It is worth checking if Naltrexone is as that can also be used for The Sinclair Method.

Thanks Alan I wish you well also. Just to let you a little of my dispair before I found AA I was (acording to doctors ) one week away or so from the grim reaper as my liver had all but seased to function . I don't know how low you are that is true so can't presume as you say. But having the stark truth cast at me I had to try and thank god I did. So I could live to help other alcoholic like me. Love rob

*Nalmefene

very good reply Paul. It makes no sense to sleep on a park bench if you can sleep in a nice house and beeing sober...a classic and worthwhile comparison. Love it!

well said Rob! trying to help others is also what I do. End Dec it will be 3 yrs for me

HI Allan. Yes, it is it a bit hard for us to evaluate what level you are at if we do no know enough about you...entirely up to people to give information on this forum as to what level they are at and whether they have reached "bottom level". Best of luck to you whatever your situation is.

Hi Ya Robin

1 month away from being abstinent for 9 years. I do think you are a bit confused regarding "bottom level" when everyones bottom level is different? Another valied question could be did i reach bottom more than once???

I disagree with the fact you feel you have to evaluate me? as if reaching deaths door through dependency is some kind of badge of honour, or right to comment. However i will tell you my story as i feel i am being judged?

Prior to my 16th birthday i was just a normal kid, School football and rugby captain, county player rugby and played semi-profoortball. On my 16th birthday my older sister introduced me to  alcohol, just a couple of double rum and cokes and 2 beers. Fealt absolutely drunk and fell asleep. Awakening the next morning i felt strange kept jumping, violent jerks. Next thing i know i was being carried to an ambulance with excruciating pain in my head. After being kept in hospital overnight i was distcharged the next morning with a diagnosis of epilepsy and given a drug called carbamazapine.

I still managed to find a job which was short lived after suffering more seizures. Drinking sociably after work on week ends i wondered if the two could be related. After asking my GP if i stop drinking will my seizure stop he replied "NO you will still be epileptic and still suffer seizures.

After job after job feeling guilty that i could not hold a job down in order to support my young family i began to drink more. Eventually at the age of 25 i was put on disibility for uncontrolled grandmal epilepsy. One marriage over i hit the streets as i believed it was where i belonged, homelessness and hostels were for me a place i wasnt being judged. A place where i found camaradery amongst the rest of lifes losers.

Aged 28 i was diagnosed Epileptic/Alcohol dependent. I began to control my seizures with alcohol, every time i would get a myochlonic jump i would down a quater bottle of vodka as it would stop a full blown one.After a short stay in a mentall institution after attempting to take ky own life, i tried to rebiuld a future. Got a job with remploy where i was soon made up to a supervisor. Got married again however after drinking sociably i was still having seizures

After the death of my father and another marriage over i hit the streets again. Fast forward, by the time i reached 41 i had been alcohol dependent for so long i was now drinking a litre bottle of vodka + 8 to 10 superstregnth lagers as well as taking 28 anti epileptic pills per/day. I would wake through the night every 3/4 hrs to drink another quart of vodka to prevent the seizures. Eventually my GP sent me for yet more MRIs after giving me 6 months to live. Seeing a nurologist afterward he told me that he can find no signs of me ever suffering from an epileptic seizure???? I began to research first looking for disorders which can be mistaken for epilepsy. This is when i came across Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome (AWS)? After writing to the neurologist he agreed to take me into hospital to be chemically detoxed.

On entering the hospital i had a massive withdrawal seizure in a hallway toilet on the way to the ward. They kicked the door in against my spine to gain access to me. After being resusitated twice i was taken to a ward alongside 4 other yellow people (kindney failure). After 2 weeks being lead on my back being intraveniously drip fed benzodiazpines and pain killers i was discharged. In fact i was the only one to leave the ward alive. The last one of the yellow persons died the day before.

I was wheeled out of hospital with a fractured spine and no future. 9 years on i have been to college, studied at University. I have been for the past three years in fulltime employment. More importantly i am no longer diagnosed Epileptic, but "Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome". Which means if i ever have an operation in the future the antisthatist cant use ethanol to put me under. As the withdrawal could kill me. Although i will never run again i can now walk. My daughter has forgiven me for not being there for her when she needed me most, "love her". My grandchildren have given me a chance to gain back some of the ones lost with my own daughter. And ive just applied to do some volunteer work for my local NHS Drug/Alcohol team.

Just leave you with a thought rob regarding the park bench?? since when has anything made sence when you are looking through the bottom of a vodka bottle???

Dont need luck, just less idiot doctors

All the best

Allan