SoberLife2014

Haha mine does that sometimes too!

freshstart57

I know that feeling of shame and guilt, of failure, of being a fake and a phony, that this was what I was, and all I would ever be. That was one of the tapes that played over and over again while I was drinking.

When the penny finally dropped, and I understood that I could make a fresh start, it was as though the door was opened, and all I need to do was step through and out into the sunlight. I used this idea that my past was in the past, never to happen again, as fuel for my motivation. All of that misery could be in the past, and I was never going to fail, never going to even consider failure. Drinking was no longer me.

This made those thoughts of failure, of doubt in myself and my ability to stay sober, clearly nothing different than thoughts of drinking as they were pointing to the same place. Such a simple motive, so easy to identify and recognize now, all for one more drink. Pointing and laughing at my AV really helped to take any force away from it. Pathetic, really.

zjw

yeah I'll be in the grocery store and the one in particular its like "oh wow they got make your own 6 pack at this store!" "you should go check out all the different kinds of beers they got over there" "ya know you never did get to try that one kind" "Oh wow how about that the sam adams winter ale got released" "oh whats that over there yuengling has a new special edition lager go over and see what that ones about"

needless to say i try not to shop at that grocery store.

its like being on the beach with your wife and seeing a whole bunch of gorgeous women in bikinis and trying not to look. Only i think it can be harder then that sometimes even.

dwtbd

I should clear this up a bit. When I came to SR I saw the terms RR and AVRT and went and found what they were about. The material really resonated. I wanted to quit , but for whatever reasons wasn't sure how(?) , didn't know how to 'get into recovery' , these ambiguous notions were what I thought I needed to find out about in order to put them into practise.
Reading about AVRT was incredible to me , because it described the battle I was having 'in my head' every time I tried to quit or stay quit in the past. I got to a point where it was starting to feel as if I was developing a split personality, it almost felt at times that the was another voice in my head , I suppose there almost was, and I unfortunately kept giving into 'its' reasoning/arguments.
But that all changed after I finally , really wanted to quit , AVRT gave me the vocabulary to understand what I was going through , why it felt like a battle.
Pre AVRT the AV said I was a drinker just accept it, it's not so bad, why change probably cant anyway blah blah ect.
After reading about the technique I was able to better handle the cravings / urges of early sobriety , the first week.
The AV has quieted down significantly since then, now that I know its secret it has lost its power.

Nonsensical

+1

ESD907

Well mine tells me to just drink today, you can go back on the wagon tomorrow. I tell it, Ok, I will have that drink, but I'll have it tomorrow.

oldsoul1122

Almost always the AV paints a lovely picture along with the thought. In fact the picture often comes first. So I also change the picture to a far less desirable one. Puking along with getting a DUI are good ones.

least

Thank goodness that voice isn't audible anymore. And the few times I do hear it, it is very faint.