Originally Posted by
hypochondriac 
While you're on the question of books... What is The Art of AVRT like? As a complete newcomer to recovery I found the anti AA stuff in the new cure not very useful and would love to read a book which stands on it's own regarding AVRT techniques. Are any of them like that?
RR: The New Cure does stand on its own, it just has some other material in there as well. The first 89 pages of
The New Cure are more or less deprogramming from recovery group and addiction treatment methods. Part II (pages 91-240) is the actual AVRT book course. Part III (pages 241-322) deals with how to help an addicted family member, gambling, and the politics of recovery. Part III also has a transcript of an AVRT session (pages 274-291) that is definitely worth reading, even if you don't care for anything else in that section.
Though I personally did not mind any of the "anti-AA" material in The New Cure, and find it interesting that people who do mind can't just skip ahead (there is a table of contents), I can say that
The Art of AVRT ramps things up from disagreement to true "AA bashing". It covers some things that were left out of TNC, most of which have been discussed in this thread, but if I were a gambling man, I would bet that you wouldn't like it too much. I would also bet that you put the RR book down very early on, without reading the good stuff, so here are some questions for you, so that you have an opportunity to correct me if I am wrong.
- Have you read Part II of The New Cure (Pages 91-240)?
- Have you read the transcript on pages 274-291?
- Have you read through this discussion thread?
If you haven't read any of these things, I suggest that you do. If you have read them, perhaps you can tell us what didn't make sense to you? We'll then know how best to help you regarding AVRT.