Aellyce

Dusty - I felt similarly about the book >5 years ago, when I first read it. The tone and somewhat outdated radicalism is indeed a bit unfortunate for readers these days, as we don't really relate to the heat against the "recovery culture" as much as people in the 1990's might have, and the general knowledge about some things have changed/progressed. Since you have the book, it might still be worth reading the parts that focus on practical tips for the Big Plan and AVRT, I think those sections contain less of the language that might annoy you.

I continued drinking for another several years until last fall, when I finally had real determination to seriously do something about my alcohol addiction. I re-read the book a couple months ago and had a very different experience with it, I think in a large part because I got into it with a mind very tunneled into looking for simple and elegant solutions, after unnecessarily (for me) over-complicating it for many years. Not saying this is the case for you, but I really think that mostly my AV came up with those criticisms a few years back, to dismiss something very useful on the basis of what I would now consider pretty irrelevant in the larger picture and context of my goal: to stay sober permanently. In my case, I now think those criticisms were mostly distractions my AV threw at me to dismiss the method altogether - a method that is otherwise quite compatible with my better self and personality, even if I don't agree with every single detail and perception.

This time reading, I didn't even feel the annoyance at all because I could understand where the author came from, his experience at the time it was written, and I wanted to focus on the real substance, not the fluff and what's irrelevant to me here and now. I have the same attitude toward the style of people discussing any method I detect as potentially helpful - don't care about the presentation, I want to extract and apply what's useful for me and not let anything get in the way. Content, not personalities. Maybe it's relatively easy for me as it is often my orientation to any content and discussion I find worthy of attention (also here on SR), I find it easy to detach from the people, attitudes, even small inconsistencies and inaccuracies for the sake of focusing on useful information... not sure how much it interferes for others. I will never become a hardcore "AVRT evangelist" but it's been one of the most useful methods during the past months, it actually works, and I even want to use the method for resolving other disruptive habits. But if you find the discussions here on SR and the Crash Course are enough for you, even better!