Originally Posted by
dwtbd 
What happens when you do develop a bone of temptation?
Is your abstinence based on the absence of desire, only ?
In a lot of your posts you speak of the 'nostalgia' of intoxication and how you beat it or win out.
I'm an avid AVRT'er precisely because my path has to include living comfortably with latent desire, temptation. From my perspective I don't think the desire for booze/intoxication ever vanishes ,completely, heck I think it is sometimes important to 'tease' the desire lest I think the apparent absence of it is the sole reason I choose not to ever drink again.
For me thinking that I will know I won't drink , even loosely based, on the absence of desire doesn't work.
Eliminating desire or fighting desire doesn't work for me, desire is integral to life and beyond my capacity to circumvent, realizing and accepting that has made me able to dismiss it.
None of this is intended to be a gotcha or 'method' message, just a view , from my path, and an observation of the things you relate.
Eloquent and insightful. No, my permanent sobriety is not, nor could it be, at least for me, based on a complete absence of desire. The nostalgia I speak of certainly is tinged with remnants of that desire. However when I examine those feelings, when I look at what that desire is really for, what the desire would cause me to do, I do find myself repelled by and just simply disinterested in the pain and suffering that would come along with the consumption of any alcohol. Even the thought of the drunk itself, at this point, that losing of control, that dropping the reins on the life I now feel in control of, is just plainly repellent to me.