I believe what the avrt 'people' mean when 'they' say stay away from "recovery groups " are those groups that treat 'recovery' as a daily reprieve from alcohol. Or that you must do x,y,z or else you will relapse. When making a 'big plan' it is a total commitment. Never again. Whereas some 'recovery groups' do not believe it is possible to make such a commitment. I do not know how all recovery groups approach this. However, the premise of 'just for today' or 'one day at a time' implicates that tomorrow is always a possibility. When you make a big plan you completely take the day after tomorrow out of the equation. Never again means just that. You don't use any excuse to drink be it 'I have a disease', 'my dog died' or failing to 'triggers'. You don't drink no matter what happens. And get on with your life. If you need help with other aspects of your personality, mental health or whatever, you must follow through with that. Stopping drinking does only one thing. It removes alcohol from the equation so that you can further improve your existence. How you go about that is up to you.
If you read further into the avrt web site, you are offered a monthly subscription to join a forum of like minded avrt types. Or a quarterly or longer. But as I read it, the option of 'longer' than a month was if you really need more. I suppose it is used as a matter of further grasping the concept and to help educate a person further on the method and how to practice it. I do not know since I never felt the need to subscribe to the avrt forum or purchase any of the literature. I did the crash course and it made total sense to me. I did not need to go any further into it.
I see mesa man posted as I was going through this. His response to 'why use this forum?' could not be improved by anything I could add.
I will add for clarification that even though I made a big plan, I still battled with the AV for some time. And I did things to distract myself in the early going - I drank alcoholically for almost 40 years. Near the end I'd go through over a gallon of hi-test a week along with a case of beer every couple days or one a day when I didn't have to work. Shot and chaser all day long.
So just making a big plan didn't remove the desire to drink - or the habit of drinking with every activity. I was able to recognize it for what it was - the AV. I removed myself from a situation or took breaks. Spending time on SR was a very great help to me. And I avoided people/places/things in the early go until I was strong enough. My social life changed dramatically and it's still not as it was. I have no desire to spend my time with a bunch of drunks any more.
One of the greatest benefits of SR to me was seeing people continually relapse and struggle. Even people with several years of sobriety were/are relapsing. The more I read about people relapsing the stronger my resolve to never drink again became.
Going on two years without a drink and I very rarely if ever even think about having a drink. My AV has given up, but I will always be aware of it if it decides to come out of hibernation. I have no desire to drink and I'm able to socialize with heavy drinkers now, not that I often do. In fact I was in a bar/restaurant a couple weeks ago and I didn't even notice people drinking or the booze on the shelf. When I first got sober I noticed it everywhere. Now, it doesn't even exist to me. And that is a fact. I don't worry about the day after tomorrow - or any other day.
I don't drink.