GerandTwine

For me, the Big Plan took away that fear of not recognizing the AV. Even right now, as I "anticipate potential scenarios", the Big Plan actually delivers a double barreled whammy to the Beast and its AV.

First barrel - I know I cannot retract my Big Plan and my Beast knows it, too. End of story.

Second barrel - When I think maybe I'm not sure if some thought or feeling is my AV, all I have to do to find out is repeat the Big Plan slowly to myself - "I ... will ... never ... drink ... again!" and it invariably flushes out the AV from the rest of me. It's like putting on infra-red goggles to light up the heat sources in darkness. Yep, there it is. One particular type of AV is the lack of confidence at being successful with a Big Plan. Yep, there it is.

When I quit for good, the loss of that unique deep pleasure of drinking alcohol created a set of emotions, thoughts, and dreams that fit the description of a grief response. There was a visceral sadness of death there in the background that occasionally attempted a resurrection, but I had experimented enough to know this time there was NO going back.

When I would wake up from drinking dreams about a year or two after quitting, I would remember things as I slowly woke up that I could not access any other way. That made me realize there was a whole bank of memories inside my head that was fading away. As a binge drinker, the whole thirteen year long life of altered-state-me had been running parallel to the unaltered-state-me, and IT was dying and I was experiencing IT dying, but I refused to resurrect IT.

While I remember a lot of emotions and self-talk around "anticipating potential drinking scenarios" soon after quitting, it didn't take too long before I was able to immediately shoot them all down within seconds of their coming to mind, and today I find it laughable that my Beast of booze/drugs could ever gain a foothold in my thinking.