In news:47A5B277.1F6C1119@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us,
Tim Bruening <tsbrueni@pop.> typed:lugubriously

>> I recently read a report in the August 16, 2004 edition of Medical
> News Today (www.medicalnewstoday.com) about a drug called Topiramate
> that can reduce drinking, alcohol cravings, and the symptoms of
> alcohol withdraw. This finding is corroberated by cooresponding
> decreases in serum gamma-glutamyl transferase levels, a biological
> marker of heavy drinking. +

Tim hello and welcome, stick around for a while as there are a few threads
here and there that might give you some situational stories of what some of
'us' went through and what we thought at the time/

By the way, your name is familiar, from security or somewhere, I forget :-)

If or when a person is drinking to excess or abusively or tends to binge....
they may or may not clean their act up in time - or have an awakening of
sorts, however stark or rude. For some of us it was DUI, jail,
homelessness, jobless, penury and poverty, illness and in some cases death.

A jolly good drinker of the hail fellow well met type, may escape this
obsession for years and years. I view it as a line in the middle of my
path. I skeeter to the left (In the US its the Right) for years. Because
of my personality- my weakness- whatever, I crossed that invisible line.
Thing is in all the years I've been doing this,m I firmly believe that once
that imaginary line has been crossed, you just cannot recross it back to
normal drinking.

PS these are my words and my opinion and although there are medical and
psychological findings to back these theories up - we alcoholics will
convince ourselves that ONE DAY we well be like normal drinkers - UNTIL we
accept that we are powerless over the demons within, in my case, alcohol.

Cheers
Tommy