Old 11-03-2011, 12:59 PM
  # 266 (permalink)  
Terminally Unique
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location:   « USA »                       Recovered with AVRT  (Rational Recovery)  ___________
Posts: 3,680
freethinking,

I don't think that your Beast is the one injecting those dreams, since the only thing IT can dream of is more alcohol, but your Addictive Voice is certainly working overtime to use those dreams as a justification for drinking. Firstly, I would suggest that you stop calling your binges relapses. This is semantics, yes, but the word "relapse" implies that binges "just happen" to you, in much the same way a cancer relapse might just happen to you. Secondly, your Addictive Voice will conceal the real purpose of drinking, which is not to cope, but to get that nice buzz, that deep pleasure, however short-lived it may be. In other words, to avoid coping with those repetitive thoughts by getting drunk instead.

If certain tools help you to mitigate those thoughts, so much the better, but to make the mitigation of such thoughts a condition of abstinence automatically creates a condition for drunkenness. You are essentially creating a bargain situation, where you will abstain only if you don't feel bad, and giving your Beast an opening large enough for a beer truck to drive through. If you do that, you can rest assured that as soon as the thoughts return, your Beast will chime in and say "see, you quit drinking, and you still have these bad thoughts, so what's the point?"

You are already wise to your Beast's ways, so don't play by your Beast's rules, which will exploit any feelings, good or bad, in order to get its fix. You have previously stated that you didn't want to make a Big Plan, which will make things more difficult. I've stated before that if there is no Big Plan, there is no AVRT, so I strongly recommend that you make one. The question you need to ask yourself is this:
How angry, depressed, or self-pitying am I willing to get and still not drink?
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