RobbyRobot

Awesome. Thanks.

My experience is I do know I'm a recovered alcoholic. I have no doubts my alcoholism illness is in remission. My sureness is based on my drinking experiences, and non-drinking experiences. I personally don't use the "can't quit or stop drinking" thinking to define my alcoholism. I prefer to use a quality of life barometer as a measure of my alcoholism existence. I quit drinking because I couldn't both live and drink. I quit because I didn't want to die drunk. If I could have not quit, and still had a life of quality to live, I never would have quit in the first place. And there is the rub - what is quality of life?

It's all about personal choices, personal responsibilities, personal experiences., etc. The bottom line, for me, is I decide what life I want and need to live to be me, myself, and I. It's not really the responsibility of any one else to decide for me what life means to me. Sounds very obvious, stated out like that, eh?! Surprisingly, a lot of folk struggle with how to live their life after quitting drinking. Initially, a struggle is inevitable. Struggling for months and then even into years though, on how to live a happy, non-drinking life, means to me anyways, that something elemental and essential in quality is missing from within that struggling persons life.

I was agnostic when I quit. Now, I'm a Christian. What happened?

Life happened. My life. I apparently needed a defined spiritual wealth for me to successfully enjoy a quality life, so I changed to ensure I received what I wanted: a quality life of my own spiritual understanding. Who knew? Well, certainly some others knew for themselves. Me, I couldn't have been more surprised that I became an active-in-the-present spiritual person, lol.

My simplified practice of AA program allowed for me to explore my spiritual awareness with an understanding of my alcoholism all at the same time. What's not to like? I was being satisfied and being deeply introspective all at the same time. Awesome. I really didn't care what the process was to enable me to live a quality life. I really just cared about living that life. For real. Not anymore wanting it, but actually living it. So, here I am, actually living it, and been living it for decades now too. Awesome.

So, like I said in an earlier post to our discussion, AVRT allows for unlimited personal choices going forward after quitting. I myself don't use AVRT to make better choices in my life. Quitting is the complete cure for my past drinking, is my understanding of AVRT. No need to be an alcoholic. No need to understand alcoholism illness. Just quit. Get on with life.

My AV is always about future drinking, and nothing but future drinking. I don't subscribe to "subtle AV" machinations. Complications arise with my calling everything/anything AV that personally disturbs or confuses me. Doing so would, for me, create doubt in my ability to be indifferent to my AV. My Beast would like nothing more then to create doubt and fear within me about my ability to practice AVRT.

I suppose some people think themselves clever in describing their "subtle AV", but for me, they are actually not being indifferent to it if they are still having discussions on just how subtle is subtle.

I recognise my AV so that I CAN in fact be indifferent, in real present time, and not to have a discussion about how I'm outsmarting my Beast. My Beast is as dumb as a bag of apples. No great accomplishment there, yeah? I don't allow IT to tell me I may miss whatever. I miss nothing. I have no fears of missing anything either. And my being more then 30+ years of successfully not drinking proves me out. At least to my Beast, and I. Confusion about and between me and IT has long ago been settled. Its a done deal already. I suggest you quickly don't get caught up with the kind of thinking that invites confusion into your non-drinking lifestyle. Life is hard enough without us beating ourselves up with doubts.

Anyways. Indifference and disassociation with my AV is the desired result, and is the ONLY reason I continue to practice AVRT.

So, I suggest you confine the collective voices into a separation of yourself, and your AV. Your AV is by definition any thought, idea, feeling etc that leads to future drinking. Everything else is NOT AV.

I've made some strong suggestions. No problem if its not for you. Its me sharing with YOU. If I'm not making sense, that's okay, let's discuss more, or let it go, and we both move on, no problem. And of course, if it does make sense, then let's discuss that too, lol.

Thanks, HRB. I appreciate your discussions in this thread no end.