Claudia Christian: Babylon Confidential

I was cast as a woman who pays Julian McMahon’s character to satisfy a bizarre sexual fetish. First, he would throw me into a tub filled with ice and keep me there until my heart stopped from hypothermia, then he would carry my numb body to the bed, throw me on it, and fuck me back to life, the heat from his body kick-starting my heart back into action.

I mean, how fucking weird is that? But it didn’t stop me from taking the role. My career was as frozen as my body when the stunt man ripped me out of the bath and threw me on the bed. Maybe this job, so long in coming, would drive the life back into it.

When Nip/Tuck wrapped I drove straight to Trish’s house and raided her cupboards. The pain, combined with the stress of creating what I hoped would be my comeback performance, had knocked down the last of my defenses. I found a bottle of vodka and drank practically the whole thing in one sitting.

The Sinclair Method has successfully helped moderate alcohol drinking in Finland, where excessive alcohol use is a major national problem, as well as other countries including Israel, Russia, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Venezuela and Estonia. A statistical analysis of the data obtained from clinics in Finland shows highly significant reductions in alcohol drinking. The method is successful with more than 78% of alcoholics. In Florida the success rates 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: drinking and craving became progressively lower with each week of treatment.

That was from a scientific article I read called “Clinical Evidence from The Sinclair Method Clinic in Sarasota, Florida.” The Florida clinic was the only one in the United States offering the Sinclair Method. The clinic’s website said:

Internationally hundreds of thousands of people have been helped using the Sinclair Method.

More than 80% of all the clients in the program were successful in long term control of their alcohol consumption, some to acceptable levels (“Social Drinking”) and others 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. 6 6 www.28weekrecovery.com/index_files/Page389.htm .

An 80% success rate! Apart from the grim reaper, who has the only 100% guaranteed cure for addiction, I’d never heard of a treatment with such a high rate of success. What’s more, the article made an astonishing claim—that The Sinclair Method was a genuine cure for alcoholism.

The word “cure” is a powerful one and can’t be used lightly. The Sinclair Method makes use of a drug called naltrexone, which creates a state of pharmacological extinction in the addict’s brain. It doesn’t block the effect of alcohol; rather, it gradually resets the brain back to the pre-addiction condition, making it a bona fide cure.

But there was one catch: the cure only remained a cure as long as you took the pill, every time before you had a drink, for the rest of your life. Otherwise the endorphins released when drinking would not be blocked by the effect of naltrexone and would lead the brain to revert to a state of craving alcohol.

I researched naltrexone and found that it had been available and FDA-approved for the treatment of alcoholism since 1994. It was nonaddictive, and the side effects were minor and temporary—nausea, headaches, and insomnia. Sign me up!

The Florida clinic charged $3,800 for treatment, beyond my budget by that stage. Luckily, I found a book, The Cure for Alcoholism by Roy Eskapa, PhD.

The book had an introduction by David Sinclair, PhD, who developed The Sinclair Method, which described alcoholism as a learned chemical addiction of the brain. Sinclair maintains that abstinence only makes the problem worse, and I’d made the biggest mistake in the book: I’d gone stone-cold sober after every binge. The sudden deprivation of alcohol only led to stronger cravings. This not only leads to eventual relapse but also damages the brain and internal organs. What no one at rehab or detox centers ever tells you is that you can detox by gradually reducing your alcohol intake. The reason no one thinks to mention this is that most alcoholics aren’t capable of doing it. But with naltrexone it’s made possible by one amazing, almost unbelievable fact—that The Sinclair Method only works as a cure if the alcoholic keeps on drinking.

You take naltrexone to reduce your consumption, and at the same time it kills off your addiction. My armor was battered and hanging on by its fraying straps, but now I’d have something to fight the monster with that I’d never had before—a weapon. I’d always been on the defensive, on the back foot while the monster attacked at will. If the claims about The Sinclair Method were true I just might be able to obliterate that bitch once and for all.

The Cure for Alcoholism contained all the information I needed to start The Sinclair Method solo. The first step was to find a doctor who would prescribe naltrexone, which costs about $30 for thirty 50 mg pills—about a dollar added to the cost of a night out. Even better, I was able to use my SAG insurance, which brought the cost down even more to $10 for thirty pills.

By taking one pill one hour before drinking I could begin the process of pharmacological extinction.

I was still not turned on by the idea of taking a pill forever, but hell, if it worked it was better than going to an AA meeting and fighting the war every fucking day for the rest of my life. And the other thing that resonated with me was The Sinclair Method’s treatment of alcoholism as a disease, like diabetes or high blood pressure. It was a relief to know that someone had devised a safe, medically proven, nonaddictive way to combat it.

Following on from the use of naltrexone, the book encouraged using the beneficial effect of the drug to strengthen healthy, alternative behaviors—eating tasty meals, exercise, sports, even sex.

I went in to see my doctor, armed with a copy of The Cure for Alcoholism . I’d been fighting every day for the last ten years. I wanted peace, I wanted my life back, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

The doctor was a nice young guy who a pill-popping friend had recommended, one used to dealing with addicts. I’d seen him once before when I was suffering a combo attack of flu and alcohol withdrawal. He’d prescribed some anti-anxiety pills to deal with the monster and an antibiotic for the flu. The flu went the way of the dodo; the monster didn’t bat an eyelid.

I was back and this time asking for naltrexone. I’d also printed out pages of the clinical papers I found on the Internet, and I sat with him and discussed The Sinclair Method. He looked up the drug in his pharmaceutical reference book and finally, with trepidation, he gave me the piece of paper that represented my last hope of recovery, my hopeful stay of execution.

I had to go to a compound pharmacy (one that makes special drugs to order) to fill my prescription. Within fifteen minutes I had fifteen pills. I stopped by Trader Joe’s on the way home and bought a bottle of red wine and a steak. I was PMS-ing and David was out of town. It was the perfect time to schedule the first experiment.

I shook the plastic pill bottle at the traffic lights, like a witch doctor rattling bones for good luck. The wine sat next to me in the passenger seat. The way home involved driving right past the khaki-colored bus stop on Coldwater Canyon. I turned and looked at it as I drove past and was overcome with emotion. I had to pull over.