Any experience with Antabuse? - Al-Anon Family Group

Dufferin · Newbie

Any experience with Antabuse?

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

In my experience it is a waste of money. It's basically poison that when the A drinks he or she will become violently ill.

It's the same concept of getting shocked if you smoke a cigarette.

Some A's drink anyway! This doctor is totally ill informed and I doubt knows much about addiction. Most do not.

The only way to stop drinking is to have a desire to, and willing to do the work to get into recovery.

That being detox at a facility as some people can get very ill when they stop, it can be life threatening.

Inpatient rehab, the best is the longes possible, 6mo. to ? Then home to do 90 meetings in 90 days and cont with them as much as they choose.

It is totally up to the A. The person who is ill with this disease MUST take care of it all themselves. Making appointments, getting to rehab, all of it. I mean they must make the effort to get it done. They are an adult. If they are too sick and need help that is fine. As we enable when we do things for them that they can do themselves.

We pray that they develop a recovery program all their own. It is for life. A pill is not going to do that.

Keep coming! Love,debilyn

Lindaoakford · ~*Service Worker*~

In my experience, there is a better medication. Naloxone. It works on cravings, antabuse just makes the person violently ill

abbyal · ~*Service Worker*~

Antabuse and booze don't mix if he drinks he could have a heart attack as it causes blood pressure to rise .and he will become seriously ill . as far as I know it hasnt stopped anyone from drinking .

youfoundme · ~*Service Worker*~

The thing is, they have to actually take the pill. Then we become pill watchers, to see if they took a pill or not. My A takes his suboxone every day (for opiate withdrawals) but has not yet gotten off of it, and his doctor hasn't tried to help him get off it either. They are all out to make money, so why would they want some one off the medicine?

As for antabuse, again they can drink and get very sick. My A still drinks even though the suboxone says not to. He even went to the doctor's so drunk one time, I have no idea how the doctor didn't know he was drunk. This doc doesn't take a blood pressure or anything, its a psychiatrist office. He goes in, sees the doc for exactly 1 minute and comes out with a new prescription.

So in my experience, the person really just has to want to get better. The drug isn't going to work forever, because he has to take it to make it work. The sick mind is still there. Try it out, see what happens, maybe your A really wants to get better and that antabuse will help him get to meetings. Take care of you! Thats the most important part of this whole equation :)

White Rabbit · ~*Service Worker*~

My husband took a couple anti-craving drugs at one point. They didn't work long term. The problem was that he wanted to just take a magic pill and get sober. It doesn't work that way because alcoholism is a physical, mental, and spiritual disease. You can treat one aspect (the physical craving), but if you don't treat the other 2 aspects, long time sobriety can't be achieved. Either the person will start drinking while taking the meds, which is a serious recipe for disaster, or the person will just stop taking the meds and drink instead.

There is no magic pill for alcoholism. The only thing that can arrest it is a program of recovery that works ALL aspects of the disease. If there were a magic pill people could take and get/stay sober, there would be no need for AA or Alanon or this board. None of us would be here.

I don't mean to sound discouraging, just want to be honest. When my AH took the drugs, I didn't have a recovery program of my own yet. I was sooooo hopeful he'd get and stay sober. Instead of managing his drinking, I made it my business to manage his meds - ask him a hundred times if he was sure he took it today, etc. After a couple months of taking the pills and doing no other work, he drank and I was devastated. It was after that point that I discovered Alanon and my own recovery program...and started going to meetings to learn how to be happy whether or not he got sober. Just like there's no magic pill for sobriety, sobriety does not cure all the problems caused by the family disease of alcoholism. You can find relief whether or not anyone else is still drinking. I encourage you to seek out meetings for your own recovery. Keep coming back!

Summer

GailMichelle · ~*Service Worker*~

I completely agree with White Rabbit.

Dufferin, I surely hope that you give Al-Anon a good try. Don't judge Al-Anon based on a few meetings. If I had, I would not have found the peace that I was searching for. For about the first two months of weekly meetings, I was not comfortable with the program. However, something kept me returning and I'm so glad it did. I attend weekly and will do so as long as I'm able.

youfoundme · ~*Service Worker*~

I agree with Gailmichelle on the meeting thing, I didn't like it at first either. I had to keep going back to really feel comfortable. I had panic attacks the whole time for the first couple of months. Now I can walk in and am comfortable. It takes time to get better. Time and work and support from my alanon meetings and sponsor... take care of you!

Dufferin · Newbie

Thanks for the replies, everyone. It's good to get opinions from all sides on this, since I really had no idea what we were dealing with.

Some background - we live in Canada, and the doctor is an addictions specialist, so I'm confident that he knows what he's talking about, and is not just out to make money. :) Also, my husband has been seeing him for over a year, and this is not the first treatment option they have tried - he didn't just walk into the office one day and walk out with the pills. He's also suffering from depression, and he had a bit of a breakdown last week, so I think that was when the doctor decided to pull out the big guns.

He is definitely motivated to change, as well. And he knows that it's not a magic pill, that there are behavioural issues and other coping skills to be learned as part of his recovery. The challenge for me will definitely be to NOT become a pill-watcher. I've been a drink-watcher for the last several years anyway, so that will definitely be a big change for me, but we'll see how it goes!

linbaba · Veteran Member

Dufferin wrote:
He's also suffering from depression, and he had a bit of a breakdown last week, so I think that was when the doctor decided to pull out the big guns.

Untreated Alcoholism "manifests" as many other mental orders if untreated whether the person is drinking or not, anxiety issues, depression, bi-polar, Narcissism, the list goes on and on, by untreated I mean by actually -WORKING- a program of recovery that addresses the underlying issues beneath the alcoholism, there is no magic bullet, alcoholism is a "thinking" disease with a physical allergy that work in conjunction with each other

Antabuse isn't a "big gun", it isn't even a "BB" gun, it's a child throwing rocks at Jet Planes, all it will do is expose the lengths someone will go to in order to take a drink, the "Big Guns" are "live in" rehabs from 30, 60, 90 days, 6 months, 1 year, 1,5 years, and their success rate is below 5%, the "Howitzer is AA, which has gotten more people sober then every other method combined since the history of man, millions upon millions of alcoholics have gotten sober in AA over the last 75 years, and there are millions and millions of sober members all over the world right now, and it only works if the alcoholic WANTS it more then anything and does the necessary work required

What works, and it's the only thing that works, is when the alcoholic is DONE, when he has a "moment of clarity", when that happens an alcoholic has a limited "window of opportunity" that only stays open for a short time (because alcoholism is based on a delusional reality, we call it "denial" that will kick back in from anywhere from, hours, days, weeks, months or even years later, an untreated alcoholic literally has no defense against that first drink, at some point they will be unable to bring into their mind the level of thinking say, touching a hot stove would bring)

OK, now here's where this gets weird

this is all useless information, it means nothing, I put it down to clarify some misconceptions, that's all

Al-anon and recovery is for US, someone who's life is affected by someone else's drinking, it teaches us to place the focus back on ourselves...I mean.....I don't even know where to begin except suggest that face to face meetings, a sponsor and working the steps FOR OURSELVES change OUR reality, that is what Al-anon is for

Good luck, keep coming back, we care about YOU, we really do, we are more interested in how YOU are doing then if your husband quits drinking or not, there is a LOT of help out there for your husband, a LOT of support, AA, all sorts of Programs, this is Al-anon, we are here for YOU, to ask how YOU are doing, to support YOU

By the way, I am a sober alcoholic, and have been so for a long time, I have been working with alcoholics for 2 decades

-- Edited by linbaba on Sunday 4th of September 2011 02:00:46 PM

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