Originally Posted by DrivenHeart85

I've had some major beast activity lately too, it just started to settle down yesterday finally after I did some re-reading of the list of how the AV presents itself and went back to Carr's book too. The first snowfall was what triggered the activity. With snow comes winter, with winter comes months of depression and my Beast knows last February I drank and left AA and 8 months of sober time because of the depression, also because I had various hang ups with the program. But anyway, I had what I call the "Beast death grip" on my brain on Tuesday night but reminded myself that being sad has nothing to do with alcohol, therefore it's my addiction being a *****. I think it was doing a bit of the addicto-depressive thing too because the depression that went along with it was way out of proportion. I saw the snow and just wanted to break down sobbing...that's not normal. Anyway, I now remind the Beast, "I will never drink again and will never change my mind, no matter how awful winter gets or how depressed I become."

I've also started trying to hammer home the moral thing. Every time I see myself in my mind with booze (typically my AV showing me what it wants me to do) I remind myself that that is completely immoral, weak behavior and that I'd be the scum of the earth if that's how I chose to deal with life. I tell myself I'd be nothing more than trailer trash, wasting space on the planet and turning to alcohol to "cope with life" is an insult to whatever force that created me. Harsh? Yes. Helpful? Yes. Somewhere down the line of addiction I became tolerant of the idea of alcohol abuse...the immoral aspect that RR tries to get across is helpful to me.