Let me tell you a little about myself first, I am, by nature, sceptical about most things – especially where medication is concerned. I choose not to get the flu jab and whilst I did get the Covid jab during the pandemic, it was only so I could go on holiday. If I have a headache I’ll drink some water, rather than take a paracetamol.
The second thing to learn about me is that I like beer.
There are days when I love beer. Now in my mid fifties, I have been a strong weekend drinker since my late teens and there will not have been many weekends since then that my alcohol consumption has ducked below the 30 unit mark. As with many of us, the 2020 lockdown helped my drinking reach new levels by getting me into a daily routine of weekday drinking.
I never tracked my alcohol consumption accurately, as I was frightened to do so, but a conservative estimate would be around the 70 units a week mark. Enough to cause some damage, for sure.
Health Early Warning Signals
As time marches on I have started to notice areas of my health suffer. Like most men, I considered myself invincible until the tell tale signs of declining health became undeniable. For example, as a lifelong gout sufferer, I had to increase my levels of medication to counteract the booze. Notably my blood pressure, once solid and stable, started to head north – the same direction of travel as my cholesterol level.
The Desire to Cut Down
You would think that these facts alone would drive me towards cutting back. Believe me, I wanted to. However, I found myself organising weekends so that I wouldn’t have to drive anywhere after 5pm and choosing events focused around pubs, rather than theatres or cinemas.
If I didn’t have a pint in my hands by 5pm then I became decidedly grumpy. Regardless which day of the week it was.
Was I – am I – an alcoholic? These were the questions I kept asking myself every morning, but I would still reach for that cold bottle of beer come five o’clock in the afternoon. None of this made me feel good about myself. Was the fact that I had a poor recollection of conversations from the night before because of the beer I had consumed that night or because of all the beer I have drunk in my lifetime?
My Introduction to the Drink Less Method
A friend of mine had read about the Naltrexone in a Sunday Times article and was telling me about it over a pint or four. Being the sceptic that I am I initially criticised the theory that a pill can help you to stop drinking.
However, that was when my online research started. I I found a couple of companies that were offering full counselling alongside the Naltrexone medication costing hundreds of pounds. Both the cost and the degree of involvement put me off.
Finally I discovered the Drink Less Method, which uses a staged introduction to taking Naltrexone after completing a online consultation. It cost under £160 so I thought I’d give it a try.
The Starter Pack Process
The starter pack came a few days later and contained a low dose (4.5mg) and a mid-dose (25mg) pack of Naltrexone plus instructions about when to start gradually increase the dose.
I followed the instructions but remained sceptical.
Here’s a very important part – as recommended, I downloaded one of the apps reviewed by the Drink Less Method on their website which monitors your consumption. I wish I had done this earlier, as it may have motivated me to do something about my drinking sooner. I went for the one that is produced by the charity behind Dry January and is called ‘Try Dry’.
Initially, you are asked to take an increasing dose of the low dose tablets daily to make sure I had no reactions. This starts at one 4.5mg tablet and increases to five tablets by day ten. I don’t tend to react badly to medication and was fine all the way along.
The downside was I was still, fine to go out and drink seven or eight pints on a Friday night!
However, this meant that the training was already starting for me, even though I didn’t realise it. My wife was the first to notice, commenting that I appeared to be ‘messing around with my beer’ – trying to make if fizzier, changing brand and even leaving some. She suggested that it might be down to the tablets but, of course, I put it down to the beer not being served correctly, since I was still sceptical.
Moving on
After completing the first ten days on the low dose tablets, I was instructed to move onto the next set of 25mg Naltrexone pills. Unlike with the first course of tablets which are taken every day to help you get used to the medication, the plan with the 25mg tablets is to take one of these only on days that you are going to drink, one hour before starting.
For me that was still every day so, at 4pm I my alarm would go off to take my tablet to make sure that it was working before my first drink.
Subtle Changes
After a week or so, the first difference that, whilst my phone alarm went off to remind me to take the tablet, I noticed was my own internal ‘drinking’ alarm had stopped going off at 5pm. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a beer that evening, just that I wasn’t dreaming about it at 4:45pm and in the starting blocks at 5!
You guessed it, I was still dubious that this was the medication at work and would put it down to being busy on a project and losing track of time. However, as the days progressed, I found myself skipping drinking days completely during the week. My consumption calendar in the ‘Try Dry’ app was taking on a different look. There were more ‘drink free days’ and the amount consumed at the weekends was also going down.
‘Drink Noise’
There is a lot of coverage in the press around ‘food noise’ when talking about weight loss jabs, well the ‘Beer Noise’ certainly appears to have reduced for me.
I have gone from drinking seven days a week to drinking on one or two days a week. The most I have had in a session is three pints in the last six weeks. I have lost three kilos in weight – and I didn’t realise I had three kilos to lose. I suppose losing an intake of at least 600 calories a day would have that effect.
What has struck me most is the way I feel in the mornings. Not wishing to evangelise, but waking up with a clear head suddenly seemed so much more important than a skin full of beer the night before.
I still take a tablet if I am going out for a drink, which means that my reorder of 60 25mg naltrexone tablets will last me more than six months.
The Long Term
I can’t say what will happen in the long term but, given my appreciation of a clear head in the morning and a full recollection of the dinner table conversation, I would think it unlikely that I return to my original seven days a week routine.
Once the current pack of tablets has run out, I will give it a go at flying solo in the knowledge that I could easily pick up the process once more.