Kaleya

Thanks, guys!

Soberlicious, I think you're absolutely right about the recognition and separation. That has always been difficult for me, as someone who is very emotional and impulsive... I just assumed that all thoughts/feelings were "me" and that I should act on them immediately. It is going to take a very conscious, persistent effort to keep on recognizing and separating myself from the Beast. I've already done it around 20 times today. It's a little tiring!

soberlicious

Don't let your AV complicate things though...any thought or feeling that suggests drinking should be ignored.

Algorithm

Hi Kaleya,

This is your Addictive Voice, predicting a long struggle with AV recognition, and injecting doubt about your successful lifetime abstinence.

The Big Plan provides a context for recognition, and brings the AV clearly into consciousness. Anything that contradicts your Big Plan in any way is your Addictive Voice.

It may take a little bit of effort to get the hang of it at first, but it gets easier. For example, I can "hear" your thoughts in my mind's ear as I read your posts, but I recognize them as not my thoughts, but yours.

Of course, I've been reading for many years, but this takes little conscious effort. If it helps, you can realize that AV recognition is not entirely dissimilar.

Kaleya

Wow. Thanks for that insight, soberlicious and Algorithm; I had already started letting doubt (AV) creep in and regain a foothold... I need to remind myself that AV doesn't just communicate by directly suggesting "Get a drink".

I think I'll reread the free crash course on the site again today. I'm considering buying the book too.

Algorithm

Kaleya,

All self-doubt about abstinence suggests the opposite, so it is AV. Set your confidence for lifetime abstinence arbitrarily at 100%, recognize all self-doubt as your Addictive Voice, and let the Beast count time since the last drink.

I definitely recommend purchasing and reading the Rational Recovery book, which is very inexpensive, and reading through the multi-part AVRT discussion thread on this forum.

RR #1

In addition to the free crash course, they will help you tighten up the screws on your Beast.

flame11

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all doing ok, from what I have read lately you appear to be doing so.
Me...not so great...but not so bad either.. .I stuck to my big plan for a little under 6 months and I've been drinking on and off ever since. I have been aware of my a.v but I choose to drink anyway....i can recognise thoughts as a.v but I'm not or don't want to separate from them. I'm not sure if I want to stop drinking or if I'm all consumed by my beast and right back in my addiction where I can't see the truth of my situation. Please can somebody give me some advice.

Fusion

Hi Flame, hope you're OK .

Is it possible for you to explain why you started drinking; and why you're not sure whether you want to stop drinking again. Is your drinking pattern different than before? Sorry about the questions, but I'd love to try to help and more information would assist.

tursiops999

Hi Flame, welcome back!

One suggestion would be to re-read your old posts here (you can search by clicking on your user name) and see what your past thoughts were about drinking and quitting.

When I was still drinking, I was ambivalent about quitting... I think that's a hallmark of addiction. Part of me wanted to quit, and part of me (the beast) wanted to drink. For me quitting was about choosing sides -- choosing to quit despite the ambivalence. Choosing to listen only to my sober self, which is the real me.

Wholesome

Hi Flame,

I did what you are describing for about a year. I knew I was being controlled by my AV and I did it anyway. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to quit, I told myself that I just wanted to drink less, and I did, or at least on less occasions, I still drank a lot every time I drank. The real me always wanted to quit for good. I kept one foot in the door here on SR and kept trying to find a way to control my drinking without having to make that total commitment. It was a lot of work and quite depressing most of the time. It's hard being addicted to alcohol, it took so much out of me. Listen to the real you not your AV which is a known liar. Make another BP. Figure out where the weak spots were in your last one and shore them up.

Fusion

Flame, I asked the questions because I wanted to extricate the real you, the one that logged on SR and posted on your thread today, the real you that seems to wish to stop drinking again. I believe there's no way your AV would suggest you log back on here again, unless it wanted to drag out drinking with moderation, or a tentative one day at a time. Your AV won't forget that logging on here resulted in nearly six months sober, which is fantastic. You can make another Big Plan, as Zen says, shore it up with your recent expereince. With 20/20 vision of what happened when you drank, you can make this Big Plan alcohol proof.

Please let us know if you have any thoughts regarding our responses and please reread your thread, as suggested by Tursiops.

flame11

Hi,
I have just spent over an hour writting a reply to you're response Tasty, zenchaser and tursiops999, and just as I pressed submit reply I lost my connection!!! Not happy. Having said that it helped me to write all of that stuff out. I haven't got time to write it all again now, but will get back on it tomorrow.

Thankyou all for your posts they have been helpful x

GerandTwine

Hi Kay,
I understand why people professing to have made a Big Plan have difficulty reporting what they were thinking and feeling in that ten minutes just before taking a drink with that "Big Plan". But doing so can help blow down the AV's house of cards built against your making a REAL Big Plan RIGHT NOW or any time in the future. What happened?

Last year Algo suggested you make a temporary big plan while you finish reading AVRT-TNC. To me, a temporary Big Plan is an oxymoron. Might as well say, why don't you have a drink but wait until after you finish reading AVRT-TNC and see if you might want to extend that wait. Oh, and you could alway make a Big Plan.

But a Big Plan seems just way too easy. (Too scary for the Beast.) Well, you extended that wait, but you never made a Big Plan (and I think you knew that all along because it is impossible to lie to oneself). And that's all OK.

You've succeeded quite well at becoming that "drunken you" some of the time, and your daughters are probably off at Uni by now. So, why not. Not nearly as bad a deal now. And wow, that deep deep pleasure. You don't seem much the worse for drinking being one of the main driving activities now in your daily lifestyle.

So, this is what I see as the "truth of [your] situation." that you "can't see."

I wish you all the best with or without a Big Plan
GT

(While it is impossible for you to lie to yourself about making The Big Plan, it is also impossible to prove to anyone else that you really made The Big Plan).

Also, it helps to hit "Preview Post" every ten minutes or so when taking a long time to write a post so that the SR server doesn't time-out on you.

Fusion

Oh my Flame, that must've been SO frustrating, but I'm glad it was beneficial. I really look forward to you writing tomorrow. There's a way forward, we'll find it. We've walked the path to freedom, we'll try to guide you onto your path. You're not alone.

flame11

Hi,

Yeah, making a big plan... I made a big plan regarding alcohol and I learnt to recognise and seperate from my av.

I didn't make a big plan about using other drugs, because my a.v told me that I didn't have a problem with drugs so I'd be ok to get high once or twice a month. I wanted to tell you guys that I was thinking this but IT convinced me that I'd be fine, seeing as alcohol was my problem. IT also told me that people coming off alcohol needed a little "something" to take the edge off for a few months... lots of people use prescription drugs, I was just doing the same kind of thing.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep this brief. I went to a festival in June, I was high but not feeling particularly relaxed, in fact I felt quite up tight. people around me were having fun, dancing and laughing etc... I was with my boyfriend who you all know is quite ill from his alcohol addiction... anyway he was drinking and I thought to myself, I'm going to have a drink with him we might never be in this situation again and I want to enjoy it with him...he might not be here this time next year so f**k it and i went to the bar and got mysrlf a pint of cider. I had 2 pints that day and I convinced myself that that had been a one off kinda special circumstances...all b.s I know that now.

I didn't drink again for 6 weeks. I had organised a 18th birthday party for my daughter which had kinda stressed me out because I wanted it to be special for her. I rewarded myself by drink I g a whole bottle of jaegermiester.

Basically, from having those 2 pints of cider I had blurred that seperation and I was no longer recognising my a.v, it had me. It had me by telling me the same old lies as always and I was believing them... the last 2 weekends I've got completely smashed I can't get the alcohol down my throat quick enough. I've got a new job where I'm learning new skills and I've turned up proper hungover on the last 2 Monday's, brain dead. I will lose the job if this continue because I won't be able to do it.

My children haven't seen me drinking yet but if it gets worse, which it will, I won't be able to hide it from them.

I want to make an amended big plan which includes both alcohol and DRUGS. My beast is a beast of addiction...and doing the drugs I knew I was still feeding IT keeping IT alive but IT convinced me I could handle it. At the time that I made my big plan but decided to do drugs I didn't fully understand that it was my a.v telling me to do this but I do now.

So that's where I went wrong with my big plan I think...but any comments would be appreciated.

flame11

Just one more thing...as soon as the alcohol was back on the scene IT didn't want to do any more drugs!!!

GerandTwine

Alcohol is a drug. Using alcohol and mind altering drugs outside a prescription from a trusted doctor is what the Big Plan eliminates. It doesn't have to be "ammended".

If you want something it means you don't have it. What does it take to posess the Big Plan? Zero callories, zero movement, zero money, and less than one minute. And zero everything for it's cost into the infinite future. As to time spent? The Big Plan, more than any other recovery method, will give you back HUGE blocks of time that you would otherwise have wasted in unnecessary "sobriety maintenance" activities.

Algorithm

Alcohol is a drug, it just happens to be the oldest, historically speaking. The Big Plan of AVRT covers the use of all hedonic non-prescribed drugs. Drink and 'use' are synonymous as far as AVRT is concerned.

This has been covered in the main AVRT thread before.
The "R" in AVRT stands for recognition, not rebuttal, refutation, reasoning against, running away from, etc. There is no need to believe, or not believe, because anything that the Beast says is automatically dead wrong, even before it says it -- by declaration.

The Beast doesn't ultimately care too much what you feed it, as long as it is something that gets you good and buzzed. Time is on its hands with that scheme, as you've discovered, and it can work with that, until the time is right.

Of course not, it was just a Beast hole.

Algorithm

I would tend to agree here, GT, but it does help to address a common early stall tactic. The Beast accuses its host of incompetence to abstain, and usually other congenital defects as well, but also demands spoon-fed (preferably very esoteric) recovery wisdom on account of those alleged defects.

More will be revealed, as they say, but hopefully not just yet. Perhaps after some more arduous study and extensive, long term coaching sessions from others who are less defective. It can't be that simple, but you may eventually 'get it' someday, says the Beast.

In my mind, at least this temporary 'little plan' solution may get them reading the book, and perhaps their wheels turning as they read. Of course, their Beast will read along as well, for loopholes, as Kay's experience shows. In this case, her Beast found (or created) a loophole in the word 'drinking', as if it were different from 'using'.

The same loophole is found in the idea of a 'drug of choice' versus a 'drug of non-choice' (meaning choice #2 on down). This is simply the Beast trying to cut a deal which is very much in its long term interest.