The End of My Addiction

days in Megève. On the last afternoon, Rebecca and I rented skis and enjoyed a little time on the slopes. Her kids had been skiing every day, of course, and they teased us about waiting until the last minute. In the car going back to Paris in the evening, I wondered whether the craving for alcohol would return when I was home and in my usual routine.
    It didn’t.
    I did not increase my baclofen dose at this point because 270 milligrams a day was producing intermittent somnolence that, unlike the somnolence at lower doses, did not go away. There was nothing uncomfortable about this. Quite the contrary, I had no anxiety whatsoever. But I sometimes felt too sleepy and on one occasion nodded off across the dinner table from a friend. For twelve days I remained at 270 milligrams with no return of craving for alcohol and no alcohol thoughts. I had not had a drunk dream since day fifteen of my protocol. Moreover I felt calmer and more physically relaxed than ever before in my life.
    Then, over the following twelve days, I progressively reduced my baclofen dose to 120 milligrams. At this dosage I had no somnolence, yet craving for alcohol and alcohol thoughts did not return, and I also had no perceptible muscular tension or anxiety. Going up to 270 milligrams had apparently triggered a threshold response, which could now be maintained at the lower dosage.
    Oddly enough, my calf muscles continued to twitch now and then. But the twitching never became the prelude to increasing muscular tension and rising anxiety, as it so frequently had in the past.
    After day sixty-three of my baclofen protocol, March 11, I kept my daily dose at 120 milligrams, occasionally adding another 20–40 milligrams in stressful situations. I had emotional ups and downs, some of them very intense, as everyone does in life. But thanks to baclofen they no longer destabilized me to the extent that I experienced overwhelming anxiety or panic attacks.
    The sense of being in a fairy tale or a dream stayed with me for quite a while. I was skeptical of what was happening, because I was living something that is supposed to be impossible for an alcoholic or addict: complete freedom from craving.
    Over time I became used to a new reality in which I could live normally and function without alcohol and without any striving not to drink. It felt miraculous. As AA and CBT both advise, I at first avoided situations and places where alcohol might be present. But I realized before long that I did not have to be concerned about this. Even when socializing with friends who were drinking in a restaurant or at a party, I had no craving for alcohol.
    The usual criterion for saying an alcoholic or addict is doing well is abstinence—success in resisting craving for alcohol or another addictive substance. I was not abstinent with regard to alcohol. I was completely and effortlessly indifferent to it.
     
    Everyone noticed the change in me. In person they remarked on how clear-eyed and vital I looked. Even on the phone, they heard the difference in the tone of my voice. Friends and acquaintances said, “You are like a new man.” They also praised me, very incorrectly in my view, by saying things such as “We admire you so much for not drinking.” Maintaining abstinence despite powerful craving is meritorious and deserves praise. But as I tried to explain to everyone who complimented me on not drinking, I merited no praise because the change was entirely thanks to baclofen’s suppressing my craving, calming my anxiety, and erasing my motivation to drink. It was difficult for my family and friends to grasp that my not drinking was effortless. I needed to talk to others in the medical community.
    I was ready to share the good news with Philippe Coumel. Heartbreakingly, he had passed away earlier in the month.
    At the end of June, I called my friend Boris Pasche and reached him at his lab in the hematology and oncology division of Northwestern University Medical School. No sooner had I said, “Hello, how are you,” than Boris said, “Olivier, something wonderful has happened for you. I can hear it in your voice. You sound different than you ever have in the past.”
    “That is why I called you,” I said, and went on to explain about my baclofen protocol. “It’s as simple as one, two, three. One is that baclofen produces dose-dependent suppression of the motivation to consume addictive substances in laboratory rats. Two is that low-dose baclofen reduces addictive