Hi again all.
I haven’t posted in quite awhile. Sorry about that!
I’m still on The Sinclair Method & have been doing very well on it. I hardly drink any alcohol at all nowadays.
Here is a graph showing my progress on The Sinclair Method.
As you can see my drinking has improved a lot since starting on TSM (The Sinclair Method).
The Green line is 21 standard drinks per week, on average, as this is the maximum recommended intake for any male adult. The gradations at the side are in 10 standard drinks measurements. As you can see on February 2015, I was averaging 50 standard drinks a week. I actually started taking the Naltrexone 2 weeks before I started charting my drinking, so this graph starts 2 weeks into TSM. On the third month of taking Naltrexone my drinking went down quite a bit but it bounced back up the next month.
I now take 75mg of Naltrexone one hour before I ever drink any alcohol. I cut the 50mg tablets in half and swallow three halves. I’ve found that cutting all of the tablets in half helps them to absorb quicker in my stomach. Sometimes the tablets get stuck in the back of my throat but if they are cut in half it doesn’t matter because they break down faster that way, so they still get absorbed into my blood stream faster than when they are whole.
I found that I was still getting cravings on 50mg Naltrexone, and this can be seen in the spike in my drinking on March 2016. I had started off on 50mg, when I first started on TSM, then went up to 75mg, as I was still drinking too much. I then dropped back down to 50mg again, as I thought that I could save money, as Naltrexone is expensive when you take it every day. After being on 50mg again for about three months, my drinking started to go up again, as sure enough my cravings started to return, hence my spike in March 2016. I went back onto 75mg and my drinking tapered back down again, almost immediately.
Many people can stay on 50mg Naltrexone each dose, and that’ll work for them, I however need 75mg Naltrexone to take away all of my cravings. Some people even need 100mg Naltrexone each dose, and even a small percentage need 150mg per dose. It’s an individual thing, & it may take some experimenting to find the right dose for you, if 50mg is still causing cravings.
I have found that alcohol has changed it’s taste on TSM. It doesn’t taste very nice anymore. This is due to the fact that I rarely get high off it these days. When I was getting high off it, before TSM, I hardly noticed the taste, as the high was the primary reason for my drinking. Now that I hardly get high from it, I really notice the taste and it doesn’t taste very nice at all!
I used to sometimes drink 1/2 a cask of wine each night prior to TSM (that’s 2 bottles of wine each night). Now I drink about two or three nights a week, and will drink about 2 small bottles of Victoria Bitter beer each time.
The cost of Naltrexone is expensive, when you take it every night but taking it every night is just something that you need to do for the first few months. After that you should start to taper down on your drinking without any effort, and drink less often, so you spend less on the Naltrexone. As an example, I used to buy two and a half casks of wine each week, when I was at the height of my alcohol abuse. That was costing me about $65 each week on alcohol. Now when I drink 3 nights a week (and that is about the most that I ever drink these days), I spend about $21 on Naltrexone (it works out to be $7 NZ for a 75mg Naltrexone dose but if you take 50mg Naltrexone then it works out to be only $4.70 NZ each dose!) and $12 on the bottles of beer, each week (they’re about $2 each). That means that I am saving $32 each week on alcohol, overall. So you see that TSM will save you money in the long run. What’s more is that the beer costs more money than casked wine does, so I’d actually be saving more if I was still drinking casked wine! It’s a win/win. My liver is no longer inflamed, I’m spending much less than I was on alcohol (including the Naltrexone), and I’m definitely happier!
Thanks for reading.
Until next time, happy TSMing!