My Background

To whomever this may help,

I am starting this blog because I am one of the millions of people worldwide who suffer from alcohol dependence. I am 24 years old, and I have been battling alcoholism for roughly six years. I started drinking when I was 14 years old, and became addicted to alcohol when I was 18 years old. I received a D.W.I. at 18, and it served as the first major legal consequence of my drinking. By the time I was 19 I was drinking almost daily, and had developed mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms (i.e. shaking, sweating, headache, lack of coordination). I discontinued playing sports, frequently chose to drink alone as opposed to with friends, and began to shut myself in. My father committed suicide due to his alcoholism and drug addiction, and I began to think I was headed toward a similar fate. My alcohol intake steadily and sharply increased, and by my 21st birthday I was drinking from the moment I woke up to the moment I passed out. I was drinking roughly one-liter of hard liquor per day, and experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms if I ever attempted to stop drinking abruptly. I dropped out of college, stopped eating regularly, stopped exercising in any capacity, and reached a point where drinking was all that remained. To put it bluntly, and not to exaggerate, I was walking down a path of nearly drinking myself to death.

My friends rarely wanted to be around me due to my always being extremely intoxicated. It's like my life was a CD that at a certain point just started skipping and remained at the same place permanently. Each and every day was nearly exactly the same as the day before it. I would wake up around 4:30 a.m., not because I'm an early-bird, but because my body was already in such severe withdrawal that it would wake me up. I began losing my mind due to constant isolation and perpetual drunkenness. I started believing in things that weren't real, and telling elaborate lies for absolutely no reason. In some sort of psychotic attempt to make people notice me, or feel bad for me, perhaps. This continued for roughly nine months, and after several hospital detoxes and a suicide attempt, I entered a treatment center. When I walked into the treatment center, my B.A.C. was .51, and the staff almost refused to have me admitted. I had now been exposed to sobriety and Alcoholic's Anonymous. Though it would take three treatment centers and several relapses, I eventually achieved sobriety for a somewhat considerable length of time. During this 14-month period of recovery, I quit smoking, lost 30 pounds, went back to college and maintained a 4.0 G.P.A., and got accepted to a university in another state.

Shortly after I moved to attend my new school however, I relapsed once more. My relapse did not have a negative impact on my life at first, and I drank with seeming impunity for a few months. However, my alcoholism caught up to me and within four months I was once again going on binges. My incredible tolerance once again developed, and I was in and out of hospitals for about two months before entering another 30-day treatment center. Again my B.A.C. upon admission was more than 5 times the legal limit of 0.08.

I have been told several times by medical professionals that I will certainly die within months if I continue to drink, but that does not always deter me. I don't know why. I have now been sober for a little over four months, but my cravings are intense and my depression severe. I am a member of A.A., however I cannot come to grips with the fact that prayer and faith are the only "treatment" for alcoholism, and that virtually zero progress has been made in the last 75 years. My tireless search for answers has led me to several discoveries; The Sinclair Method, Rational Recovery, Moderation Management (I know I could never successfully moderate, but it's worth mentioning), S.M.A.R.T., and most recently and most notably, Baclofen Therapy. I have heard amazing things about this drug (negative things also, which I will gladly discuss as I plan to be as objective and open-minded as possible during this endeavor), and it deservedly merits further research and investigation. I will provide my findings and my goals related to HDBT (High Dose Baclofen Therapy) in the next post.

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