Challenges on The Sinclair Method for Alcohol Addiction | with Claudia Christian

[Music] hello everybody this is Katie with reiha health and I'm here today with Claudia Christian founder at c3 foundation and evidence-based recovery advocate Claudia we're going to talk with you today about sneaky things that can destroy or hinder someone's progress on medication treatment for alcohol use disorder and these can be things from you know emotional state mindset environment all these different ways that can really harm harm or impact someone's progress and how they can be aware of them and perhaps avoid them or at least learn how to deal with them if they do come up so I really just want to turn it over to you then and hear from you you know from your experience the past 10 years of you know being on the Sinclair method for your own alcohol use disorder and coaching hundreds of people what have you seen as some of them like most important things that can really hurt someone's progress on this method Thank You Katie well as they always say hindsight is always clearer and who believe me I would have done I would have been more actively participated in my own recovery had I known what I know now I certainly think that from what I've seen from individuals who start with a bang like I did you know you see that the immediate response from the medication in your disinterest in alcohol you get so excited about your recovery and what happens is they see a marked improvement they're really really devoted in the beginning they're keeping their drink log they're watching videos or participating in peer support maybe they're with reiha and they have a coach and they've got the breathalyzer and they're fastidious about doing that every single day then as life takes over and what is human nature and the fal ability of just being a person that fades in time and you just start taking it for granted and so I have people in months six or eight who start to really stop keeping a drink log they stop participating and they become a little bit too sure of of just relying on the medication they start to fudge as far as waiting the whole hour they start to you know resent the lack of spontaneity whereas before it was a gift and it was a magical cure an improvement in their life now it's just something they take for granted so let me stress the importance of being mindful and accountable during this process and it's not just the first year it's forever take it from me who has had non-compliance issues in the past and who never kept a drink all because I didn't even know what a drink clog was just from my experience of seeing who is the most successful and what the bumps in the road are for most individuals it's not maintaining the respect for the method and understanding that this is a life-saving medication it is not a party pill or sometimes I take it pill it's a life-saving medication it's your life-saving medication and that you must participate in your recovery whatever that means to you it's it's so what I see a lot is besides the compliance issues which is kind of obvious if you don't comply it's not going to work but the tapering of the fastidiousness and the and the accompanying changes in your life falling back into the habits of drinking the habitual drinking not really embracing that wonderful feeling that you felt let's say in the first year so what I really tell people is look this is a long-term process and let's say you're on TSM and you're in year 4 and you really feel at that point you know what I don't need to keep a drink log because I'm not drinking anymore that's fine or I'm drinking only at weddings and and I'm cool I understand that but you will know when you're really at a point when you can start to back off a little bit of that accountability but it's absolutely not in the first year and I see so many people you know touch base with me and say well I don't understand why my drinking is increasing well your drinking is increasing because you stopped doing everything except taking the medication and you're just falling back into old habits again and I hear you talk a lot about the lizard brain can you say more about what that is and how it can kind of intersect and harm us on this path absolutely the lizard brain I refer to as the monster or the dragon and when I'm coaching people I always give it they find a name that they like to call it sometimes it's not a very good name this is the voice in your head that will tell you four months into TSM that you don't need to take the tablet this one time and this is the voice that will tell you that you don't need to keep a drink log and that's silly this is also the voice that will tell you that you know oh you can take the pill with the drink because this is the voice in your brain that wants you to feed it the way you used to feed it imagine this lizard is now angry at you because you're not giving him what he wants what he wants is constant supply of alcohol whenever he craves so this goes into so many different tentacles of our recovery you have to think of this as an octopus with many legs first of all the lizard will tell you not to comply it's the same lizard brain that tells you when you are in forest abstinence that you don't have a drinking problem because you've been six months over that's the same lizard that will tell you you can have a beer you've got six months of sobriety under your belt go for it well that same lizard will tell you when you're on TSM oh don't worry about the tablet today let's be spontaneous and have a drink everyone else is drinking go ahead do it you have to tell that lizard to shut up I used to say it out loud actually I would say just shut up I talked to myself but it helped because you're saying it out loud and you're be mindful that's another thing is is this knee-jerk response to which the lizard is used to it's like oh you had a bad day drink oh that person was a jerk you have a drink this is not healthy for your recovery to use alcohol as an emotional buffer so what you have to do at that moment is stop and take a moment and say okay yes I had a hard day but maybe it would be better for me to take a walk and let off some steam and then if after the walk I'm really physically craving alcohol and I can't stop thinking about alcohol I will take a pill and wait an hour and have a drink even the act of telling yourself that and giving yourself permission and giving yourself two options or three options take a walk take a walk then take a pill and drink or take a walk and don't drink so you have all these different options even that act of giving yourself the option and that act of being mindful will stop and will reset yourself and and and really set yourself up for a much healthier recovery because you're being mindful you're being accountable so this lizard brain I always say to people you know name it talk back to it acknowledge it and watch it get smaller and smaller and we what our hope is is that eventually that lizard will not be talking to you at all and when it does rear its ugly head because there's one little bit of it left you can you can acknowledge that and understand it and see it for what it is it's the tiny shred of the addict struggling to have as little bit of control or power over you one more time you know and that's that's just the nature of this this compulsive disorder yeah and I I think that you you know taking that time to pause and just giving yourself those options it feels so good and you know I've seen it with a lot of people where just giving themselves an extra thirty minutes can really make all the difference and they find out oh I don't want a drink I just wanted to you know eat something or go yeah well we talked okay to you and I talked about the hungry angry looking bored lonely all the time because really if you stop and say okay why do why am I thinking of alcohol is a knee-jerk response to XYZ it's because you have in the past it's a habit it's engrained in your neural pathways so we want to change that and we want to find bed it better for healthier happier responses to that and yes you should ask yourself am I just thirsty you know have some soda water or am i hungry okay I'll eat something and yet then why am I upset if I can deal with my emotions without the crutch of alcohol the perhaps I'll reach the outcome after 10 minutes or so whereas I don't need that alcohol because lutely I've actually and I don't want to use the word mature because that implies that that anybody suffering from alcohol use disorder is immature I don't like those labels like narcissistic or selfish or any of that but maturity to me also means calm and present and if you take that moment of feeling mature about your your childhood trauma there's a little girl in you or the little boy and you says oh my my dad said something mean to me I want a drink if the adult you sits there and says okay that's okay to be heard you know it you're a sensitive person and that's alright but what will the drink do for you right now that just sitting and thinking about it won't do we're going for a walk or talking to somebody you know reaching out to someone and saying you know I'm kind of upset and I just want to get it off my chest that's the beautiful thing about communication during recovery is that the more you talk about it to your friends in vlogging like you've done the stronger your sense of self perception becomes and your sense of your own recovery becomes and that's what we need we need to hold that mirror up to ourselves and we need to forgive ourselves and understand ourselves and all of these years of misusing alcohol has put a damper on our emotions it's pushed them down and they're going to start bubbling up and they're you're going to become more vulnerable and you're going to start feeling these things that you didn't feel before because you are numbed and self-medicating with alcohol and don't be afraid of that you know that's another thing that's not that's not the lizard these are real good feelings these are feelings that sometimes they hurt but it's wonderful to feel that it's what party it's it's being human and it's also repairing the trauma from the past and that's imperative to recovery just listening to yourself and listening to your own feelings yeah and I've even heard people say that they've started documenting it through vlogs but they're not going to publish it but it's just for themselves and so I but like what you said just talking about it we're writing about it yeah we're writing about exactly sure logging yeah yeah yeah bringing it to life it sheds light on this like secret or this darkness we've held within us that's what I don't like and it gets your feelings out and when you read it a year later you'll be you'll be pleasantly surprised to see your growth or you'll be able to see what you still need to work on yeah it's it's just a wonderful habit to get into during recovery yeah so how about others who can have influence on someone's recovery using medication treatment for example you know someone has a family member who doesn't support them and so they're having to kind of do this on their own or a family member who wants to still control how much they're drinking how can people navigate this part of the recovery process it's extremely difficult when you don't have the support of loved ones it's one of the reasons why I made my documentary one little pill so that they could see that this is not an excuse to drink that there's science behind this and that it you know it's it's evidence-based so I wanted I definitely encourage people to sit down and watch but a lot of people are in situations where their loved ones their mates whatever they were a refuse to even engage in the idea they think it's an excuse to just continue drinking they want to see you completely abstinent and they don't want to hear about what you're doing and that really leads to some awkward and painful situations such as the holidays or birthday parties or stuff I have a lot of people on TSM who simply cannot drink around their family they just don't want to go there but I would encourage people to absolutely try your hardest to educate them there are so many resources out there now where people can actually look at the the clinical studies they can go to c3 foundation net which is specifically for doctors they can go to c3 foundation org and look under the tab for your doctors or for your loved ones and and print out some stuff or say listen we just watch Claudia's TEDx talk or watch some of Katie's videos or or you know watch one little pill with me it would mean the world to me if you understood what I'm doing if all else fails and you can't do you can't drink in front of your family you know and and I feel really badly for those people then you're gonna have to make choices about who you spend your time with and how you spend your time and I don't think there's anything wrong with telling people if you don't understand what I'm going through and you will not at least look at the research or you will not engage with me on the subject then I have to I have to not see you for a while until until I'm comfortable being around you and and you know this is you have to take your life back on so many levels and just that show of strength and independence and self-love is critical to to your recovery so I definitely think that all of these influences including friends that maybe are goading you into drinking I've worked with individuals who literally their family was was actively trying to get them to drink more and drink without the medication oh yeah people saying to them you don't need this medication that's hogwash it's just placebo or you can do it power the mind or why don't you just go to a meeting you just use willpower or or better yet just why don't you just drink you don't have a problem I drink more than you do I mean seriously these are people I have people who weren't to the point of physical dependence but they're drinking too much and they're young and they want to live their life and their parents are telling them no they don't have a problem have a drink I mean it's it's it's every single ever every single individuals experience and and and influence around them is different so you really have to deal with it on an individual basis and that's why professional support is so important so if you can if you don't have loved ones that are supporting you or your boyfriend or girlfriend or your family members just don't get it or don't want to hear anything about it please get yourself a coach like you have it real please get good peer support please get a doctor who understands what you're going through so you don't feel like you're all alone you know it can be very daunting to have to navigate your recovery with people who are not on your side and and this is this is also having to do with the complete lack of education but nowadays you have the resources you have you can show people films videos clinical studies you can show them examples of people online that are doing TSN and say look no I'm not this is not you know something that I just found myself or it's not an excuse to drink this is something that I believe will help me and and truly if somebody wants to see you get better and someone really loves you and respects you then I think that they should be on board and if they're not then you need to make that choice of saying you know maybe I'm gonna take a break from that individual because they're harming my recovery right now yeah and I you know I've heard you talk to about people who say their family doesn't support so they find themselves having to drink in private or sneak it still in some way and how does that kind of hinder progress when someone's having to drink and secret still even though they're using this method to get better because you know their family doesn't want them to drink at all but how does that impact things okay that the hiding is a big this is a big dilemma because some people simply cannot drink in front of their children for instance so they will do TSM and use the hard soda water or something that they can hide in in a glass just so they can start the method and get the alcohol in their system after the naltrexone or they'll drink outside of the house and and this is sad but sometimes for some people it's absolutely necessary there was a woman in my film for instance the woman who was blurred who couldn't do it in front of her family so she would literally go out to a bar and after taking the pill and waiting an hour and get a drink so that she could do - yes I'm so she she could finally reach extinction and stop white-knuckling at home because she was so distracted from the thoughts of alcohol whatever you need to do you need to do but I will emphasize that if you don't need to hide don't hide alcohol because the more you hide alcohol the more you lie about it the more you're feeding that lizard that we talked about before that lizard who is telling you to do things that are indicative of addictive behavior and compulsive behavior and hiding and lying out about alcohol and alcohol consumption is part of that so I encourage people who say to me well I'm still drinking in the garage or the pantry or whatever behind my husband wife's kids backs whatever I I try to encourage them to say look if he if they're supporting you in doing TSM there's no reason for you to hide your consumption there's no reason you need to tell them that you're gonna have like drinking days no drinking days and probably heavy drinking days they're just going to have to understand that I actually wrote a blog about that for couples so that people cannot dictate what you'll drink when you drink it because that's going to trigger you once again into all those old feelings of your earlier recoveries it didn't work you know if somebody's telling you well you can't drink until I get home from work and you can only have light beer and you can only have it at 7 o'clock to 8 o'clock that's not gonna work listen Clare method works because you are trying to kill your own cravings your own patterns of drinking so if you're desperately white-knuckling at noon on a Saturday you're gonna have to tell your spouse you know what I'm gonna take a pill and I'm gonna have a drink at 1 o'clock that's just what I'm gonna do and I'm sorry you know but it's what I've got to do because I'm literally craving and I can't think of anything else and I'm not gonna be fun to be around yeah or whatever I'm not gonna be present because my mind won't shut up about having a drink but once again that goes back to you as an individual understanding if it's a knee-jerk response or if you're bored or lonely or hungry or angry or thirsty or if this is a genuine craving for alcohol and we have to keep pressing that into people's heads you need to differentiate between a genuine craving for alcohol and a knee-jerk response to an emotional trigger or a biological trigger like hunger yeah and that's something I know like with Rhea the coaches or if you have support that's something that people like professional support or peer support can really work with you to identify because I know for me and for others it's hard to distinguish between the two especially early on and that's totally normal but um it's a process but getting support can help with that absolutely having professional support is key I mean we've seen in so many circumstances the success rates amongst people who use telemedicine like REO hell that have comprehensive programs and the success rates compared to people who just went it on their own and it's so much higher with professional support even having the support of your doctor onboard makes a massive difference in people's success rates so this is not something to take lightly this is not like the cabbage diet that your look up online and you're trying you know for a week this is a lifetime commitment you want to put as much energy into your recovery as you did into your drinking career if you put the ceiling in you know finagling around to get alcohol and all of those tricky little things you did to be in environments where you drank and be around people who drink if you put all of that energy that you put into your drinking career into your recovery I can guarantee you you will have much better success I've never thought about it somebody who I didn't like ridiculous I mean ridiculous and then yeah I ain't a good wine in the pantry so that during my dinner parties I could nip into the pantry and have another drink as people weren't drinking fast enough and I was drinking I mean yeah it was exhausting being aware of exactly how much alcohol was left at the party oh my gosh not being able to listen to conversation because you're looking at the wine bottles on the table saying that's not enough for eight because there anymore oh my god go to my car where I hid some I mean it's just ridiculous what we did to satisfy that lizard who wouldn't shut up in our brain now if we put that much energy and listen to our recovery we're gonna be sorted and fine and much better off yes it's so true I love that I'm gonna use that now going forward so you know I think the last thing I want to wrap up with you on I know you talked a little bit already about difficult emotions obviously they're gonna come up and we're gonna start peeling as opposed to being numbed out from them so I know that for some people this increase in vulnerability or these emotions that are kind of new new feelings for people can be overwhelming at times or feel like too much so how this this experience you know perhaps hinder someone's progress or cause someone to feel you know afraid of what they're feeling for the first time and how can we kind of work through that I can tell you that there are many phases and everybody's recoveries is is obviously unique to them for me I was so enthralled with the ability to control my drinking in the first three years that I really didn't do any work on myself and I was still of the belief that this was all biological and I was fine things definitely started to come up especially when you're not self-medicating with with alcohol so I would I would say that if you suddenly have dramatic results and you're drinking reduces it might be like ripping a bandage off of your emotions because this is you say you know it might be like oh my gosh what am I feeling all of a sudden because you genuinely don't want to drink you have your drinking under control but you haven't dealt with these emotional issues you haven't dealt with feeling just just raw feeling I mean there are still times and you and I have discussed this and you've seen it on videos where I just burst into tears or some of the meetings that we used to do on Sundays you start crying and it's not that I'm in pain it's that I'm feeling and this trickles down to all phases of recovery you know I'm in year 10 going on eleven it's it's just a phase of just constant enlightening of your feelings and and you can't it's easier said than done I can tell you not to be afraid of them but what you have to do once again is be mindful of saying why am I feeling this and are these tears tears of joy or relief or tears sadness and is it okay to feel sad yes we're human we feel every emotion and we get angry and make it sad and and the more these bubble up the more these things feel these feelings come out you have to find ways to express them and that's why I always say you know walking or being in nature going to a museum when you're feeling joy express it be nice to somebody call a loved one call an elderly person who's lonely use these feelings to to start learning how to express yourself take baby steps so it's not all at once but believe me as far as ripping off the bandage you can have experiences like I have where just something I remember a few times in year four or five I would be riding my bike and suddenly I would just be overwhelmed with the feeling that I was alive and then I was so happy that the addiction was gone I'm even tearing up now yeah I have chills right now just feeling that you're free yeah absolutely it's really really powerful yeah it's just the great gratefulness and the appreciation you feel for that part of your life to be over to be gone to be free it's profound look well and because for so many of us we didn't think that that was an option we thought it would be a lifelong sentence in a way whether we were drinking or not and so I think I mean a lot of I know I relate so much to what you're seeing right now and I know a lot of people can as well just that that second chance at life someone was just emailing me this morning like what do I do now anything's possible and it's like yep buts to get out there well that's another thing is the fear of success the fear of who you can be and who you should be and who you why you were placed on this earth and what your life's mission is and all of these things come tumbling at you at once because you haven't been thinking about that because you've been drinking and and it's it's scary for people I think the fear of success sometimes outweighs the fear of failure I think that this is why we set ourselves up for failure once again listening to the lizard brain all of that is is internally to me a fear of living up to our capacity and our self-worth and living up to our ambitions and taking chances on our dreams and really living the life that we believe we deserve because so many of us have have this thing in our head where we're telling ourselves constantly that we do not deserve to make money or be successful or meet the right partner or have a beautiful home or even have a pet you know I can't do that I don't have the time or we constantly or oh I can't afford to eat out I shouldn't do this I shouldn't do that so we're never living our what we want to do because we live in fear and while taking that that whole entity of alcohol out of the equation or at least getting the alcohol under control so it's not an issue in your life anymore then exposes the reality of your life okay I don't have a drinking problem anymore but I have a an issue with maybe sleeping in too much or not not putting myself out there to meet people or not pursuing my dream about being a guitarist or not picking up my hobbies again or not sitting down and reading the books that I really wish I would love you're not doing the things and now you don't have that excuse of alcohol so that all this stuff adds up to an incredibly complicated journey for people in recovery it's really difficult to take all of these feelings at once and and partition them into some sort of structure so you can deal with each thing at once and nobody expects you to deal with each thing at once you have to take it as it comes and once again just the simple act of being mindful and saying why am i feeling overwhelmed now that my drinking is under control why am I feeling more overwhelmed it's because you're feeling you're actually feeling you know and all of this stuff like your taxes that aren't done and all this stuff you can tackle it better but then you also are living with the guilt of saying wow look at all this stuff I allowed to slide in my life look at all this all of the relationships I ignored are the people and that guilt all these feelings come up once again feelings are good they can bring you to a place where when you feel things you're you really feel them and you're moved and that is the human experience is to live this life and be moved and to feel and to love and to take chances and to live the life that you believe deep deep deep inside that you truly deserve yeah and for me I feel like when I when I was really allowing myself to feel and am really allowing myself to feel these tough emotions they come to the surface and they can heal as opposed to with alcohol when I would just need your cope and drink it was never really healing anything I I wasn't really going anywhere but when I feel these tough emotions they they breathe and they heal and it's I become a different version of myself every single day for the better absolutely and just being mindful about it I'm mindful about the fact that I just teared up but that there was a good thing because now I'm mindful all day long of how happy I am that I'm healthy yeah and then I'm gonna live my life and and and really appreciate everything around me so so those that those are just everything is a healing process you know and and if you maybe just take those band-aids off a little bit at a time let it let it heal a little bit then take the next one off and and enjoy this feeling of being human and of emotional experience it's it'll get better and better I can I can assure you of that it's it's been a heck of a long journey for me but it just gets it gets better and better I can see everything from from now from this place and all I want to do is save people from making mistakes along the way so please take this advice it comes from a massive amounts of experience well wonderful thank you so much Claudia for sharing with us and just being your true authentic self I mean you've helped so many and always so great to be able to speak with you thank you Katie I always appreciate your time and your experience and your joy as well all right we'll talk again soon [Music]

Channel: Ria Health

Views: 8,589

Rating: 4.9523811 out of 5

Keywords: the sinclair method, sinclair method, naltrexone treatment, naltrexone, claudia christian, how to stop drinking alcohol, how to quit drinking alcohol, pills for alcoholism, medication for drinking, sober curious, sobriety vlog

Id: eHlwr__6ofA

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020