Hey guys. I’m curious what thoughts people on here have regarding using medications to help support sobriety. I went on antabuse a few years ago to get sober, and it obviously wasn’t the right choice for me, because i stopped taking it and chose to relapse. Now, i have about 5 months of sobriety the right way, and my doctor is talking about prescribing something that with make the urges quieter. It would also help with some other issues i have. I’m nervous about getting on something like that, partly because of my history with antabuse. Does anyone have advice on using meds like this the right way? Has anyone benefitted long term from using meds to curb cravings in the short term?
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At 5 months sober the physical cravings have all passed. The alcohol is out of your system. What you are experiencing now are mental cravings, which I’m not sure medication will be effective for. Medication can treat the symptoms but not what is causing them. I would think therapy, AA, SMART would be more effective.
However, that being said I was on vivitrol my first 6 months and found it helpful, or at least placebo effective lol
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Thanks so much for replying and sharing your experience. Yeah, my understanding is that it would help with the mental urges to drink, not specifically physical cravings. I guess I’m worried that this would potentially lead to being weaker in my mental and emotional sobriety, which is why i was hoping for some other opinions. i do meetings and i work through a lot with my therapist too, and i wouldn’t stop doing those things.
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Stick with that. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.., talk with your sponsor about the step 9 and 10 promises.
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In my opinion it’s essential to look deeper what the cravings want to tell you. Maybe it’s a symptom where this unhealthy coping mechanism shows that needs are not met, that issues come to the surface (and want to be tackled or at least seen), that you are overwhelmed, exhausted, need rest, ME time etc.
What always, in every life situation helps me is to check HALT and act accordingly, no matter what. It helped and still helps me to find a good balance on the daily in my many parts of life.
Also deliberately sitting with whatever comes up (in my case it’s mostly emotional things, I rarely crave anything) helps me. Just sit in silence for 5 minutes and breath, giving myself calm and space to be just me. Feelings come and go when you let them.
Please take what is helpful and leave the rest. I’ve been taking antidepressants for about 9 years now and reduced the dosage markedly after I got my life in order resp. on the way to it last year. Meds can be helpful when dealing with the source, the real issues.
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You’re doing everything right: working to get in touch w yourself, investigating your pains, fears, wounds, wishes via connection w other living ppl. 
That work will lead to long term sobriety and nothing else will. We all had to do that who have been sober a while and live full lives.
Your doctor has outed himself as an absolute nit re addiction for his suggestion.
This thread contains a lot of stuff I think would interest you: Your #1 tip for sobriety (over 2 years sober)
Congrats on your sober time!
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Think hit the meetings get active help others exercise and diet keep active the cravings will pass , wish you well
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Ye what everyone else has said already - I just started at SMART but I’m finding it way more helpful than AA because they have very specific tools you can use in different situations based on psychology and the groups seem a lot more supportive from my experience
I can’t imagine taking medication at this point in your recovery would be helpful because you’d just be substituting one drug for another - and what you want is to not be reliant on drugs?
With that said, I do take a lot of Kalms also a beta blocker because of anxiety (that I used to self med for with drugs and alcohol) such that I can manage my symptoms enough to go and do the the things I need to do for recovery ie go to meetings etc. So I guess that would be an exception to my mind, but that’s not really to do with cravings as such
I would def recommend checking out a SMART meeting or so tho, because they’ll be able to recommend tools to help you figure out what’s triggering those cravings and how best you can respond to them
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Sounds like they want to put you on GLP-1.
I’d like to try it too, just too expensive for me. If I were to do something like that it’d be suboxen or methadone.
I’ve heard it’s cool if you tolerate it well. Makes you less hungry I guess, and less cravings for alcohol.