I wonder if the preference for reasoning versus absolutism comes down to temperament. It is often said that addicted people are "musturbators" - they think in absolutes such as "I must do this" or "I have to do this." Indeed, CBT/REBT is in large part a way to address these types of irrational beliefs, and is therefore a large component of SMART Recovery.
As Tom Horvath, President of SMART recovery wrote once,
"So at a typical SMART Recovery meeting, in addition to members doing their CBAs (cost benefit analysis), they are also doing their ABCs (Activating event, Belief, emotional and/or behavioral Consequence). They are watching out for musturbation, awfulizing, and catastrophizing."
In my case, I simply could not get past this. I knew that I simply
had to quit drinking, and no amount of analysis of my irrational beliefs was going to change my mind on this. There was no way that I was going to accept that this "musturbation," as pertained to my addiction, was an irrational belief, that I had to discard it, or that I had to think better of myself or stop damning myself. To do so would simply produce a self-accepting drunk ("don't be so hard on yourself, it's only a slip, you're not a bad person"), which would only lead to further drinking.
Experience also showed me that to even contemplate the reasons for drinking versus not drinking while having an urge was doomed to failure. Before I was even half-way through my Cost-Benefit Analysis, I would be three-quarters of the way to the liquor store. I was at one point able to do this, but by the end, any "thinking" about why I shouldn't drink would inevitably lead to some ridiculous rationalization for drinking, or at the very least not produce a sufficient reason not to drink which would deter me.
This is excerpted from a Jack Trimpey / Albert Ellis Debate (1994) on AVRT, which pretty much sums up the difference between AVRT and a "reasoning" approach, in my opinion.
"AVRT declares that the sole cause of all substance addiction is the Addictive Voice, which is the cognitive-emotive expression of an immutable, substance-specific appetite for the pleasure produced by those substances. The Addictive Voice is accepted as a permanent feature of one's psyche, partitioned off from the "true self" through a number of simple dissociative techniques, and then observed rather than acted upon...
In AVRT, there are no conditions for abstinence or for relapse, nor are there any triggers, warning signs of relapse, psychiatric diagnoses, or thresholds of tolerance, that suffice to justify or explain why one would choose to self-intoxicate. AVRT is a mental sorting skill - a filter - that prevents any further use of alcohol or drugs, regardless of "disposing factors." It is completely independent from all philosophies, schools of psychology, and religious doctrines. Indeed, those epistemologies and methodologies, when posed as a primary means to achieve abstinence, may be properly identified as the Addictive Voice itself...
AVRT creates a combative, oppositional attitude patterned after the Addictive Voice itself, and it is not a contemplative, reasoning, approach like REBT."