Originally Posted by
GerandTwine 
The particular Technique of AVR I used with the scotch-on-the-rocks is called SHIFTING. The intention of SHIFTING is to, yes, draw out and create some AV. That very doubt you mention is AV. I couldn't even feel any doubt.
I knew MY absolute detachment from the drink, and then I intentionally tried to recognize ITs single-minded demand to get me to drink it. Well, it was hardly there at all. It did remind me of dank dark barrooms with pool tables. But no ambivalence. And since I can't remember the pleasurable sensation of being even slightly under the influence, let alone drunk, there was no "appetite" pressure.
For me it's the same with pot. I had a strange pot using dream not too many years ago, and when it got to the point in the dream where I smoked, the sensation of being high didn't happen the way it used to in my dreams decades ago. Instead I just felt huge fatigue and slightly dizzy, like my brain was trying to recreate the high sensation, but it simply couldn't. It had been too long ago.
Yeah, I know about SHIFTING. I'll comment on that in a bit in another post in this thread. There is alot there to cover, lol.
Originally Posted by GT
What you describe above reminds me of your dedication to the recovery group movement and what in AVRT is called the "institutionalized Addictive Voice". The recovery group movement, in making sobriety a group project, tends to leave in place one's doubt about their alone being capable of not drinking, while in AVRT that doubt is exposed and dismissed (like with the Shifting exercise I did). That may be where your sense that the Shifting I tried to do with the scotch-on-the-rocks was a sort of vanity on my part. I can see that. But I believe that shifting exercise proves the potency of AVRT in both solving the problem and allowing the PhD (Phormer Drunk) to put the addiction behind them and get on with their own way of life.
The Technique of Recognizing the Addictive Voice is brutal against the desire to drink/use again. When people use the laser focus of the RT to expose the AV, it can sometimes be misinterpreted by an onlooker as being condescending, vain, mean, any number of adjectives. But hopefully, with further understanding, those adjectives get dropped.
GT
Well, here again, you got me wrong. I'm not dedicated now, nor was I ever, to the recovery group movement. I'm always a complete maverick within that scene. Sure I have graduated and completed the Twelve Steps. Sure I call myself an alcoholic as defined by AA. I use the Twelve Steps the same as I use AVRT -- a means to and end for desired results. Another lifestyle choice, as it were. However, just like choosing to be spiritual doesn't equate to mean I also choose to be religious, so too can you not simply equate my prior and ongoing experience with the program of AA as being in support of the group recovery movement.
MAVERICK simply more realistically defines me in so many things...
I don't personally support organised treatment modalities. I'm all about personal recovery and being recovered. The thing is, is I also don't have any ax to grind against them though either. My approach and experience with such things as organised religion and organised treatments for alcoholism is/are simply 'live and let live' .
Can't really say more here, because AA and 12 Step programs are off limits in this forum, and I not only respect that, I agree with the off limits rules.
I just said enough to give accurate information as to my true experiences in answer to your statement charging me that I'm a supporter of group-think methodologies.
I really don't care either way. I take what I need/want, and I'm on my own way there after.
Yeah.
