This is a response regarding whether or not AVRT requires a Big Plan. I think it does, but I did find this interesting paragraph in RR:TNC on page 141:
"Ironically, the Big Plan of Rational Recovery is optional. AVRTechs (trained instructors ar our RR Centers) and RR Coordinators are cautioned to avoid advising participants to abstain or to suggest that not having a Big Plan is a prediction of troubles. If a plan for permanent abstinence does not come from one's own intelligence, as a personal decision, then it will not come at all. Drinking or using is a personal matter, not one to turn over to others, no matter how well meaning, spiritual, rational, authoritative, official, credentialed, or competent they may be."
Now this passage could be due to that fact that the RR: TNC was written back in 1996, or just that Trimpey wants to emphasize that a Big Plan can only be undertaken by you under your own free will in order for it to work. I don't think the RR centers exist anymore, but Trimpey does have his own class you can attend.
This paragraph does come at the end of a section called, "The Only Time is Now" which explains that in AVRT, times does not exist. Trimpey explains that. "Now is all there is. The future is only a possibility, but even then, it will be now" so the phrase, "I will never now drink is perfectly acceptable in AVRT (140).
The idea of the "never-ending now" does make the Big Plan easier to digest.