Originally Posted by
JeffreyAK 
It sounds like the AVRT "beast" is more-or-less identical to the "devil"? I never understood AVRT as a religious program, but the parallels seem clear - living amoral entity trying to survive, two beings, one moral and the other an enemy, etc. Which is fine, there are after all lots of people who believe in the devil, but I never noticed this parallel before.
Humans are essentially self-domesticated animals, or very smart beasts, if you prefer Darwinism, but this parallel with the demonic has been explicitly covered before, in the main AVRT discussion thread. Given the many different AVRT-related threads that you regularly choose to contribute to, Jeffrey, you may want to consider reading through it if you get a chance to do so.
See this post regarding the parallel:
The Beast and religion... (Addictive Voice Recognition Technique (AVRT) Discussion — Part 4)
Although the Addictive Voice is essentially the voice of a sociopath, notice that I chose the word amoral, rather than immoral, to describe the Beast. It is trying to live, and understands that abstinence means starvation and death. The Beast simply does what it must in order to survive, and as with most wild animals in the jungle, morals simply don't come into play in such a context.
Originally Posted by
JeffreyAK Back to my original question, I guess if one believes the beast never dies and is always there, waiting, then it is indeed a permanent affliction, and one can't drink because one doesn't want to because one always wants to, or part of one (the beast?) always wants to. So, thank you, I think I have my answer.
AVRT was synthesized into a coherent whole by a self-recovered individual from the reported experience of the self-recovered population. It is generally reported that re-addiction usually occurs comparatively more rapidly than the initial addiction, but that is not the only reason we assume that the Beast is permanent.
AVRT is patterned after the Addictive Voice itself, which argues both sides of all arguments, and part of the art of AVRT is to meet the Beast on its own turf, and to always play the Beast's trump card. By doing so, we don't allow the Beast any room to conceal itself, or allow it to create any loopholes to exploit.
This is why, for example, we abstain from the benefits of drinking, and not just from the downsides. If the Beast tries a fake, by suggesting that drinking doesn't feel good as of late, and that's the real reason we are abstaining, we simply call its bluff, and assume that it probably would feel very good. The Beast doesn't really care about the downsides, after all, and if we accepted such a premise, the Beast would only need to argue that it might feel good.
All self-doubt about abstinence is Addictive Voice, since it suggests the opposite, and the Beast cunningly boasts of its own silence, as in "I have no desire to drink". The Beast is saying, in effect, "Yes, you are doing well, for now, but that's only because I've been very quiet lately. You better hope that I keep quiet, though, because if I weren't quiet, then you might be in big trouble, and you might drink."
I do have a desire to drink, but that desire is not mine, but rather, that of my Beast, which is a quadriplegic, and which depends completely on me to feed it that precious stuff. Too bad for it.