Originally Posted by
GerandTwine 
Here you are suggesting for your Beast that once you’re off antabuse YOU WILL get something out of it (that wonderful deep pleasure of drunkenness).
Your AV LOVES that you are on antabuse. This is an essential understanding in AVRT. The AV will point out the following beliefs IT wants antabuse users to think, “Hah! You can’t keep from drinking without taking antabuse!” “You really have NO will against drinking without antabuse.” “What you mean to say is “I will never drink again, and I will never change my mind, as long as I am on antabuse.” Your Beast knows you cannot take antabuse the rest of your life and it is happy to wait as long as you are on antabuse. The Beast and its desire is timeless, not really understanding time. It will be happy right now if you tell it “I will have a drink when I’m 85 years old.”
The Big Question about Antabuse and AVRT is: If you made a Big Plan, “I will never drink again, and I will never change my mind.” why would you need or even want to be on Antabuse? Your Beast wants you to think you must be on Antabuse to not drink.
GT
Hi ff,
I've heard approximately the same thing from Tatsy about Antabuse - that continuing to take it is in service to my beast. (Tatsy, bear with me - I'm paraphrasing for sure.) I just want to provide an alternate viewpoint from my experience. Plus a tiny bit of pharmaceutical knowledge.
You're correct that you will likely gain no enjoyment from drinking while you are on Antabuse - the physical symptoms brought on are truly wretched. I don't know of anyone who would be able to enjoy drinking whilst beat red, dry heaving and feeling like their heart is beating out of their chest. It's no picnic, that. But you, the real You is also correct that your beast would definitely enjoy the sensation of being buzzed or drunk if drinking didn't make you violently ill. That's just facts.
The entire point of AVRT is to make a distinction between what It (the beast) wants and what I want and to disregard the beast's wants as irrelevant. To me, that means I recognize that there is a physiological process going on in my brain that can dupe me into believing that addiction (It) is Me. It's very strange to understand that I am not my thoughts, but the AV is a perfect example of how that can be so.
I don't know about you, but my experience is that my AV doesn't really have feelings. I mean it can
act like it has feelings
very convincingly, but that's it's function. AV speaks for the beast; that's its only reason for being, right? AV didn't love it that I was on Antabuse, nor did it hate it. AV is neutral in regard to anything but expressing the deep unwavering insistent
want of the beast and convincing me that I
need what the beast wants. AV may use the fact that you are taking antabuse as some sort of ploy, "You know you'd be drinking if it weren't for the Antabuse," but I suspect You are smart enough to see through that as a pretty lame ruse. Really, that's some weak-butt amateur stuff in the lexicon of the AV in my experience.
What does your AV want? Nothing. Its job is to convince you that you must drink; its function is to get you to fall for the malarkey of the beast who believes that you (It) can not get through life without alcohol.
In fact, as long as your liver functions aren't impacted, I have it on good medical authority that a person can indeed take Antabuse indefinitely. There is absolutely no reason that you need to do so, but having made the Big Plan, there is absolutely no reason that you need to stop either. Antabuse does not have any physiological impact on cravings. It's prophylactic; you make a conscious decision every day to ingest the pill. The fact of taking that pill can be used effectively by your AV - or not. I don't intend for this to become a debate about AVRT (there's an entire subforum dedicated to that topic, after all) or about medication prescribed by folks in the field of addiction; I just wanted to say that no other person can tell me that taking a pill (or working out or doing puzzles or taking up skydiving) is AV. AV is a voice, not an action. And I am the only person who can discern the difference. For me.
You've got a lot of stuff going on, ff. I wouldn't spend a lot of time wondering about what the AV or beast is up to or why. (I mean, I did, but that was just more AV.
) Your beast needs alcohol. Your AV speaks for It. I'm not sure that you or I will ever fully extinguish the beast but I can assure you that Its voice does get less and less insistent and bothersome over time once you truly internalize that it doesn't matter At All what the beast wants.
O