28 Week Recovery

Sinclair Method

Phone: 941-330-2929

E-mail: neuroassistedrecovery@gmail.com

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Effective treatment comes from understanding why the brain is craving alcohol.

 

Alcohol drinking is a learned behavior. Each time a person drinks, the alcohol causes some neurons to release endorphins (compounds similar to opiates) that reinforce the drinking behavior as well as the cravings, feelings, and thoughts about alcohol. Year after year these become stronger until eventually alcohol can dominate one’s life.

 

The Sinclair Method provides the first effective treatment to the problem of excessive drinking.

It utilizes a new form of medical technology developed by Dr. David Sinclair during the course of 20 years of research in the Biomedical Research Laboratories in Finland.

 

The Theory

The Sinclair Method is a proven method that works. It is based on progressively eliminating the desire to drink. This process is called  “extinction”. It has been known for nearly a century that there are two opposing mechanisms for changing behavior. Learning and Extinction.

 

Learning increases the chances of making a response or emotion that has been reinforced with food, water, or some other thing such as alcohol. Extinction removes such reinforcement behaviors.

 

Alcohol drinking is a learned behavior and in some cases becomes too well learned. Some people receive so much reinforcement so often (partly due to genetic predisposition) that alcohol drinking, and craving for alcohol, come to dominate their lives and cannot be controlled by normal means.

 

Some are classified as alcoholics. However, many more are not yet alcoholics, but nevertheless are drinking more than they should or even more than they want to. So they will try to “cut down” or promise themselves that they will “stop drinking”. But they try and fail over and over again. Soon they find themselves locked in a vicious cycle of trying various “traditional methods” that are promoted as the means to gain control of their drinking. The traditional methods of the last 50 years or longer, mostly consist of programs that say in order to control  alcohol, one must first stop drinking.

 

 

The Sinclair Method Program

 

The enjoyment derived from using alcohol involves the opiate system in your brain. Neurons in the brain release endorphins when alcohol is present. Certain prescription medications known as opioid inhibitors, block the reinforcement from endorphins. By following the specific Sinclair Method protocol, drinking and craving are extinguished. It has been proven in other areas that combining medication and behavioral modification, that long term habits that have been engrained for dozens of years can be stopped or reduced to manageable levels. A common example of this would be the patch called Nicorette (Nicorette is a registered trademark) used for smokers. What Nicorette is to smoking and nicotine, the Sinclair method is to drinking and alcohol. The Sinclair Method reduces the desire for drinking alcohol. Taken according to the established protocol it will not make you sick while drinking. In fact, the specific protocols are begun while the client is still drinking, thus eliminating the need for abstinence or detoxification.

 

Instead, your drinking decreases gradually as the treatment removes the desire for alcohol. It differs from other traditional that impose an external barrier to drinking without  removing their internal cause. The method is designed to maximize long term beneficial effects: in most cases complying cases, those who complete and follow the program, should find it provides a long term successful solution. 

 

The Sinclair Method treatment is provided in an outpatient program. You do not need to undergo detoxification or abstinence prior to starting the program. The program is private and confidential and you do not have to attend weekly self-help meetings, unless you desire to do so. Throughout the program you will meet with a medical doctor and a licensed counselor (LMCH). Your response to the medication is monitored. Alternatives to drinking are explored and considered in individual private counseling sessions.

 

The program focus is on thinking about the future and the various possibilities provided by a new lifestyle. Client dignity is assured, the is no need for self-effacement since the motivation for drinking alcohol is removed by extinction

 

Each client establishes his/her own goals for the program. The general goals are to decrease the dependency upon drinking alcohol and to develop the ability to control the consumption of alcohol. Each client makes his/her own healthy decision to drink less, and stay within moderate limits or to quit drinking completely, Using the Sinclair Method you should not experience any health, personal, social, job, legal, or financial problems due to alcohol. If abstinence is the desired goal the Sinclair Method is the key to success.

 

Clinical Evidence

 

The Sinclair Method has successfully helped to moderate alcohol drinking in the Scandinavian countries of Finland, Sweden, and Denmark where excessive alcohol use is a major notional problem. Other countries that have used the Sinclair Method include, England, Israel, Russia, and Argentina. Dr. Sinclair is a consultant to Florida’s Sinclair Method Program.

 

A statistical analysis of  the data obtained from clinics in Finland shows highly significant reductions in alcohol consumption—more than 78%. In Florida the results since 2002 have been more than 85%. During the treatment program when shown on a graph a pattern emerges. It was always a classical extinction curve, it shows that drinking and craving alcohol  became progressively lower  with each week of treatment. Internationally hundreds of thousands of people have been helped using the Sinclair Method.

 

More than 80% of all the clients in this program were successful in long term control of their alcohol consumption, some to acceptable levels (“Social Drinking”) and other to complete abstinence. For those who desired to control their alcohol consumption, their drinking was reduced to an average of 1 drink per day. These same individuals had at one point consumed anywhere from 24 to 50 drinks or more a week. Some of the Sinclair Method’s successful patients had consumed more than 200 ounces of alcohol a week prior to the program.