Rethink Drink: Sinclair Method Coaching and Clinical Support in the UK

Rethink Drink is a UK coaching programme for people changing their relationship with alcohol, using The Sinclair Method (TSM). We focus on the behavioural and habitual side of change; prescribing clinicians make every medical decision, and a partner pharmacy dispenses.

It's designed for people who want to change how they drink and are looking for a different approach from the ones they've been offered before.

It meets you where you are. You don't have to pick up the phone, and we won't ask you to change everything overnight.

• Start in your own time. Our free mini-course explains The Sinclair Method from the beginning, privately, at your own pace.
• If it feels right, on sign-up you complete a medical questionnaire and then have a private consultation with a prescriber who fully understands The Sinclair Method protocol. If medication is suitable, our partner pharmacy dispenses it.
• Then the coaching starts, built around your real life, not a week away in a clinic.

Prefer to talk it through first? You can book a call whenever you're ready.

Matt Brindley, co-founder. Spent years stuck in the same loop with alcohol before The Sinclair Method gave him his choice back. Rethink Drink is built from that experience.

Bruce Rose, co-founder. Over a decade of experience in addiction recovery management.

Professor Jonathan Chick, Clinical Lead. Consultant psychiatrist, researcher, and former editor-in-chief of the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. GMC registration 1326952.

Porter Pharmacy, partner pharmacy. GPhC registration 9011388.

The Sinclair Method is half the deal. The other half is you: your routines, your triggers, your Friday nights, and the story you tell yourself after a bad week.

That's what our coaching works on. You get 1-2-1 coaching, group coaching calls and a private community of people doing the same thing, led by expert coaches, including coaches who have lived it themselves. The community is on your phone too, through our dedicated app, so support is there between calls. Nobody is expecting a perfect week. It's about progress, not perfection.

Read it in their words, not ours. Our reviews are on Trustpilot, and we'd rather you read all of them than a handful we picked.

And if you've searched for criticism of The Sinclair Method, good. Read that too. The questions below on the success rate and "is it a con?" are our honest answers to it.

The Sinclair Method, often shortened to TSM, is an approach to changing your relationship with drinking, in which a prescription medicine is taken before drinking.

This reduces the rewarding effects alcohol can produce. Over time, the brain can change its relationship with alcohol, as it dis-associates alcohol from providing a reward.

Rather than removing alcohol from the equation, The Sinclair Method keeps the choice to drink in place and uses the process to change your relationship with it, rather than removing alcohol, and choice.

It's named after Dr John David Sinclair, the researcher who developed it.

Drinking alcohol releases endorphins, and the brain learns to link alcohol with that reward. Repeat it enough times and the link turns into a habit that feels like it has a mind of its own.

The Sinclair Method works on that reward loop. The medicine, taken before drinking, blocks the reward, so each drink teaches the brain a little less. Researchers call this gradual unlearning "pharmacological extinction". Dr Sinclair's route to this idea began with something called the alcohol deprivation effect, explained in the next question.

Sources: UK clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment, Department of Health and Social Care; Sinclair JD, review, Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2001

The alcohol deprivation effect (ADE) is a temporary rise in drinking that can happen when alcohol becomes available again after a period without it. Dr John David Sinclair described it in laboratory studies with rats, published in 1972, and it's where the thinking behind The Sinclair Method began.

It raised the question that shaped his work: if simply stopping doesn't remove the learned desire for alcohol, and can even sharpen it for a while, what would reduce that desire over time? His answer, later in his research, was pharmacological extinction (see How does The Sinclair Method work?).

This isn't a claim that everyone who takes a break from drinking will drink more afterwards. The effect is well established in animal research, and a 2026 study in mice found that a period of forced abstinence was followed by more alcohol seeking and more compulsive drinking. In people, the evidence is limited. But if you've ever come out of a dry spell and found the desire to drink stronger than you expected, you'll see why he asked the question.

Read more: our full guide to the alcohol deprivation effect. Sources: Sinclair JD, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1972; Vengeliene, Bilbao and Spanagel, review, Alcohol, 2014; Doyle and colleagues, study in mice, Molecular Psychiatry, 2026

There's no single success rate. The figure you'll often see is 78%. It comes from Dr Sinclair's own clinics in Finland in the 1990s, and it counts only the people who stayed in treatment long enough to be assessed, so it can't tell you your own chance of success.

The controlled trials give a more useful picture. People taking the medicine before drinking cut their heavy and binge drinking more than people taking a placebo, and the benefit was clearest for those who also had support to build coping skills. That's why coaching sits at the heart of what we do, and why the success rate that matters most is yours: we track your drinking with you, week by week.

Read the full picture: The Sinclair Method success rate, what the research shows.

Sources: Sinclair JD, review, Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2001; Heinälä P and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, 2001; Santos GM and colleagues, American Journal of Psychiatry, 2022

Anyone who gives you an exact date is guessing. The Sinclair Method is gradual by design, because it's a learning process and learning takes repetition.

What we can tell you is what to look for: fewer drinks on the nights you do drink, easier alcohol-free days, less alcohol noise about the next one. We track it with you week by week, so you see it for yourself. Data over drama.

Fair question. You should ask it.

It isn't a miracle. It's an approach with published research behind it and real limits, and we'll show you both. What we won't do is promise you a result. What we add is the coaching: the habits, routines and hard moments that decide whether change sticks.

No. The Sinclair Method is an approach, not a brand or a franchise. Think of it like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT): an established method that many different practitioners offer. You wouldn't look for the "official" CBT provider; you'd check the therapist's qualifications. The same goes here.

It's named after Dr John David Sinclair, the researcher whose work it's based on. No UK regulator or professional body appoints an "official" Sinclair Method provider, and "The Sinclair Method" is not a registered trade mark in the UK. So when an organisation calls itself official, that's a description it has chosen, not a status anyone has granted (or can grant).

All organisations working within The Sinclair Method space originate in the work of Dr John David Sinclair.

Binge drinking is one of the patterns people bring to us most often: fine all week, but the desire to drink continues to increase; then one drink turns into more than you meant.

The research includes a 2022 randomised trial in sexual and gender minority men with mild to moderate alcohol use disorder who binge drink, where the targeted approach, alongside weekly counselling, led to fewer binge-drinking days over 12 weeks. That's one trial in one group of people, not a promise for everyone, and whether it's suitable for you is the prescriber's call. What we work on with you is the moment the binge starts: the trigger, the setting, the "just one".

Source: Santos and colleagues, American Journal of Psychiatry, 2022

Yes. That's the whole point.

Rethink Drink doesn't start with a promise never to drink again, and we won't ask you for one. Your goal is your goal: fewer drinks, more alcohol-free days, or stopping altogether if that's what you choose, now or later. Most people who come to us don't want a lifetime of avoiding the pub. They want to be able to take it or leave it.

Control is the goal.

Someone whose drinking isn't a disaster, but isn't fine either. Nothing dramatic has happened. You're holding it together at work and at home. But alcohol takes up more space in your head than you want it to, and the rules you set yourself keep quietly bending.

You don't have to hit 'rock bottom' to deserve help, and you don't need a label. If this sounds like you, that's reason enough to look at your options. Plenty of people who call themselves "sober curious" are asking the same question from a different angle.

If you're asking, it's worth taking seriously, and that isn't a judgement.

The UK guideline is no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days. But the number is only part of it. Are you drinking more than you meant to? Making rules and breaking them? Thinking about the next drink more than you'd like? Our free alcohol units calculator shows you where you are in a couple of minutes.

Source: NHS, alcohol units

It's a saying, not a scientific law.

For some people, lifelong abstinence is exactly the right path, and it works for them. But as a rule for everyone, it turns a learned pattern into a fixed identity, and tells people the only choice they'll ever have is never to drink again.

The Sinclair Method starts from a different model: what the brain has learned, it can gradually unlearn.

It's entirely up to an individual if they choose abstinence or to have the choice to say yes or no.

Dry January. The breaks. The rules. "Keeping it social." The promises at 3am. Matt did all of it, for years. It never meant he was weak; he'd been given the wrong model.

Willpower on its own asks you to fight the desire to drink every single day. The Sinclair Method works on the desire itself, and our coaching works on everything around it.

It isn't for everyone, but if the same approach keeps giving you the same result, there is an option for an alternative treatment pathway.

It can be. It's a different model, not a competing team.

AA helps a great many people, and its route is abstinence through peer support. The Sinclair Method takes a different starting point: you don't have to stop drinking first, and the aim is control. Some people want one, some the other, and some find peer support, whether AA or SMART Recovery, useful alongside their plan; the NHS lists both as support options. What matters is finding the route that fits you.

Source: NHS, alcohol support

Yes. Most people who get help with alcohol in the UK get it in the community rather than in residential rehab, and online programmes like ours let you keep your work, your family and your life going while you change.

Rehab is the right choice for some people, particularly where there's serious dependence or a risk of withdrawal, and an assessment helps decide what's safest.

Source: NHS, alcohol support: "Most people receive support to stop drinking and recovery support in the community"

Sometimes, and it's always worth asking your GP.

NHS guidance mainly describes this kind of medicine taken daily to support abstinence, after any withdrawal has been managed, so many GPs won't prescribe it for The Sinclair Method's targeted approach. That isn't your GP being difficult; it's the guidance they work to. If the NHS route isn't an option, a private prescriber can assess whether it's suitable for you, and that's the route most of the people we work with take.

Sources: UK clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment; NHS, alcohol-use disorder

Our current programme prices are on our pricing page, because we'd rather you see them up front than hear them for the first time on a call. Our Sinclair Method mini-course is free, and so is a call.

If you're comparing options, compare the whole package: the prescription, the medication, the coaching and the support, not just the price of the tablets.

Your conversations with our Rethink Drink coaches are confidential and are separate from your GP medical records.

The medical side of the programme is handled by the prescribing clinician and is subject to the same confidentiality rules as any other medical consultation. If they felt it was appropriate to contact your GP or share information with another healthcare professional, they would discuss this with you and seek your consent first.

As with all healthcare professionals, there are limited exceptions where information may need to be shared without consent, for example where this is required by law or where there is a serious and immediate risk of harm to you or someone else.

If you drink heavily every day, speak to a doctor before you make any sudden change. As the NHS puts it, "It can be very dangerous to stop drinking suddenly if you're dependent on alcohol."

Stopping or cutting back sharply can cause alcohol withdrawal, and the medicine used in The Sinclair Method does not treat withdrawal. What to do depends on the symptoms:

• Call 999 or go to A&E if you or someone else has severe withdrawal symptoms: shaking visibly, being unusually restless, irritable or upset, confusion (for example, not knowing what day it is), seeing, hearing or feeling things that are not there, or a seizure (fit). Do not drive yourself to A&E.
• See a GP or an alcohol support service if you get symptoms like anxiety, difficulty sleeping, sweating or feeling sick when you try to cut down.
• For confidential advice, Drinkline, the national alcohol helpline, is on 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9am to 8pm, weekends 11am to 4pm).

None of this has to rule you out. It means starting safely, with medical support, from day one.

Sources: NHS, alcohol-use disorder; UK clinical guidelines, alcohol withdrawal symptoms; NHS, alcohol support (Drinkline)

If you are physically dependent on alcohol, do not suddenly stop drinking without medical advice. Call 999 for severe withdrawal symptoms such as hallucinations, severe shaking, seizures or fits.

That worry is heavy, and you're not the only one carrying it.

You can't change someone's drinking for them. But you can change the conversation: less blame, more curiosity, and a way of seeing this as a learned pattern rather than a character flaw. You can download a free copy of Matt Brindley's book, Supporting A Loved One: A Guide for Friends and Family When Alcohol Is a Problem.