Originally Posted by
JeffreyAK 
Interesting. These both seem to me like manifestations of the disease theory, I have a permanent affliction and it might someday suddenly jump out from behind a bush and attack me, with interest or with some false allure. What if this, etc. Some have this perspective and combat it with permanent meetings, service, and so on, but it sounds like there's an element of this in AVRT too, where it's combated by falling back to a solemn vow? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
You are misunderstanding what I am saying. What if this, what if that, etc., is an attempt to expose the embedded plan to drink (the implicit AV) in certain ideas, mostly for the benefit anyone else that may read this thread. My line of questioning is definitely not of the "your disease wants you dead, it is doing push-ups out in the parking lot, and it might come in and pounce on you if you are not vigilant" variety.
Remember the definition of the Addictive Voice: Any thinking or feeling which supports, suggests, or directs your possible future use of alcohol and other drugs. The AV is a comprehensive style of thinking centered around the addictive mandate to drink or use again. Alternatively, the AV is simply any thinking or feeling which contradicts the Big Plan.
Hence, no Big Plan, no AVRT.
Regarding combat, AVRT is unforgiving. It is the mental art of all out war on the ruthless mentality that sustains addiction. Its logic is patterned after that very mentality, only with the precise opposite cardinal rule -- the Big Plan. The cardinal rule of addiction is, naturally, 'never say never' to the possible future use of alcohol and other drugs.
Originally Posted by
JeffreyAK My own experience so far has been, triggers are part of a biochemical reactive phase that does fade away. They were mental knee-jerks, but in their absence - which has been always for many years now - there's no more desire to drink alcohol than to quaff paint thinner.
I presume that by 'triggers', you mean people, places, and things that stimulate the desire to indulge the addiction. In AVRT, that is simply Beast activity, and, once again, the object in AVRT is not to remove or to silence the Beast. The Beast is not the cause of the addiction, since it cannot run the peripherals (hands, feet, mouth). All the Beast can do is to 'bark' AV, which, until defined, is initially unrecognized as such, since the AV sounds a lot like one's own voice.
The Beast may indeed settle down and get more quiet with prolonged starvation, but the fact remains that abstaining purely because one has 'no desire to drink' (ie, no Beast activity) suggests that one might drink if they did. That sentiment is therefore Addictive Voice.
I have no desire to drink = I might drink if I did.
Originally Posted by
JeffreyAK I can't imagine suddenly having interest in quaffing paint thinner, and I know I've had zero interest for decades in snorting coke or dropping acid, so it stands to reason that there's no alcohol tiger behind any bushes either. I've looked around a lot of bushes, been scared or anxious about some, but nope, no tigers. I guess I don't believe in tigers anymore.
The Beast of AVRT is not a tiger, but it is a rational, albeit amoral, entity. It is rational because its aim is survival, and it would be very irrational indeed for any living entity to not try to survive. Subcortically, the Beast interprets the deep buzz produced by alcohol and other drugs as necessary for its own survival. It will kill its host in order to survive, by leading it to ruin, but not because it wants its host dead. It simply doesn't want to die.
AVRT proper is not strictly dependent on this understanding of addiction as an artificially created survival drive, but others, such as Dr. Nora Volkov from NIDA, for example, have reached very similar conclusions. This understanding explains why addicted people often drink or use as if their life actually depended on it, and despite all the risks of doing so.
One doesn't stop breathing just because the air may be toxic, and the Beast doesn't stop trying to get its host to ingest toxic substances just because they may cause some side effects. To the Beast, those substances are the source of life itself. It is undeterred by scarecrows such as 'paint thinner', because the Beast understands that without that paint thinner, it will starve and die.
The 'insane' behavior and ambivalence characteristic of addicted people does not appear nearly so insane when one considers that there are two rational survival mentalities competing with each other. The human, moral host, and the mutant, parasitic enemy within, whose progenitors have kept us on this planet for eons through war, famine, disease, and various other catastrophes.