Originally Posted by
Algorithm 
Perhaps, but people sometimes quit drinking, and keep smoking cigarettes, for example. I'm sure that the nicotine excites the Beast, on some level, just as prescribed painkillers do. There is a small "buzz/high" as a side effect from the pain killers, after all. It will give the Beast a little oxygen, but one need not go out and drink because of that.
I believe the above is all Addictive Voice thinking. It supports the idea that if you quit alcohol/drugs, but not nicotine, then you are somehow feeding C-rations to your Beast of alcohol/drugs. I've always believed that AVRT defines a completely separate "Smokey the Beast" for nicotine because, while nicotine is severely physically damaging, it is behaviorally and mind altering on the level of caffeine and sugar, not alcohol/mind altering drugs.
Also, the above is AV because the Beast goal of getting me to easily acquiesce into the role of a medical patient in pain and need of pain killers is completely passed over unrecognized in trying to justify the marriage vow analogy. And we all know the seriousness of pain killer addiction growth here in the U.S.
Originally Posted by Algorithm
I don't have an argument against the priest/nun analogy, GT, but I don't think many people can personally imagine that scenario, although they may have seen it, which is probably good enough. They can probably imagine shorter periods of personal celibacy, however.
I was speaking more to the fact that it's not nearly as difficult to restrain a persistent drive as is so often suggested, if you know what you are doing. There is simply no need to root out desire in order to comfortably abstain.
AVRT is not about cushioning people into scenarios they can imagine. It is about informing people that they have the complete and instantaneous capacity to immediately launch themselves into permanent abstention using a very simple pledge that society has spent 175 years indoctrinating them into thinking they cannot succeed at; of deciding to stop doing ON THEIR OWN something they haven't imagined how they could stop doing. Why continue to pamper the Beast?
Imagining shorter periods is what the problem is all about. All Beast.
I will very comfortably abstain for an imagined short period after a nice time of having sex with Mabel. Which has nothing to do with AVRT.