Started reading Rational Recovery today.......
In AVRT, you will take a direct moral hit for becoming addicted, for maintaining the addition against your own better moral judgement, and for ending the addiction, immediately, all on you own, forever. There is no sterile robe of "disease victim" to protect you or explain away your future drinking. When you get started, you may even feel sick inside, but you will also understand those feelings and the meaning of abstinence. Some of those bad feelings will be regret or remorse for your past behaviour, and some will be grief for the loss of substance pleasure. there is no compensation due to you for any of this, even though hope for a better life may motivate your decision to abstain. Although your original family may have been imperfect, and you may have been mistreated, and society may have given you a rotten deal in some ways, your are not owed an apology or compensation, nor are you excused in any way for becoming addicted, for remaining addicted, or for any of your behaviour associated with your addiction. AVRT is entirely uninterested in you personal problems and life's troubles. In fact, there is no guarantee that your life will not become much worse following your decision to abstain. As an abstinent person, you may consider yourself just like anyone else, taking the hard knocks of life, finding out that life can be lonely at times, and taking risks to gain the good in life. When you feel your history of addiction is a handicap in remaining abstinent, or that you need more than your own resources to remain abstinent, you are simply hearing your Addictive Voice.
I like this guy a lot!
He makes so much sense, the only way to treat addiction is abstinence. Endlessly talking about life's problem or personal defects will never cure someone wanting to get drunk or high. He really blows traditional treatment out of the water!
I wish I'd read this a long time ago.