I recalled a post on the multi-part AVRT thread, from Terminally Unique, who had more knowledge in AA, REBT, RET and CBT, than I.
I found the post interesting, because likewise, whilst I worked on my ABCs and CBAs in SMART.......I'd have jumped in my car and bought and drank alcohol, before I'd finished.
I was horrendously addicted to alcohol, I needed the absolutism of AVRT, which objectifys the desire for alcohol (pleasure) as a learned behaviour that morphed into a rogue survival drive, hedonistic in nature, due to the artificially high levels of feel good chemicals that alcohol causes in the brain. AVRT acts as an automatic filtering skill, that parses out any thought, thinking, feeling, emotion, that even slightly suggests drinking. (the AV emanating from the rogue survival drive 'Beast' :then instantly dismisses it. Period.
SMART can be applied to deal with stopping drinking and solving thinking problems that exist afterwards. Since I became abstinent, I too find that the AVRT filter can be applied to identify (and instantly dismiss) negative self-talk. When I start awfullising or catastrophising, I filter the thoughts out from the thought-stream and label them (Catastrophising Beast) etc., and dismiss them, as untrue. All these negative thoughts are part of the autonomous lower/mid-brain, habitual thoughts, 'I' am the 'Self' that experiences those automatic thoughts and rejects them - or in SMART, '' would note the thought and then perform the CBA/ABC.
Here's Terminally Uniques's post:
I wonder if the preference for reasoning versus absolutism comes down to temperament. It is often said that addicted people are "musturbators" - they think in absolutes such as "I must do this" or "I have to do this." Indeed, CBT/REBT is in large part a way to address these types of irrational beliefs, and is therefore a large component of SMART Recovery.
As Tom Horvath, President of SMART recovery wrote once,
"So at a typical SMART Recovery meeting, in addition to members doing their CBAs (cost benefit analysis), they are also doing their ABCs (Activating event, Belief, emotional and/or behavioral Consequence). They are watching out for musturbation, awfulizing, and catastrophizing."
In my case, I simply could not get past this. I knew that I simply had to quit drinking, and no amount of analysis of my irrational beliefs was going to change my mind on this. There was no way that I was going to accept that this "musturbation," as pertained to my addiction, was an irrational belief, that I had to discard it, or that I had to think better of myself or stop damning myself. To do so would simply produce a self-accepting drunk ("don't be so hard on yourself, it's only a slip, you're not a bad person"), which would only lead to further drinking.
Experience also showed me that to even contemplate the reasons for drinking versus not drinking while having an urge was doomed to failure. Before I was even half-way through my Cost-Benefit Analysis, I would be three-quarters of the way to the liquor store. I was at one point able to do this, but by the end, any "thinking" about why I shouldn't drink would inevitably lead to some ridiculous rationalization for drinking, or at the very least not produce a sufficient reason not to drink which would deter me.
This is excerpted from a Jack Trimpey / Albert Ellis Debate (1994) on AVRT, which pretty much sums up the difference between AVRT and a "reasoning" approach, in my opinion.
"AVRT declares that the sole cause of all substance addiction is the Addictive Voice, which is the cognitive-emotive expression of an immutable, substance-specific appetite for the pleasure produced by those substances. The Addictive Voice is accepted as a permanent feature of one's psyche, partitioned off from the "true self" through a number of simple dissociative techniques, and then observed rather than acted upon...
In AVRT, there are no conditions for abstinence or for relapse, nor are there any triggers, warning signs of relapse, psychiatric diagnoses, or thresholds of tolerance, that suffice to justify or explain why one would choose to self-intoxicate. AVRT is a mental sorting skill - a filter - that prevents any further use of alcohol or drugs, regardless of "disposing factors." It is completely independent from all philosophies, schools of psychology, and religious doctrines. Indeed, those epistemologies and methodologies, when posed as a primary means to achieve abstinence, may be properly identified as the Addictive Voice itself...