Originally Posted by
Gavinandnikki 
You are correct, I am not uncomfortable in making life or death decisions in my work. It is what I do, it is my job and I am well trained.
BUT..... I do not actively kill anyone or anything knowingly, except insects.
My Beast has always been around - my best party bud - I guess even better than my husband used to be. Beast kept me company high or low, happy or sad. I need to be really, really sure before I kill him - and is it not interesting that my Beast is male? Why is it not female? Is the Beast always male?
I feel like I am in a transition time where I am getting used to seeing Beast as enemy and not friend. Ultimately, I think I need to get to the point where I just don't give a sh*t about him - then his death will be very anti-climactic.
Pam
The Beast is often the same sex, but quite frequently the opposite or neutral, I don't know which is most prevalent.
There's an important distinction in AVRT that may make it easier to confront the Beast as an enemy.
The Beast is only the desire to drink, it is not you under the influence. Once the effect of alcohol sets in, the Beast evaporates into nothingness along with the real you until your body finally flushes the alcohol from your system.
When I quit drinking, I felt grief over the loss of me being under the influence, not of me wanting to drink or figuring out how to get away with it. The feeling of being drunk and the memories I had acquired while under the influence were somehow a personal possession that I was ambivalent about giving up. AVRT, of course, sorts all that out.
I then had a period of drinking dreams that caused me to realize that there were memories I could only access while under the influence. When the dreams stopped, those were gone, too. By that time, I was perfectly OK with the loss, no ambivalence. But my AV was still there. For a while, my AV created in the back of my mind an anxiety that I had actually failed at my Big Plan, even though I hadn't. When I focused on it, it evaporated in a few seconds, and eventually never came back.