Originally Posted by
DriGuy 
Everything I hear about AVRT sounds spot on to me, but having found my own way years ago, I'm more of an observer than a practitioner of AVRT. Well, that's not quite right,either. It seems what what I read reflects most of what I have learned and applied to my own recovery. I'm certainly not the expert, but I am a big fan. But so much for my introduction.
What I wanted to comment on is about doing AVRT half-assed. In early recovery and even before, doing things half-assed applies to almost every potentially successful program one might adopt and subsequently fail at. Basic survival as in "not dying" often serves us well with a half-assed approach. Not so with recovery. In early recovery our tendency to default to "half-assed," only to fail and fail again is a near universal failure.
In the early stages of failure, we don't see ourselves working in a half-assed mode. We see ourselves working as we always have and staying alive in the process. When we do recognize, usually after we have made the necessary corrections, that we were giving our plan only half of our attention, we have crossed an important bridge. That bridge was commitment to following a good strategy to the letter and not taking another drink.
I admire people who figured this out on their own. One thing that made that difficult for me, I think, was my own career, the choice of work I was doing for >10 years in mental health but even before, because a lot of that was focused on how diseases work, predispositions etc. I was mostly doing research, but deeply embedded in the medical/treatment industry. But actually that's also just a half-assed argument and mostly an excuse. I can easily apply similar knowledge in a way that is fully compatible with Rational Recovery and AVRT, and will in the future.
Yes, the difference between a half-assed method and full commitment is what I was also trying to describe above with my experiences of handling a strong craving. I was often approaching my recovery half-assed for many years - had some desire to quit, and definitely interested in learning about all the methods, but I did not really apply them to myself (often said I did, but the opposite was going on in secret). I didn't have a strong motivation for it. The SMART program actually helped with the motivation bit, they have some cool tools that build motivation on personal values and explains how to use them to maintain motivation for recovery. That bit worked very well for me. But when I applied the urge management tools, the real commitment was still lacking. The way I think about it now: it has to be a good blend of right mindset (commitment, Big Plan as RR calls it) and right action/effort. Any of these half-assed and it won't last long.
Yes, survival is passive. I think survival is what we did while drinking (and it is likely to be limited if we continue). I even believe that many people who dislike being sober and suffer in that state a lot are still mostly surviving in a way - they manage to remove the addictive substance/behavior, but still do
life half-assed. Okay, some have real mental illness, and that is a different discussion, but being sober and healthy without personal purpose and effort is still mostly an empty space, IMO. I have the impression that most of us who like and succeed with a self-directed approach like AVRT are already pretty good at self-actualization, naturally. So remove the addiction and it's effortless and satisfying. It makes so much sense!