Originally Posted by
GerandTwine 
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.
GT
Great post! The part I quoted is especially relevant to me. Sometimes I find myself coming to SR a little less frequently, and that's because I don't "need" it often. Occasionally it's good to read all the negative posts, the ones describing the agony and desperation of being a drunk. Obviously I do this not because I enjoy suffering but remind myself that this was my life, too. It's easy to forget, once you're sober, just how miserable the merry-go-round of moving from drunk to hungover really was.
Of course, I also come here to offer support to the newer folks, and the long time members who're going thru a rough time. To me the highest goal of a person is to recognize oneself in others, to see the essential humanity that we all share. Where that scared, lonely person is today is where I was yesterday. The good folks here helped me when I needed it, and it's my moral duty to pay that forward and help the next group of people trying to change.
I've found AVRT to be the tool that saved my soul. I don't subscribe to the permanent recovery notion, either. I have no problem with AA or the like for those who need it or find that it works for them. But I don't think there's a higher power guiding my fate and I won't give myself permission to relapse.