You also did not mention that a number of studies have shown this drug to be only modestly effective at treating alcohol abuse, and that there are better treatments. It can also cause liver damage. It's not a magic pill.

To my knowledge liver damage has only been documented at doses far beyond what the Sinclair method directs.

Edit: source as requested below: https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/36/1/2/137995

You are contending, without evidence, that these physicians are dangerous. That is a serious claim.

If you are concerned that these physicians are endangering the public, you should take it up with their respective state medical boards straightaway.

There is nowhere near a consensus among professional physicians that this drug is as good as you claim it to be. Meanwhile I can find plenty of physicians like Dr. Oz who are snake oil salesmen, so I reject your fallacious appeal to authority.

EDIT: I see that you have now edited your comment to say "(An appeal to authority is the purpose of medical licensing.)". You should not edit your comments in an attempt to make people who responded to you look bad, or look like they missed something that was actually not there.

Now you keep adding even more! If you want to respond, then respond. I quoted the entire text of your original comment at the top of mine.

The majority of physicians do not prescribe this drug, and even the ones who do prescribe it do not recommend that patients try to obtain it online and self-medicate.

You twisted my meaning into an attack on physicians, which it certainly was not. It was a rejection of a fallacious appeal to authority.

The fact that some physicians recommend something is simply not convincing. It's not hard to find a small number of physicians who would recommend homeopathy either, nor is it hard to find a small number of scientists who reject climate science. A consensus among physicians (or scientists) is what makes an appeal to authority reasonable.

As opposed to the liver-sparing lifetime of alcoholism?

Principle of least harm comes into play, here.

If you're worried about liver damage please look into Acetaminophen.

There's a subreddit here too which is becoming more and more active. https://reddit.com/r/alcoholism_medication

For anyone who is struggling with addiction, or thinks they may have a problem - please treat this like any other disease and consult a medical professional.

I'd also suggest, if possible, speaking with another addict in recovery to learn about what they have found successful. There are 12 step support groups (AA and NA being the two most well known) worldwide.

There are many available treatments and it's really difficult to know what will be best for any one person (and what works for an individual at any given point in time may change).

(Also, if you have been actively using alcohol or benzodiazepines, please consider talking to medical professional before abruptly stopping - there are serious risks during withdrawal and it can be deadly).

If anyone need help finding more information, don't hesitate to message me.

I didn’t downvote. But AA has a mixed track record with respect to effectiveness [1]. It’s also been likened to a cult [2]. This might explain some downvoted.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746426/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr...

That article shows that people who regularly go to AA meetings are more likely to be sober (e.g. 67% people who went to one or more meeting a week were sober 16 years later).

Because of the universal nature of AA, it is hard to randomize for it (if you just randomly tell an alcoholic to go to AA, they have already been told that by others, so that's not a very good randomization; the control is contaminated); that said, there are studies where people randomly selected to go to AA are more likely to be sober. A 2014 meta study shows that greater AA attendance results in greater sobriety, which can not be attributed to self-selection (in other words, we have finally scientifically demonstrated that the people doing well are being helped by AA):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4285560/

Now, that Gabrielle Glaser article you link to which claims AA is a cult uses some very dubious figures for AA's success. They come from Lance Dodes; since Dodes could not find any studies that AA has a 5% success rate, he instead multiplied multiple numbers from unrelated studies to synthesize the 5% figure. His numbers have been questioned by a number of treatment experts, including Thomas Beresford, John Kelly, Gene Beresin, and Jeffrey D. Roth (who called Dodes's figures a "pseudostatistical polemic").

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/108107397127806

(Note that this is a paywall link. Here is a quote to give readers here a gist of that article: "acceptance of the tenets of AA may be associated with positive behavioral change"; the paper describes how working the AA program results in people having a more positive world view)

12-step meetings are not a short-term fix; I have already linked to a paper which shows that two out of three people who regularly go to AA meetings in their first year of alcohol treatment are still sober 16 years later. Here's the original paper with those figures:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2220012/

I'd also like to add, each group is different and yes, some can be cult-like. I'd suggest trying more than one.

I'm really not trying to promote AA, just mentioning that it's one of many options (in addition to medically assistant therapy, individual and group counseling etc).

Anybody who claims to know what will work for any one person is full of it. But to anyone struggling, please keep trying different methods until you find the treatment that works for you.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/5/17071690/alc...