Katie Lain thought nothing of turning to the bottle seven days a week but finally quit using a sobriety method that changed her life for the better.
A woman whose boozy sessions turned into blackouts every day of the week has revealed the secret trick that got her sober.
Katie Lain thought nothing of turning to the bottle seven days a week but finally quit using a sobriety method that changed her life for the better. The 39-year-old revealed she quit her unhealthy ways simply by using the Sinclair method and a $1 pill.
Katie says her struggles with alcohol first began when she turned 21 and became associated with “a lot of heavy drinkers”, admitting she herself got a taste for hard liquor – like vodka – and found she “couldn’t control” her consumption.
She has revealed how she would start drinking on her lunch breaks whilst working from home – and what started as experimenting making “fancy” cocktails soon spiralled into drinking until she blacked out seven days a week.
After a hospital scare and driving drunk she tried to quit – trying AA, holistic routes like medication retreats, different diets like keto, juice cleanses and even ayahuasca retreats – but failed for 10 years.
But after seeing a TEDxTalk by actor Claudia Christian explaining how she beat alcoholism using the Sinclair method and a pill called naltrexone she decided to give it a try.
She would take the $1-a-day pill an hour before drinking – which works to block the endorphins that flood the brain after consuming alcohol. Katie continued to drink but slowly over time her alcohol cravings dulled – until she was left unable to finish a glass of wine.
Now she has been sober for the last eight years and coaches others on the method to help their sobriety journeys. Katie, founder and owner of Thrive alcohol recovery, from San Francisco, California, said: “I began searching for a way of trying to either quit drinking or ways to control my drinking starting in 2010.
“I’d last sometimes a day, a week, or a few months but found that for me, the mental preoccupation of drinking always brought me back. I was willing to sacrifice my own wellbeing and health to drink. I thought the Sinclair method seemed too good to be true but thought ‘I’ll give it a try’ in July 2017.
“Drinking was not getting the same reward with the medication on board. In my case I drank over and over again with the treatment for a year and as I continued to drink and use the medication I just fell out of love with alcohol.
“I would see myself have a second glass of wine and not finish it, or go days and weeks not drinking. I would have control, I wasn’t blacking out anymore and having hangovers anymore.”
Trying her first drink aged 15, she says she would “experiment” with alcohol with friends, even using a fake ID age 19 to buy it, but there was “no addiction” at that point. Katie began experimenting with alcohol after her 21st birthday in 2008, but soon progressed to drinking daily.
“I didn’t really care about it and didn’t like to get drunk at the time but shortly after that I started drinking a lot through the relationship I was in,” she says.
By the time she realised she had a problem it was “too late”. “I’d get my job done, but would start drinking on my lunch break, finish up the day and start drinking at that time,” she said.
“Initially I was making fancy cocktails like margaritas and then went to drinking straight vodka. I wasn’t measuring but drinking until I was blackout seven nights a week.
“I wasn’t someone who could have a couple and be done with drinking, I was drinking to get drunk. The times I would stop at two I was forcing myself and it was very difficult to do.
“I was still very much functioning and drinking on my lunch break was not a daily thing I did every day but I thought if I did not have a lot going on in the afternoon I could get away with it. I would have a shot or two but I wasn’t bingeing on my lunch break.
“I would pretty much get away with it. After I started the Sinclair method I told one of my co-workers and she told me she had smelled alcohol on me before”.
Katie said vodka was her “easy go to” but she would sometimes switch to wine, polishing off two bottles after work or six to eight strong IPA beers. In 2010 she made the decision to try and quit after several “pretty terrifying” moments.
Katie said: “One time I was pulled over and should’ve gotten a DUI. I got pulled over for a tail light. The police officer just didn’t ask if I’d been drinking and I avoided it,but I was very drunk and driving.”
But despite trying different diets, juice cleanses, medication and ayahuasca retreats Katie always went back to the booze. At one point she reached six months of sobriety but admits she wanted to drink “every day”.
Even when she was diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary embolism – blood clots of the lung – caused by a genetic condition, and put on blood thinners and advised not to drink she relapsed just four days later.
When she stumbled across the Sinclair method in July 2017 she decided to give it a go. The method is a treatment for alcohol use disorder that uses naltrexone to gradually reduce the brain’s association between alcohol and pleasure.
Katie said: “It’s not an abstinence-based method, so you start it still drinking alcohol. What it does over time is helps your brain unlearn your alcohol addiction. Naltrexone is taken one hour before drinking.
“By taking the medication what it’s doing is sitting on the receptors of the brain that otherwise have a big flood of endorphins as a reward for drinking. It doesn’t make you sick or make drinking a terrible experience, it just makes it a little less exciting.”
Slowly over time Katie’s cravings began to fade. She said: “It’s important to know it takes time and it’s not like a pill that’s magical.
“For me the foundation allowed me to make other changes in my life like my habits and coping skills now my mind wasn’t obsessively craving alcohol anymore.”
Katie still remembers her last ever drink in September 2018, just over a year after starting the method. She said: “Again, it wasn’t supposed to be the last time, I went out to dinner in town and didn’t finish my glass of wine. I drank two thirds of it.
“I went on a trip after that and thought ‘I don’t want to drink on this trip, I just want to be clear headed’. After that trip, it was three weeks, then a month, then two, three and four months after simply not drinking because I didn’t want to.
“I wasn’t trying, I just kept not wanting to drink at all – it didn’t cross my mind.”
She is “still amazed” at the method, and started coaching others to help get sober in 2018, before starting her own company Thrive in 2021 using the Sinclair programme. “My life is freedom, that’s the best word to use for it,” she said.
“To be able to reconnect to my true self apart from someone who was addicted to alcohol for 10 years. I appreciate the simple joys – family, a cup of tea, delicious meals, all the things I ignored and numbed out with alcohol everyday.”