Originally Posted by
AprilMay1895 
Can I ask whoever is using AVRT...was there a motivating factor that made you start using AVRT? Like, did something substantial happen in your life related to your alcohol abuse that initiated your desire to stop drinking immediately? As opposed to saying, you were active in your drinking, only slightly agitated with your drinking habits and thought you should maybe quit and one day you wandered into a book store, read the RR book and BAM, just stopped drinking out of nowhere for the next 5 years?
I'm wondering if there's something that you experienced or something that happened to you, that made you severely want to stop drinking and before you chose AVRT as your method. I guess in AA speak...(sometimes still the only language I know) I'd mean did you have a "spiritual experience" or "hit your bottom" before you decided to use AVRT as your recovery method?
My husband also used self-recovery similar to AVRT, like I did, and he up and quit drinking immediately and never drank again. This was over 20 years ago, and he has never had a drop of alcohol since, despite a heavy family history of heavy alcohol abuse, including his mother starting to feed him wine with he was a teenager. He drank for probably 30 years total, daily. He is now 63 firm in his resolve that is a non-drinker.
For him, it was a nosebleed. Seriously. He'd been drinking like usual for years and years, trying to quit here and there, succeeding for a few weeks, then BAM back to the wine. One day, he got a nosebleed. I mean A NOSEBLEED. He ended up at the ENT doctor's outpatient surgical clinic getting packing in his nose. His nosebleed lasted 4 days before it stopped. He lost a LOT of blood.
There was just something about that nosebleed. I don't think he believes that drinking made him get the nosebleed. I think it was just a wakeup call that we are all mortal. That he could die. And he didn't want to die a drunk.
FT