Hi Thrifty,
When I quit drinking, either AVRT wasn't around yet or I just didn't know about it (20+years ago). I don't know exactly how many years I drank, but it had to be close to 20. During the latter 10 years of it, I had made mulitple attempts to be a "normal" drinker, and I few times I managed to pause my drinking. Like for two extended periods of time during pregnancy, I didn't drink at all. Since it wasn't all that hard for me to do that, I figured I must not be a "problem drinker".
However, the final few years, I really had a tough time of it. Eventually, I decided I was NEVER going to be a non-drinker, so I just set about making sure I knew where to get alcohol and just didn't go places that didn't have it. It wasn't long before I realized that alcohol was running my life and not me. I didn't like it.
After a BUNCH of failed attempts to quit, which only seemed to drive up my quantity of drinking every day (lots of "last chances" to drink, ya know?), the LAST time I tried to do it, it took. I guess by then, I really had had enough. I actually bought alcohol that day (my story is elsewhere here, the "cold duck method"), but I decided I was not going to drink it. After a few days of NOT drinking the bottle I brought home, I began to consider myself a "non-drinker".
I realized later on, looking back at that, that what "the difference" was between that time and all others was my self identification as a "non-drinker". Once I began to consider myself in that way, everything change. Every decision not to drink was no longer a question or a challenge, or a deprivation. I was just a non-drinker. No questions. No arguments. Period. End of story.
Much later, only recently, I discovered AVRT and realized that was exactly what I had been doing years ago. In 2010, I used my version of AVRT once again to quit opiates. I foolishly did not recognize opiate addiction in myself during rapidly escalating osteoarthritis, torn meniscal ligaments in both knees, and finally double total knee replacements. Once again, I figured I was going to be a lifelong opiate user, just like I had once thought I would just always be a drinker. Once gain, I realized the drug was running my life. I liked it no better in 2010 than I did with alcohol a long time back.
So, I quit. I decided (after MANY attempts at tapering off, which drove up my use much like alcohol once did), hell with this --- I am a non-opiate user, just like I am a non-drinker. No questions. No arguments. Period. End of Story. Again.
I must say that for me, opiates were more difficult to kick than alcohol was, but both times it was not easy. But my fall-back position as a non-user of either opiates or alcohol made every decision a non-decision.
Maybe you aren't there yet, and maybe you are. The whole point of something like AVRT is the finality of the decision. You are either a drinker or you aren't.
I chose to be a non-drinker a long time ago, and eventually it "takes". Don't beat yourself up if you haven't made the decision yet. But do take it seriously when and if yo do make that decision, and really mean what you say.
The Addictive Voice doesn't have to be "annoying". Don't give it more power than it deserves. It is a normal shouting out of your basal urges that are not used to being ignored, so of course they will sound loud. They are only thoughts and do not need to be acted upon. That part is up to YOU. The less you fight with your own thoughts, the quieter they become. Mine are still there, too. But they are only noise, and I can handle noise here and there.
Good luck. Read that book. Get a good grasp of it. Make sure that when you make "the decision" that you mean it. I don't know if reading about it ahead of doing it would have made me act sooner than I did. Maybe. I just know that it is a very powerful thing, our ego. And once I self-identified as a non-drinker, and non-opiate user, I protect my self identity like my life depends on it. And I think it does.
FT