Well, my friends, I’m home after a 4 day stay in the ICU. Obviously I relapsed again in a bad way, one of the worst out of the 200+ I can’t even count. Admitted for alcoholic ketoacidosis, alcoholic hepatitis and monitored for DT’s. I’m in fair shape now, far from feeling peachy but a lot of it is guilt and shame and general malaise.
They usually give me some nausea meds and send me home but I was super honest and forthcoming about it so they got me a telemed with an addiction specialist while I was there who’s started me on naltrexone and campral. Already had my first couple doses in hospital and will continue with scripts and follow up visits. Never taken these meds before, anyone have experience with them? Were they effective very much?
I’d been aware of and asked for Antabuse before and been sent away with “that’s not what we do here you need to see a specialist” but I guess they felt sorry for me or figured it was more serious this time and called one up for me. They were all around very kind to me though so I’m pretty grateful for that.
Anyway that’s that. Not much else to say but I’ll be sticking around.
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Good to hear you hop on the sober train again. There are several threads on the mentioned meds, you can use the search function to find information. Sending you good vibes.
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Man that sounds scary. Please, please use it to turn things around?
Be interested to hear what you think of naltrexone. It seems pretty controversial here in TS because its primary use in alcoholism as I understand it (it is normally used for opiate addiction) is to reduce/remove cravings for alcohol. It doesn’t mean you CAN’T drink but it works by blocking your opiate receptors which generate the buzz from drinking. It doesn’t make you feel nauseous, it makes you feel nothing from drinking. Did you get instructions for when to use it? Apparently an hour before you drink (I.e. when the craving kicks in you have to wait an hour otherwise it doesn’t do anything)…
So for those on the journey to getting sober it can make sense as it means you don’t derive pleasure from drinking and will stop after a couple. That’s the idea. For those who are trying to stay sober it doesn’t make sense as you don’t want to have any alcohol at all.
Good luck with it, and please look after yourself
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Glad you are okay. There are / were a few folks around who wrote about Naltrexone. You can search on it and read up on their experiences.
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That all sounds very serious and I hope it was a wake-up call. I took Campral on two occasions. The first time I was desperate and defeated and just wanted the meds to fix me. And it didn’t work. The second time I was in AA, and had made the decision to throw everything at getting sober because I was looking at going to rehab, which I really didn’t want. That time I think it helped. I think they can only support a determined effort to get sober.
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