In my experience - both from rehab and from 5 years on alkie forums - Campral kinda works if ... you believe it does. All staff from rehab were formal: you can get it if you want, but we don't really think it helps much. You certainly can't rely on it to stay sober, that has to come from another place. During my time, only 2 out of 52 took it. And both relapsed during their stay.

What I'm saying is, but I'm sure you know: he is making his staying sober depend on external factors, like Campral, like you saying "no, a Porto would NOT make it less painful". Somehow, he needs to be able to make that switch in his own mind.

If an alcoholic is thinking "maybe one beer will ease the pain", even as a faint fantasy, there's nothing even a 100kg dose of Campral can do. The lizard part of the brain feasts on it. "YAY! IT'S BEING CONSIDERED. HMMM, BEER!", like a dumb but very persistent version of Homer Simpson. The rational part of the brain needs to shut it down immediately. It needs to be deleted as being an option. As much as it may bring some relief for 10 minutes, there's decades of pain (if you are lucky...) and paying for that first beer lying ahead, and that's 100% certainty. He really needs to learn to play the tape forward, think about the situation after that first beer (needing a second beer to keep the pain away, a third because it's starting to hurt again anyway, so let's drink a bit quicker, and what about tomorrow morning, when increased pain will be accompanied by horrible guilt/hangover/zero days sobriety). Tomorrow morning always comes. I'm so glad I drank yesterday, said no alcoholic, ever.

For me, in the first 2 years, "playing the tape" really worked on the odd day that I felt a sudden stirring of the beast. If done immediately, it doesn't even develop into a real "craving". It's more like catching out a stupid thought before speaking out loud. "Oh look, the station is moving!" "Um, no of course not, the train is, dummy!" is what you think .15 second later. You can not avoid that stupid thought, it jumps into your mind. But you can catch it.

Even if it still LOOKS like the station is moving after that, you ignore it, and go "oh, you silly brain!"

So... play the tape, and immediately go do something else, distraction, eating something, anything. When you get good at this, the stirring doesn't even last 15 seconds. Your brain will learn how you cope, how you change your behavior, and it will get easier, almost automatic.

He should not rely on you to keep him from doing it. And "vocalizing it" doesn't work, if anything, it makes it more persistent. It makes it a thing. "What if she says: 'sure, a beer, you deserve it with all your pain'?" Lizard brain doing push-ups at that point, and if you'd do a CT scan, you would see a drooling brain.

"Maybe she'll get mad, so then you really need a drink!" lizard brain continues.

It's totally OK to talk about it after it passed, to let your partner know you had been going through a rough moment. We all need some support, someone to acknowledge that it's not easy. It's not OK to use it as a pointed gun the moment it is happening. That's blackmail.

Hope you don't mind the harsher words. Again, we know how hard it can be at times, we have been there, we still deal with it today. It's not meant as disparaging. But he needs to own his sobriety. From one alcoholic to another. If it would help, feel free to read this post to him - it's me talking, not you.