What is the Sinclair Method?

The Sinclair Method is a medical way to drink less. You take one tablet of naltrexone (or sometimes nalmefene) an hour before you drink. Over three to four months of consistent use, it blocks the brain's reward from alcohol, the urge quietens, and your drinking comes down, often a long way, to a level you are happy with.

It is unusual in two ways. You do not stop drinking to do it; the method only works while you drink with the tablet on board. And it rests on a piece of neuroscience rather than on willpower.

The method was developed by Dr John David Sinclair, an American neuroscientist who spent his career at Finland's state alcohol research institute in Helsinki, and published its foundations in 1992. Naltrexone in alcohol use has since been studied in dozens of trials; a 2023 JAMA review of 118 trials and nearly 21,000 people confirmed it cuts heavy drinking compared with placebo.

When you drink, your brain releases endorphins that hit opioid receptors and trigger a dopamine reward. That reward is what teaches the brain that drinking is worth repeating. Naltrexone blocks those receptors, so the reward does not land. Each drink taken on naltrexone is, in effect, an unlearning. Over months the link between alcohol and reward fades.

This is pharmacological extinction, the point where the pull has largely gone, and it arrives as a gradual fade, not a switch. It is what sets the method apart from Antabuse, which makes you ill if you drink, or acamprosate, which is for people who have already stopped.

One thing to be clear about: naltrexone does nothing to the alcohol itself. You still get drunk, you still get a hangover, and you are just as impaired behind the wheel, just as over the limit and just as dangerous to drive, as you would be without it. It does not sober you up. What it changes is the pleasure, the reward that drives you to keep going past the one glass you promised yourself would be the limit. The drink stops paying you back, so the urge for the next one fades. Every usual rule about alcohol still applies; never drive after drinking, on the tablet or off it.

The method does not demand abstinence, at the start or ever. Most people use it to drink less, and in Sinclair's published clinical work most people came down to sensible or non-hazardous drinking over six to twelve months. But it is not one-way: many find they want less and less, and some reach a point where alcohol does nothing for them and stop altogether. Drinking less and stopping are both valid destinations, and which one you head for is yours to choose.

It works best when drinking is reward-driven, when you drink because it feels good in the moment. It does less for purely habit-driven or social drinking. It is not for anyone in heavy physical dependence who needs a supervised detox first, and not alongside opioid painkillers or opioid dependence, since naltrexone blocks them. The assessment checks all of this.

Three ways in, and you pick how much doctor contact you want. Online with no appointment, a doctor reviews your assessment and prescribes. A consultation by phone, video or in person, if you would rather talk. Or the full programme, with a coach alongside you for six months. The medicine is dispensed and delivered by us, and priced separately. No subscription, no lock-in. Prices are on the Sinclair Method page.

The online assessment is quick. A doctor reviews it and, if naltrexone is right for you, prescribes it, dispensed and delivered to your door.

Begin your assessment →