Originally Posted by
MyTimeNow 
... it brought back something to me from the book that just won't shake and it is so real to me, it frightens me.
Pages 63-65 they are having an imaginary conversation with a homeless person. She does everything to avoid accepting any help. She is not in denial, she knows full well what she is doing.
She makes her choice, declines help and it ends with Her prison is better than ours
That actually makes me weep. I feel myself that I have been in a prison for so many years. Ok, it's not death row, it's not even maximum security. I'm actually free to come and go as I choose.
So why do I keep choosing to return to my prison? Why won't I choose 'their' prison?
In "Rational Recovery The New Cure for Substance Addiction" by Jack Trimpey, the homeless woman dialogue is presented in
"Chapter 4 The Recovery Hall of Mirrors: Let's Shatter the Illusions" p. 54
The dialogue and what it means are at the end of
"Illusion 3- The state of addiction may be objectively determined or shown. This very serious error is made when chemical dependence is confused with substance abuse and substance addiction." p. 58
These three terms are NOT interchangeable. Here are the relevant parts of three definitions from the RR Dictionary in the back of the book:
Addiction. 1. Addiction is chemical dependence that exists against one's own better judgement and persists in spite of efforts to control or eliminate the use of the substance. Logically, since addiction is known only to the individual, it may not be "diagnosed" except by asking the individual. 2. Addicted people are not out of control in the usual sense of the word, but have reversals of intent that lead back to drinking or drugging. 3. Addiction exists only in a state of ambivalence, in which one strongly wants to continue drinking alcohol or using other drugs, but also wants to quit or at least reduce the painful consequences. With AVRT, recovery from addiction is a simple, mercifully brief undertaking. (See chemical dependence and substance abuse.)
Chemical dependence. 2. Chemical dependence (especially upon drugs and alcohol) is an individual liberty with known health risks and known personal disadvantages including regrettable behavior, social ostracism, relationship problems, divorce, unemployment, and imprisonment. Regardless of the content of prohibition laws and the best efforts of law enforcement and others who oppose chemical dependence, using alcohol and drugs for pleasure is a personal liberty that cannot realistically be controlled by others. (see substance abuse.)
Substance abuse. 2. Someone else's opinion about an individual's use of certain substances, as in, "Substance abuse does not presume addiction."
When I came to understand Addictive Voice Recognition Technique, these definitions were essential to my getting a good foundation for how I thought to myself and talked to others about AVRT.
I interpret the two prisons Trimpey is referring to from the context of the complete paragraph he wrote that includes that last sentence on p.65. (highlighting added)
"The impulse to regard chemical dependence as a mental illness justifying incarceration has been tried and abandoned because of the implications to a free society. We may strongly disagree with this woman's judgment that she is really free, and we may believe that what she calls freedom is a prison in which she will needlessly die, but the judgement is hers until she may be declared mentally incompetent. Her prison is better than ours."
Later in the book, PART II AVRT: The Book Course, has all the information needed to sort out the strong emotions evoked from reading about the homeless woman. Which emotions were really mine and which belonged to my Beast?
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As an abstainer, exercising my free will allows me to have a much more interesting and creative life than as a dependent drinker. Compared to when I was hooked on booze, as a permanent abstainer, there are so many more things I have imagined and can imagine doing in my life; and choosing to spend the time and effort to actually do them is what life is all about, to me. But I feel this is only half of the value of free will.
The other half of free will, to me, is having the ability to inhibit my behavior when various ideas come to mind that I conclude are impractical; and that happens a lot with me; and I like that I think that way. It's an essential part of my curiosity and broad view of the world. And when I take that inhibitory ability to the maximum, I know I have the capacity to decide many, many things that I will NEVER do. Drinking alcohol is one of them.
I came to realize that drinking alcohol actually reduced MY ability to use free will to its utmost, because it reduced my brain to operate at a subhuman level so often, and led me to spend so much time and effort on the insipid conniving of how to keep out of trouble when drunk.
When I made The Big Plan, I realized that by eliminating my ability to choose to drink, I was actually vastly increasing my opportunity to choose many other things. It was an easy trade off. I turned the drink on-off switch off and then smashed it with a sledge hammer, never to go on again.