I have a book I purchased awhile ago about the Sinclair method of treating alcoholism, and, although I didnt read the whole thing, Id like to share the basis of it and see if any of you have any experience with this treatment. It is called Naltrexone and it is an opioid inhibitor. Basically, when you drink, a reaction happens causing neurons to fire in your brain which triggers endorphin release. The endorphins then bind the opioid receptors which cause the neurons to fire again, and the cycle continues. We need to keep drinking because we have trained our brains that we need more and more alcohol to keep this cycle going. Naltrexone binds the opioid receptors to stop the cycle so that we can drink, but not crave more and more. The positive effects (the effects that make us crave more and more) are diminished and we can someday drink like normal people, with the one caveat that you HAVE to take naltrexone before every single time you drink.

The book claims that the proper use of Naltrexone is to KEEP DRINKING, but take the medicine before every time you drink. Within 3 or 4 months you are supposed to be cured in the sense that you have retrained your brain to not be addicted to alcohol. However, it does say that if you drink without the medicine after you are cured you run the risk of retraining your brain to be alcoholic again. So might as well take the naltrexone every time you drink forever.because better safe than sorry.

It has a high success rate think it says something like 90% (dont quote me on that), but ONLY WHEN PEOPLE TAKE IT AND KEEP DRINKING. If you take it at a point in life when you arent drinking at all, it will bind the receptors, but it isnt blocking any endorphins from binding because you havent had any alcohol to trigger endorphin release and so you arent retraining your brain anything. So it only works if you keep drinking. Anyway the success stories are that people have a very diminished interest in drinking and when they do drink, it is very little. There is no more reward for drinking to excess. You dont take this every day, only days you drink so you dont destroy your liver which is a plus (already did enough of that with the booze anyway).

I guess I was interested in this because it seems like so many people can stay sober for extremely long times, but most people relapse at some point. And then there are those that cant even stay sober for long periods. Then there are those that fear those awkward social situations where they want to fit in and have a drink or two, but know they cant drink like normal people.

Have any of you tried this drug or know anyone who has? More importantly, tried it and kept drinking? As I said, in the book they are ADAMENT that you need to take it and drink, but that sadly when the drug was being prescribed, the FDA would only allow it to be directed for use with patients that already quit drinking, and so for those people the success rate is low.

Thoughts? Experiences? Im thinking about trying this, but I dunno about having an opioid receptor blocker on my list of meds..looks real bad because usually this is prescribed to people with heroin addictions. Also not sure how easy it would be to get the doc to give me this.

P.S. book is called The Cure for Alcoholism: The Medically Proven Way to Eliminate Alcohol Addiction

Thanks for readingI know this is long but Im hoping it could help those that have tried everything else.