Static Time

This concept was introduced in Rational Recovery: The New Cure, but when coupled with the probability game, it takes on greater meaning. Briefly, we know that the Beast, an appetite for toxic pleasure originating in the midbrain, is timeless. The concept of time is neocortical, i.e., known only to you, but the Beast has little difficulty exploiting ideas it cannot conceive. The basic strategy of the Beast is premised on the idea, “Then is different from now.” For example , when you attempt to formulate a Big Plan for lifetime abstinence, it will echo, “Yes, you may say that now, but I’ll get you sooner or later (then).” Falling into its trap, you may feel insecure, wondering if this may be so, that at some time in the future, when conditions are much different, you may change your mind and drink or use.

Probabilities

At this juncture, you may feel your confidence level rising and falling, say on a scale of 0% to 100% confidence that you will never drink again. Your Beast will suggest that you pick a number, any number, between zero and a hundred to represent how confident you are that you will remain perfectly abstinent for the rest of your life. Let’s say you rate your confidence at 90%. “Fine, you may think,” that’s a lot better than feeling hopeless, as I did last week, when I was hopeless about salvaging my life from addiction.” You may hope that as time goes by, and as you successfully practice AVRT, your confidence will grow, and your confidence will keep rising and eventually you will reach 100% confidence. But this is only your Beast, playing a game with you.

The game is similar to roulette, in which your number may come up against heavy odds. The Beast accepts your concept of spacial time as if the calendar is the betting board. It places its bets on now (akin to the green 0’s, if you are familiar), plus other squares representing those special times when you would find drinking irresistible and would change your mind, e.g., New Year‘s Eve, while in the back country, when a loved one dies, weddings, celebrations, times of boredom or misery, etc. It is hoping that its number comes up, and that you will lose. In this probabilities game, the Beast has the odds, because the game is never over. When you rate your confidence at, say, 90%, you may as well erase the “9” and call that the new zero point, with the same ten intervals as before. As long as any chance of drinking exists, a plan to drink exists in the present moment, and the Beast is placated. It will hardly stir as you play the high stakes betting game, each waiting for the pea to fall on some future date. You stand by, only hoping that your Beast’s number won’t come up.

In AVRT, the practice of static time allows you to know that you will not drink under different circumstances. Since there is no time, but only the present moment throughout life, there is no statistical game board for speculating on the next drink. Since there is only one eternal moment, the now in which everything exists and occurs, there is no difference between any imaginary “then“ and now. When this concept of static time is appreciated, the Beast has been met on its own turf, and it suddenly becomes easy to say, with perfect, 100% confidence, “I know that I will never drink in the present moment, because it takes no effort to do nothing right now.”

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Excerpted from The Journal of Rational Recovery,
Vol. 9, Iss. 4, March-April, 1997, Page 26

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