The Cure for Alcoholism: Drink Your Way Sober Without Willpower, Abstinence or Discomfort

by Roy Eskapa

Book Overview

Finally, there is a cure for alcoholism. This is the first step. Featuring new and updated information and studies, including an introduction by actress Claudia Christian, the second edition of The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933771550
• ISBN13: 9781933771557
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Benbella Books
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Every clinicain, every alcohol abuser should read this book...The National Anxiety Foundation.

Summary: The National Anxiety Foundation gives Dr. Roy Eskapa an A+ for his superlative book that so clearly and concisely explains Dr Sinclair's enormously effective method for treating alcoholism. Detail: I am President of the National Anxiety Foundation in the United States. I'm also a clinical psychiatrist with a large private practice, a medical inventor, a clinical professor of Psychiatry at a medical school. I hope that you will buy this book. I was very skeptical of using naltrexone to treat alcoholism. I tried Revia (naltrexone) years ago with disappointing results. It turns out that American doctors have been misinstructed in how to use naltrexone. I only learned of the general correct way when I met the discoverer of this cure, Dr. David Sinclair of Finland. David explained how naltrexone should be used to treat alcoholism. I started using it in that manner and, WOW! it made all the difference. I have two failures to eight home runs in my alcohol patients since learning how to correctly use the method. Roy Eskapa's book explains David's method better than David himself explains his own method (Sorry, David). I learn some new fine point which helps me to provide better clinical care every time I pick up the book. For example, check out page 120 about "Selective Extinction" which David tried his best to explain to me but I just didn't really get it. Roy's explanation of it got me past my confusion. By using selective extinction, it is possible to improve a person's life beyond the miracle of resolving the alcoholism disease horrors. Where there previously existed excessive alcohol behavior, the clinician can shove in its place enjoyment of exercise or some other healthy, socially acceptable and enjoyable activities. I almost wish the Sinclair Method was harder for patients to undergo or that it didn't work in over 70% of alcoholics. Its Achilles heel is that it sounds too good to be true and people pooh pooh it before they even look into it. I hope to deliver a presentation of the Sinclair Method to my state medical licensure board. I have physician patients who have run into alcohol overuse and have greatly benefited from this method. I think of this book as "The Sinclair Method of Treating Alcoholism Textbook". I know that "Naltrexone + Alcohol = Cure" sounds simplistic. But the greatest things are often very simple. "E = mc2" also sounds simplistic. Both took great geniuses to discover. With all sincerity, I thank, on behalf of mankind, David Sinclair's devotion of his entire professional career to discovering an effective treatment for alcoholism. I put Sinclair on the level of Pasteur. I am sad to see that, as the world was resistant to Pasteur's idea of vaccination, some of the addictive disease treatment movement is quick to dismiss this breakthrough as wrong or ill-advised, conveniently ignoring the evidence such as the Journal of the American Medical Association report showing parity in treatment effectiveness wi

Now there is real hope for all alcoholics who want to quit!

I wish every health care professional, social worker, psychologist, member of the clergy, and alcoholic or their family could get their hands on this book and try the cure! What hope! What joy! For anyone who knows someone who is in the grip of alcohol addiction and wants their life back this is the book. The options available to alcoholics up to now have been limited to detoxification and abstinence. There are numerous programs from AA to food and other therapies designed to help people to resist their craving for alcohol but the program outlined in this book (the Sinclair Method) provides a safe medical alternative which will cure the alcoholic of their cravings over a period of time. The irresistible craving for alcohol is both a learned behavior and a disease and this program provides alcoholics with an understanding of how that behavior can be unlearned and the craving extinguished with a safe generic drug. It is difficult to believe that there is a safe effective cure for this debilitating disease available for anyone who wants to get the prescription. It is difficult to believe that all the pain and suffering associated with alcoholism can be a thing of the past. What is not difficult to understand is that when something sounds too good to be true people will doubt that it is true. In order to accept this program people will have to unlearn much that they believe to be true about alcoholism. They will need to unlearn that the only way to treat alcoholism is through abstinence. They will need to unlearn that the only way to overcome a drinking problem is by submitting to a higher power. They will have to unlearn that in order to stay healthy the alcoholic must remain abstinent. What they will have to learn is that as long as the alcoholic is taking his or her medication before they take that first drink they are actually drinking their way to a cure. They will have to learn that this medication can provide a way for the alcoholic to safely and slowly detoxify and reach a point where alcohol is no longer the major focus in their lives. Dr. Eskapa presents all the information a person needs to get the cure for alcoholism. It is simple and safe. The book is easy to read while providing a logical scientific explanation of why and how the process works. It is well referenced and indexed and useful for alcoholics themselves as well as professionals who work in treatment programs or others in the medical profession. I will be purchasing additional copies to share with friends and colleagues.

Relief from alcohol addiction

Dr. Eskapa's work describes a promising new approach to the treatment of one of the oldest and most plaguing problems in medicine and society, i.e., addiction to alcohol. Dr. Eskapa, a clinical psychologist with accomplishments in the area of behavior modification, was inspired to search for an effective treatment for alcoholism by the suffering and eventual early death of a close friend. This tragedy led Dr. Eskapa to "discover" the method of Dr. David Sinclair, a researcher in Finland, who wrote the foreword to this volume. This book describes the Sinclair approach in clear layman's terms. Eskapa has put alcoholism in the context of recent scientific discoveries over the last few decades relating human behavior to receptors in the brain. Many addictive behaviors are dependent on the building up of a common pathway in the brain, related to naturally occurring endorphins activating opioid receptors. These endorphins make us feel good but are dangerous when coupled to alcohol intake in people prone to addiction. They change the "wiring" of the brain, but fortunately this change is reversible based on the new method. Dr. Eskapa covers many aspects of the use of naltrexone for alcohol abuse and explains why it must be taken with alcohol in order to be effective. At first this sounds counterintuitive (that one has to continue drinking somewhat in order to stop drinking), but after reading this book one understands the beautiful logic. The book is written in an easily understandable manner, yet is firmly based on solid scientific information of the highest caliber. This method has the potential to relieve the suffering of countless individuals, and it is important that it be widely publicized. It is not a "commercial" for a product, and the author has made it clear that the patent held by Dr. Sinclair has recently expired. Thus, the main motive behind this writing is to help people overcome the problem faced by Dr. Eskapa's late friend. I recommend the book "The Cure for Alcoholism" for those with an addiction problem and for medical professionals, as well as for those who are simply interested in learning more about how the brain works.

A New Paradigm

Dr. Eskapa's important new book explains the quiet revolution that is occurring in our understanding of how people become alcoholics and how to treat alcoholism. To make a long story short, the field of alcoholism research and treatment has been divided into two opposing camps: those who believe that alcoholism is best thought of as a kind of medical illness (for example, AA) and those who believe that alcoholism is best thought of as a learned (very) bad habit (many psychologists). What Dr. Eskapa explains in clear, non-technical language is how new research shows that neither one of these views is completely correct--but that both of them are partly correct! That is, alcoholism is like a disease because certain people are genetically predisposed to become alcoholics. But alcoholism is also a learned behavior--even someone who is genetically predisposed to become an alcoholic will not become an alcoholic if they never try alcohol. This new paradigm is the basis for the cure for alcoholism--a combination of a widely available drug treatment and a behavioral strategy--that is clearly described in Dr. Eskapa's brilliant book. This book argues very convincingly that alcoholics must unlearn their addiction to alcohol, and the best way to do this is by drinking alcohol while they are simultaneously taking a drug that blocks the biological reward system in the brain that underlies addiction; this process of unlearning is called extinction by psychologists. The research from over 70 clinical studies shows that alcoholics can unlearn or reverse their biological addiction by continuing to drink alcohol while simultaneously taking a safe, non-addicting medication to block the jolts of reinforcement in the brain produced by the release of endorphins each time alcohol is consumed. By following this plan - of ALWAYS taking the medication before drinking, craving and actual drinking levels reduce dramatically. In other words, alcoholics can transform themselves into either moderate drinkers or nondrinkers, whichever they prefer. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who suffers from the tragedy of alcoholism--both alcoholics and their families.

If Alcohol's a Problem, Look No Further... This Works!

Having had a dear friend who used this method after having tried AA, rehab numerous times, and everything else, let me tell you firsthand, the Sinclair Method works. The Cure for Addiction now means that one doesn't have to travel to Finland for treatment. One doesn't have to abandon life as they know it to endure 30 days of rehab or attend AA meetings; the Sinclair Method integrates into normal life and no one has to know you're on it if you choose to keep it private. The Sinclair Method gave my friend back his life, and all those love him, reason to proselytize it in any way possible.