Originally Posted by
dustyfox 
I am on Day 9 and have been thinking a lot about the AV, and reading previous threads on this subject. I understand it, or at least I think I do.
Hi df,
The AV is simply the bark of the Beast, that specific ingrained appetite for alcohol that YOU have decided is wrong for you to ever indulge again. It can cause feelings and use English in your thoughts; BUT IT is harmless if you separate from IT, and refuse to act upon ITs pleadings through ITs usual recall.
I went for a long walk this evening, it had been raining all day so good to get out and be surrounded by the fresh green of park and woodland. There was only me walking. I said out loud . 'I will never drink Alcohol again'. - It made me feel odd.
This “oddness” is new, this “oddness” is a good sign. You are preempting IT’s recall with the Big Plan which forced your AV to respond.
Hundreds of thoughts about the many times I have drunk and enjoyed alcohol came rushing towards me - I said the same sentence again and it filled me with a terrible restless anxiety, verging on panic. I know this is the AV.
Exactly! You are getting it. You forced it out into the open by reciting the pledge, and it cannot avoid the blazing spotlight of YOUR consciousness presenting to yourself your knowledge of the pledge that will kill IT.
Whether you have actually made that pledge yet is up to you. You WILL know when you’ve done it.
When you actually MAKE the pledge, there is a good chance you will experience the Abstinence Commitment Effect (the ACE of Rational Recovery). The ACE is an amazingly wonderful sense of sudden change. I bet behind that “odd” feeling you mentioned was a sense of the apparent magic that occurs within when willfulness can actually DESTROY a biological power from ever being enacted upon in the future. Because YOU know it is wrong to fulfill that bio-power’s recall, and you can simply MAKE IT UP for yourself that you are 100% confident about NEVER drinking again.
Can anyone advise me? Will the very uncomfortable feeling become less as I become better at shutting 'him' down? Right now I feel OK - apart from headaches and terrible insomnia - but I don't feel 'powerful' enough when I say to myself 'I will not drink alcohol again' - I don't know why?
I understand why you put ‘powerful’ in apostrophes. When those thoughts and feelings appear within (or from without) all you have to do is ... NOTHING, and that takes very little power. No need to even break stride in your walk.
I cannot predict how fast the “very uncomfortable feeling” will become less uncomfortable, but given enough time, there will become a time when you will offhandedly realize you have forgetten what it felt like to be under the influence of alcohol.
GT