zenchaser, like you with the mushrooms, my mind gets carried away sometimes, way, way downstream thinking about picking up again but as soon as I realise it's my AV I'm back on the river bank as it were, safe and sound, watching my mindstream play out.
I know my puppy has featured quite largely in this thread but let me say just one more thing about her
A couple of days ago my partner went away for a week and my AV had been suggesting the idea of drinking again before she even left("who would know?"). I had been lacking the killer instinct towards the beast, feeling sorry for it, if I've honest, whenever I thought that me never drinking again would make it feel deprived. But it hit me yesterday that the beast would like nothing better than for me to spend all week completely drunk and wouldn't give a toss if I was unable to care for the pup at all. For "pup" think anything you care about, and this really brought home to me that I need to have the badass attitude towards the beast that AVRT advocates and dismiss its needs without a second thought.