Originally Posted by
Jack16 
Hi GerandTwine, thanks for taking the time to reply.
Yes, I got swept along reading the book, but if I think back I didn't actually make a BP.
I believe you have every capacity to make a Big Plan for alcohol right now. Making a Big Plan is a very important and necessary logical consequence of using AVRT to end an addiction.
Originally Posted by
Jack16 (I did make a BP when I first came across AVRT, maybe two years ago, but it did not hold)
There's a good section in the book "RR: The New Cure" about how to get out of your Big Plan, but Trimpey ends up discovering that he cannot find a way to get out of his Big Plan and neither can I. So, I'm very curious to hear how you got out of your Big Plan two years ago. What was going on in those minutes just before you got the booze and drank some more? What were your thoughts and feelings, and what were you actually doing? Did the idea of the Big Plan come up as you went to get the alcohol?
Originally Posted by
Jack16 Yes, as you suggest, basically, the BP cut through the noise of the AV very briefly, and I felt angry with the Beast and mentally swore at it. I think that was what snapped me out of it.
I see the simplicity of the technique, yet at the same time, those Beast attacks seem at times to swamp me so thoroughly that all separation between me and IT is lost. It feels like being 'possessed', although of course that is only in hindsight.
I can see now that it's all about pattern interruption. It's like in Zen meditation. The zen master would walk around the room with a big stick, and whenever they sensed a meditator was drifting off (being swamped by involuntary thoughts), they would whack them with the stick. It seems that is what AVRT is - it's a way of snapping out of those thoughts before they gain a stranglehold, right?
Thanks again
In AVRT there is no need to "snap out of those thoughts" because thoughts are totally harmless. Shifting is an exercise in AVRT wherein a person actually practices "snapping" in and out of "those thoughts" intentionally.
Alcohol is not necessary like oxygen, so it is very easy to quickly understand that I am not suffocating from a "stranglehold" of a sense of urgency to drink some more. My Beast, though, will try to convince me that not drinking is like not breathing - pure balderdash.
GT