In August 1993 when I first sought treatment for my alcoholism, I was a model patient; I was completely open with my psychiatrist (who was also my key worker), I attended almost all the group meetings where I always took an active part, but whilst doing this I could not envisage a life in which I would never again be able to share a bottle of wine with a beautiful woman during a candlelit dinner.
In October 2003 when Judy asked me to stop drinking and I promised to do so, I knew I had made a promise I did not know how to fulfill.
In November 2003 I had a session with the consultant psychiatrist, Professor Jonathon Chick during which I explained my past and the future I wanted, and he suggested a number of strategies which I should consider, but made no mention of Campral.
In 2008, four alcohol-free years after taking Campral, when Judy and I had intimate dinners together, I made her a gin and tonic before hand, and then during the meal Judy drank wine and I drank something non-alcoholic, but I never once felt that I would have enjoyed the experience any more if I too had drunk alcohol
However, the most surprising thing of all was at the many dinner parties Judy and I gave and attended; Norwegian dinner parties tend last a long time - 6 hours is normal - I would get our guests drinks before the meal, keep their glasses topped up with wine during it, serve liqueurs afterwards, but at no time did I feel left out, or have the slightest wish to join them and I never felt awkward because I was not drinking.
For a time I wondered if this total indifference towards alcohol at dinner parties was because Judy was in the same room, but there was almost always some opened wine left over which was re-corked for consumption on another day, and while this was standing in the kitchen or fridge and I was alone in the house, it never occurred to me to have a drink.
In January 2011 when I learned that my liver had recovered fully despite the many years of being an alcoholic, I knew I had to talk about the effortless alcohol-free life I now lead as a result of taking Campral. I knew that before I could speak with authority, I needed to know why Professor Chick had not mentioned Campral as one of the options in 2003.
When I met Jonathon Chick in September 2011, he told me that although he knew Campral worked well in some people, there was no way of knowing in advance who they were. He went on to tell me that it was he who had conducted the UK clinical trials prior to Campral’s approval in 1995 and that at the end of the trial, no difference could be found between Campral and the placebo.
However in a follow-up study 3 years later Campral’s true effectiveness became apparent; all those subjects who had been given Campral and were still abstinent (not drinking alcohol) at the end of the trial, had still not started drinking, whereas almost all in the control group had.
People like me for whom treatment with Campral is profound, are not mentioned in any of the studies, they focus on the time to first relapse and the amount of alcohol consumed post-treatment, but all have a significant number who dropped out of the trials.
I wonder for how many of the Campral trial dropouts the treatment was so successful, their lives so transformed, they just walked away to live out the rest of their lives in peace with their families and never go near and clinic for the treatment of alcoholics ever again?
What is it that the people like me for whom treatment with Campral is profound have in common?
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