I enjoy seeing people getting good at the T of R'ing their AV
Hi Jess,
I absolutely LOVE being an abstainer AND that I've been out of the addiction recovery world for so many years.
I know other people like being that way, too, and there are a LOT of us - a sort of recovered-silent-majority of abstainers everywhere.
The reason we're so silent is because there's no good personal reason to out ourselves as Ph.ormer D.runks.
But there is the altruistic reason - the desire to help other people and society as a whole.
As I see it, AVRT is the shortest way out of both addiction AND recovery, and I have that altruistic desire to see others at least know about AVRT and what it really is.
I believe there are huge economic and big-brother-type forces in our service oriented society that are geared towards keeping people IN recovery for the rest of their lives.
In the last seventeen months of my posting here on SR, I've had more Beast activity than in the previous seventeen years. Not to worry, that Beast activity has simply made me smile and chuckle a little.
I post here to try and keep AVRT as un-mutated as possible.
And I enjoy seeing people getting good at the T of R'ing their AV, such as yourself.
I also enjoy the gradual awareness that so-and-so who used AVRT to quit for good is not posting any more.
That's the expected result of becoming a self-determined permanent abstainer.
I assume the people who do get AVRT and remain posting here on SR are doing it for one or a combination of several reasons.
1- A desire to refine and get better at AVRT in their own head using SR feedback
2- Altruist desire to help others and to get better at giving AVRT feedback to others
3- Anxiety about their Big Plan (which is Beast activity); the feeling they have to keep posting to not drink.
It's become clear to me that understanding AVRT is pretty basic, and that the greatest hurdles are the Institutionalized Addictive Voice all around us in "popular" AV beliefs.
So, giving feedback about the AV in written discussion is fairly straight forward AVRT, and SR is an ideal format for learning AVRT.
The part of AVRT that does not work so straight-forwardly here on SR has to do with the Big Plan - "I will never drink again."
The Big Plan exists for anyone to use and complete quite quickly - but only once in their lifetime. That's the clear logic of it.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to truly know whether anyone else has really made the Big Plan.
What the Beast loves to do with this dilemma, is to then suggest that I, the person who made the plan, ALSO do not really know whether or not I really did it. No way. I've been trying for years to get anyone to teach me how to lie to myself, to no avail. SO, it is ALSO impossible for me to NOT know if I made the Big Plan to not let alcohol into my body. I must know. Therefore, having made a Big Plan, I know absolutely, there will never be alcohol in my blood again. Any anxiety about that is simply residual futility of the AV.
GT