Originally Posted by
soberlicious 
"When I watch with this silent mind the AV just puffs away like an illusion."
"I" am not afraid of "the beast" because I am the one in charge now. I find that if I give in to the panic that the AV tries to create in me and I am fearful then I begin running around like a chicken with my head cut off making all kinds of crazy decisions.... Fear means that I am engaging with the AV on some level which gives it a foot in the door so to speak. Buddhism also speaks to "sitting with" temptations/distractions as opposed to running from. I translate this to "yep...I see you. I know what you are up to. It's not gonna happen" I have experienced the same "poof...it's gone" feeling you described.
The shifting tool has also worked well for me.
That's basically the "key" insight of AVRT. All addicted people hear voices tell them to drink/use in a thousand different ways, or see pictures in their mind of their favorite stuff. Most chemical dependency counselors are well aware of this phenomenon. The AV normally appears to be "you" until you recognize that the AV is just an expression of base urges, not necessarily originating in your rational mind.
Trimpey basically repackaged the "lizard brain" theory of addiction and called it the "structural model" of addiction. Some rehabs, notably Caron, have lectures on this paradigm. What I find interesting is that NIDA and others are presumably "discovering" this now, and giving it some more weight than usual. If you google "lizard brain addiction" you'll find all sorts of "new" articles on it.
