jkb, hello.
i'm not one who worked much with the AV concept, so it's best if i don't get in your way on that.
but i want to be clear on this point: when i talked about thinking i needed clarity on "the why of it", it refers to the "why" of my drinking. i told myself that i couldn't quit/stay sober until and unless i knew why i drank. see, looking back i see that as trying desperately to find a reason that was rational. well, turned out in a real way i drank and kept drinking because i'm a drunk. i know how that might sound: like no reason at all!
(i'm not talking about triggers here, but about causes)
when i talk of "the choice-thing",jkb, it's shorthand for a very long drawn-out torturous process of stubbornly trying to understand what happened to my power in regards to the decisions i made over and over. everywhere else in my life, i can stick to my decisions. and the little reading i did about BP and AVRT sounded to me like the BP was yet one more decision, and so what use was it to me to make one more? but RobbyR's way sees it more like the intention against which you can put any "voice" urging you to drink, or trying to convince you that you can moderate now, or that just one more time will get it out of your system or any other such nonsense.
for me, finally waking up to "oh **** i'm a drunk", knowing it unequivocally, has been the turnaround. grappling with the choice-thing was ongoing after that. took me a couple of years to come to a place with that where i had peace with what i figured out. i really do think there are no short-cuts for that one. and not being an AA member and having all my life balked at anything suggesting i did not have utterly perfect control over what i let pass my lips made it that much tougher. but yes, i am powerless over alcohol. knowing that freed me from battling, lifted the ambivalences and the driven-ness.
i think we all have to come to our own knowing it for ourselves; it comes from inside.
but of course that's an opinion
you're confused...confused is okay, you know...it beats certainty a lot of the time. once we're certain of something we so often end up vehemently opposing anything else...
reminds me of something i heard somewhere else once: we relapse because we already know how not to relapse!
rambling on again...the "choice-thing" is one of my favorite topics, neverendingly fascinating because it defies all reason.....you should never encourage me!