GFCO, It sounds like you've learned enough AVRT to recognize that you don't have to limit yourself to a conditional, powerless-over-alcohol type of sobriety, and that you have every capacity to plan your own permanent abstinence using your concept of good and evil with the devil acting for what RR calls the Beast. Congratulations on that.
In addition, it also seems like you are enjoying using the 12 step spiritual way of life concepts for personal growth purposes unconnected to the issue of to-drink-or-not-to-drink.
And, finally, it appears you are enjoying giving feedback to others about their recoveries, and how you're changing your life.
Speaking more generally, now, since AVRT has been taught here the last 8 months, I think what GFCO has done about her addiction, and is doing in the SR community about her personal growth is not unusual, and will become even more commonplace as time passes and AVRT settles in alongside the other programs and methods used here.
I haven't been here long enough to see how people "graduate" from SR and get on with other things, but I'm interested because I think separation for positive reasons is something that isn't addressed very often, anywhere. Of course, in the 12 step approach, one is never expected to separate, so positive separation is not an issue there. But even without AVRT's presence, most people do drift away from "the ongoing process of recovery" for different reasons. So, in a way, it is an issue for everyone.
AVRT demands a separation from "needing" any recovery community, eventually even an AVRT teaching community, because AVRT isn't difficult to learn by itself. Needing a recovery community is the AV. This is what I mean by a positive separation from institutionalized recovery.
So, why am I here? I recovered decades ago. Well, I really like AVRT, and after watching the AVRT threads for a few weeks, I wanted to join in, decided I had the time, and did so early January.
I'm also aware that RR encourages this sort of involvement. Here's from their World Services webpage -
"...we are now inviting individuals interested in bringing AVRT-based recovery to their own communities to become Advocates for independent recovery,... "
Notice how I mentioned "AVRT isn't difficult to learn BY ITSELF" a few sentences ago? In the SR community, it is being taught alongside other programs. This, I think, gives learning AVRT an advantage and a disadvantage.
The advantage is that one doesn't have to go far at all to run into AV activity of every variety imaginable. The disadvantage is that it takes a lot of work to keep the TECHNIQUE of AVR correctly described and taught, and I must say TU has an amazing skill and endurance to pull it off so well.
So, what about this positive separation? People are supposed to leave, to "graduate" from learning the AVRT "way" out of addiction, as opposed to learning "The Way" of life of "recovery". This leaving happens very naturally. But, now, on the other hand, people who have learned AVRT are being encouraged to stick around and help spread the message of its existence and its method.
This finally leads me to a suggestion. That there be a thread called something like The AVRT Recovery EXIT - where people who've done it, can post their farewells in a positive, celebratory, getting-on-with-real-life fashion. Some people will naturally leave SR. For those of us who want to stick around and teach, we could still post to the AVRT Recovery EXIT thread a farewell to our addiction and struggle, and confirmation of our Big Plan, and that we are "graduating" to the PhD level (Phormer Drunk), and continue posting as an AVRT (and/or other program) advocate.
Who knows, it could even become popular to the point of attracting more people like myself onto SR to post their having exited recovery in the past and their helping teach some AVRT on SR for a while.
To conclude, I think an AVRT Recovery EXIT thread would also give folks like GFCO an opportunity to mark the time clearly between the end of her struggle with future drinking and the beginning of her choice of what ideas to use to enhance her life as a permanently abstinent person, even if they are 12 step ideas. The way I look at it, GFCO already has ended her addiction and has decided to continue posting for reasons other than helping her to not drink, and she is far from being alone in that situation.
