Choosing between heavy drinking, moderation (for me that meant averaging two drinks a day), or abstinence, with the maxim of staying as happy as possible, was my modus operandi for many years until the moral compass I was raised to respect ended up vascilating so wildly I finally realized it was taking too much work to protect the drunken me - that whole other happy, altered-state personality I had grown to depend upon. While I was internally prideful about how I thought I had been hiding my drunkenness from certain people, and enjoying it at the same time, I now see that my life then was a mundane hedonistic treadmill compared to what the rest of my responsible, upwardly mobile peers had been doing for the previous ten years.
As I see it, I had been doing for a long time what the Freedom Model is teaching. I was choosing between 1 - heavy drinking, 2 - moderation (whatever), and 3 - abstinence, with my happiness (both while and while not under the influence of alcohol/drugs) being foremost. The Freedom Model suggests to me how a Recovery Coach might have convinced me, had I had enough money and had they been invented way back then, to hire him/her to help me learn how to solve my how much to drink problem. I think it probably wouldn’t have worked for me. I would have just continued down the same path.
I chose the fourth option, the option that is so often avoided in the recovery community - I chose to remove any further choosing with PERMANENT abstinence. The Big Plan is much different than choosing abstinence within a context of ongoing happiness evaluations between heavy drinking, moderation (whatever that means), and abstinence. Upon looking up the definition of abstinence it does not usually mean FOREVER, WITHOUT ANY FURTHER RECONSIDERATION, as in I WILL DIE WITHOUT ANY FURTHER OPTION OF RESCINDING THAT ABSTINENCE.
I relish my having made the Big Plans I have made on mind altering drugs, caffeine, and man-made-sweets. I stopped using nicotine decades ago and quickly found it so disgusting that I never made a formal Big Plan on that. In fact, seeing now, with so much clarity, the difference between the popular meaning of abstinence as an ongoing chosen state, here evaluated with happiness, as taught by the Freedom Model, and Permanent abstinence mandated by pledging “I will never use ... again”; I will here and NOW make my Big Plan for nicotine.
I will never use nicotine again. Yup. Just that simple. In this case, no pressure, no new thoughts or feelings, nothing. I can’t even shift into smoky the Beast. I have absolutely no recall as to what it feels like to be “on” nicotine.
In my mind, the ACE of AVRT, can also be considered the PACE - Permanent Abstinence Commitment Effect which is more in line with “cause and effect” than it is with the ACE’s early positivities of making a Big Plan. The pace of my heart has been saving at least five beats a minute for more than half my life; the pace of diversity of interests in my life has blossomed beyond compare with before quitting; etc; etc. (I consider the relatively low volume of AVRT posting on SC a sign of this blossoming diversity in others.)
I think the PACE of making a Big Plan is something that goes way beyond the pursuit of happiness. It also goes beyond the reach of the Addictive Voice as it is simply “cause and effect”. Not a required or assumed effect, just an observed effect. I can enjoy the effect, and at the same time understand that my AV also wants me to enjoy the effect to the point of needing to enjoy it. NOT!