Cautionary tales of relapses after extinction (and a shameful report)

Hi! I'm about to (re)start my journey with the Sinclair Method. I had great first two months. For the first two weeks I went to just 2 units (from 8 a day), and that's just because my poison of choice are high ABV Baltic porters (bascially 2 units in 1) and I was literally forcing myself to drink at least one bottle just to make "unlearning" more efficient. They smelled and tasted like a yeasty dishwater, so bascially precisely what they really are. Later on my drinking had gone up and somewhat plateaued at 5 units. After two months I ran out of NAL and decided to give my tormented liver a break.

Stupidly I didn't make an appointment with my psychiatrist to ask for a refill. After two months of serene sobriety, the temptation to "have a sip" crept back in and while still having no NAL I thought that after two months my opioid receptors are probably back to their pre-Naltrexone levels, so I can check what had changed. Of course, it ended in a 3 weeks long binge (I'm still waiting for my appointment btw). But I was right. Some things changed. I drank less - 6 units at most. I was choosing lesser ABV beers. For the first week my beer smelled and tasted precisely like it did under NAL. I also generally seemed to fell less buzz. Sadly, I have wasted some progress.

I would like to reach extinction and - if possible - even aversion for alcohol. I absolutely have no hope for "social drinking". Booze simply isn't my thing (said by an alcoholic), but I have to acknowledge that I live surrounded with a very booze-friendly culture and sooner or later - 2 or 3 years from now - some high-school friend of mine I have not seen for years will lure me into a bar to have one or two pints with him and I will agree to drink "unprotected" just like four weeks ago simply because I won't have the pill. It is often said that Sinclar Method is a lifelong committment. The rewiring may not be as deep as we hope (I don't think there are some MRI scan comparisons confirming it), or perhaps there are other things at play in our dependence, that's beyond the point but I understand it's prudent just to follow the protocol for the rest of my life.

So out of curiosity (and fear) I would like to hear cautionary tales of people who were successful with the method, but decided that they can go 'unprotected' at some point and ended up exactly where they were before (or at least heading in that direction). How long did it take? Was it rapid or gradual?

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