Originally Posted by
zenchaser 
Hey everyone. So I had a couple of moments in Cuba where I tangled with my beast. The first one I felt myself use the shifting technique, I actually had a beer in my hands and I felt myself move between my beast's very strong desire to drink it and my true self's desire to remain abstinent. I absolutely experienced what Trimpy called vertigo when I reached out and took it, the man offered it to me and I didn't even think about it. As I was standing there I was aware of the fact that I was doing the shifting technique and I allowed all the thoughts to happen, and with relief, I handed the beer off to my bf. It felt like a test and afterward my AV was quiet. IT popped up here and there..... for instance, my bf and I had spanish coffees, but his had alcohol and IT suggested that I should have a taste of his to see if it tasted better. Silly things like that.
Until Friday when I realized that I had accidentally already ingested alcohol by ordering that virgin cocktail that was no virgin. I'll be honest my beast got the better of me in that moment. I obviously need more practice or else I'm not doing it right because once that happened for a few minutes I was not in control or at least I didn't feel like I was. It did feel like my beast pounced on me. I recovered quickly and stopped but there was a moment where I was going to go balls to the wall. I can't get the moment off my mind..... I picked that drink back up and had some more of it. It kills me because I was feeling so good about staying sober and not white knuckling it. It wasn't like I went out to the store and bought myself a 6 pack and reversed my BP or sat down at the bar and ordered myself a drink. It was a mistake that I handled poorly for a minute.... but that split second decision meant something to me. *** ya know.
Once I come back to my senses my AV quieted right down again, there haven't been any real cravings. I didn't want to drink at the time of the incident and I don't want to now. But I don't want something like that to happen to me again. How do I protect myself? I know that that was a unique situation, being in a foreign country ordering virgin cocktails isn't going to happen again anytime soon. But what if the line between me and my beast gets blurred like that again?
I know how frustrating it is to drink a little booze and not get a good buzz on. I can imagine how nice and familiar it felt with that nice warm feeling in the throat as it goes on down. "Yes! There it is again. That warmth before the beautiful assault of pleasure."
Your thread from yesterday on the alcoholism forum "No, gracias, no bebo" describes with a little more detail what you were thinking and feeling around your drinking some more alcohol. And it sounds to me like there's some real anger within you that "You might never drink again." And it is getting expressed in disguise as fear - fear that you can no longer act upon a "healthy urge" to get wasted on alcohol. Why tell your BF "I'm thinking of drinking it" with beer in hand? Why drink some more to get more warmth in the throat?
What do you think the answers to your 2 questions are?
How do you protect yourself?
What if the line gets blurred again?
When you finally decide to move from toying with the idea of the Big Plan to actually making the Big Plan (IF you ever decide to) and thereafter practice AVRT in real time, you will not act or feel the way you did with drinks in hand.
A person can only make the Big Plan for alcohol and drugs once - by definition of "never again". Basic logic. And, of course, it cannot be rescinded.
The Beast wants you to tangle with it. It wants you to believe that it is out in the parking lot doing pushups.
You do not seem to want to accept that you can easily take the upper hand towards your Beast. Like Neo when he first stopped the agents bullets in mid-air in the Matrix, you can instantly know what to do, and maybe even smile to yourself as you set the drink aside, again and again, without anxiety or fear.
The beauty of AVRT to me is the bald faced and gross intentionality of what it takes to get alcohol or drugs into my body. I have to choose to hold it two inches from my eyes, and one inch from my nose, and I have to choose to put it INTO my mouth, and even then, I HAVE to choose to swallow it. If I say I will never do that again, I know absolutely that it can't sneak up and happen unintentionally.