Dri Guy said:
The scary part of my AV was that it would try to make me see my success as a reason drink. It's even more dangerous after the cravings leave because you feel so normal. It's almost a perfect strategy for your AV to trap you. It uses your own success against you.
I think this might be what is happening to me right now. I do feel normal most of the time. My AV is trying to tell me that all that ugliness is a thing of the past, and that surely, my relationship with alcohol has changed by now, with all the hard work I have done. "It's been almost 5 years! You don't crave it! You don't need it! You can probably drink like a normie now!" Those are the thoughts that sometimes come unbidden. I can recognize that it's the cunning and baffling AV at work in my head, but it still unsettles me. That's when I know it's time to play the tape forward, and to recall some of the truly horrible times I had before I quit.