2 years clean on AVRT, some shares from my experience
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 113
2 years clean on AVRT, some shares from my experience
well this is my annual check-in, 2 years now sober on AVRT! 
following my own intuition i moved away from using this forum much once i got sorted because it was triggering unhealthy stuff FOR ME (i'm not saying it does it for anyone else or will ever do so, my stuff!
) but promised myself to try and share anything that's helped me, so here's the stuff i've found most important this past year:
1, in my career as a drunkard i felt like i 'needed' alcohol for certain things, eg stressy days or serious life events, celebrations, but get this, which by the way is THE most valuable piece of AVRT i ever had:
the more important, or emotionally significant (good or bad), or related to things you love, hate or need, any event, feeling, or experience is, the more STRONGLY the AV/beast will try and associate alcohol with that thing, until you become unable to experience that thing or event or feeling WITHOUT imagining alcohol as a part of it.
that is how it gets so entwined in your life, by making everything a trigger/invitation/excuse to drink.
it's not that bad events or good things etc are associated with alcohol through some kind of innate integral special thing, eg it's not that you 'need' alcohol to celebrate, unwind, etc - instead it's that your AV/beast will hijack and try to corrupt all those things, like a computer virus will violate and corrupt your files.
i can't tell you the relief i got from this realisation and it only came quite recently and has made the 'recognition' part of AVRT soooo much easier, because part of me thought i'd 'used' alcohol to 'cope' (a concept JT DOES warn about!) and then realised no, the addiction had simply attached to significant things in my life, which is a different and healthier way of seeing it.
this is probably my biggest personal 'a-ha' moment and i hope someone else gets value from it - that important things are not attached to drinking, drinking attaches to important things.
and this includes not just the 'bad day at work' but my own mental weaknesses, past traumas, etc.
2. it's NOT 'a searching and fearless moral inventory' because my background, abilities and stuff luckily meant i never did anything immoral to get drink, BUT, i found great value in setting out to work out what things in my life were out of integrity, eg a friend i was tolerating whose values and mine were at odds, or all sorts of really minor things, like i said not a 'step' BUT valuable as part of getting the rest of my psyche sorted, so if that step ever appealed to you, it can be run, maybe using different terminology and might be helpful.
in my opinion, it doesn't take you near 'recoveryism' either unlike some of the other 12, so if it appeals, it's certainly helped this former booze-hound!
i've also found value in all sorts of self-help books and stuff because while being unhappy etc isnlt a reason to drink, AVRT and life in general is easier when i got my thoughts straightened out, especially when i stopped with the black and white thinking, and the tendency to see worst case scenarios at every turning.
and i REALLY found working out how drinking had been out of integrity for me was helpful in reminding myself WHY i made a Big Plan in the first place!!
3. the beast doesn't die because it's a miswired part of the brain that mistakes ethyl alcohol (or your drug of choice) for a survival necessity, so, in a way expecting it to die completely gives it a sort of moral imperative like it's a reasoning entity, when in fact it's a dumb thing that will kill you (and some people's beasts will kill other people), just to get a fix!
so really, acting like your beast/AV is rational is a tiny bit of beast activity, in that it's trying to present itaself as a reasoning thing with a sense of consequences, timing, and appropriateness. well, this is how it seems for me, anyway!
treating it like a blind urge, a biological mishap like malaria that just comes back and has no grasp of reality, helped me there and i know it's a thing we've probably all wondered about at some point, as it's a keystone issue and a concept AVRT & AA kind of share, that the urge never really goes.
4. it is possible to recover from a life-threatening addiction by yourself... give it time and the self-respect that will give you actually has a GOOD way of attaching to other things!!
i wish health, peace and sobriety to all who want it, regardless of their choice of system or whatever!!
following my own intuition i moved away from using this forum much once i got sorted because it was triggering unhealthy stuff FOR ME (i'm not saying it does it for anyone else or will ever do so, my stuff!
) but promised myself to try and share anything that's helped me, so here's the stuff i've found most important this past year:1, in my career as a drunkard i felt like i 'needed' alcohol for certain things, eg stressy days or serious life events, celebrations, but get this, which by the way is THE most valuable piece of AVRT i ever had:
the more important, or emotionally significant (good or bad), or related to things you love, hate or need, any event, feeling, or experience is, the more STRONGLY the AV/beast will try and associate alcohol with that thing, until you become unable to experience that thing or event or feeling WITHOUT imagining alcohol as a part of it.
that is how it gets so entwined in your life, by making everything a trigger/invitation/excuse to drink.
it's not that bad events or good things etc are associated with alcohol through some kind of innate integral special thing, eg it's not that you 'need' alcohol to celebrate, unwind, etc - instead it's that your AV/beast will hijack and try to corrupt all those things, like a computer virus will violate and corrupt your files.
i can't tell you the relief i got from this realisation and it only came quite recently and has made the 'recognition' part of AVRT soooo much easier, because part of me thought i'd 'used' alcohol to 'cope' (a concept JT DOES warn about!) and then realised no, the addiction had simply attached to significant things in my life, which is a different and healthier way of seeing it.
this is probably my biggest personal 'a-ha' moment and i hope someone else gets value from it - that important things are not attached to drinking, drinking attaches to important things.
and this includes not just the 'bad day at work' but my own mental weaknesses, past traumas, etc.
2. it's NOT 'a searching and fearless moral inventory' because my background, abilities and stuff luckily meant i never did anything immoral to get drink, BUT, i found great value in setting out to work out what things in my life were out of integrity, eg a friend i was tolerating whose values and mine were at odds, or all sorts of really minor things, like i said not a 'step' BUT valuable as part of getting the rest of my psyche sorted, so if that step ever appealed to you, it can be run, maybe using different terminology and might be helpful.
in my opinion, it doesn't take you near 'recoveryism' either unlike some of the other 12, so if it appeals, it's certainly helped this former booze-hound!
i've also found value in all sorts of self-help books and stuff because while being unhappy etc isnlt a reason to drink, AVRT and life in general is easier when i got my thoughts straightened out, especially when i stopped with the black and white thinking, and the tendency to see worst case scenarios at every turning.
and i REALLY found working out how drinking had been out of integrity for me was helpful in reminding myself WHY i made a Big Plan in the first place!!
3. the beast doesn't die because it's a miswired part of the brain that mistakes ethyl alcohol (or your drug of choice) for a survival necessity, so, in a way expecting it to die completely gives it a sort of moral imperative like it's a reasoning entity, when in fact it's a dumb thing that will kill you (and some people's beasts will kill other people), just to get a fix!
so really, acting like your beast/AV is rational is a tiny bit of beast activity, in that it's trying to present itaself as a reasoning thing with a sense of consequences, timing, and appropriateness. well, this is how it seems for me, anyway!
treating it like a blind urge, a biological mishap like malaria that just comes back and has no grasp of reality, helped me there and i know it's a thing we've probably all wondered about at some point, as it's a keystone issue and a concept AVRT & AA kind of share, that the urge never really goes.
4. it is possible to recover from a life-threatening addiction by yourself... give it time and the self-respect that will give you actually has a GOOD way of attaching to other things!!
i wish health, peace and sobriety to all who want it, regardless of their choice of system or whatever!!
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 113
thanks! this system does work, maybe it's not for everybody, but if it appeals to you, then you can use it and stay sober, and a lot of the time (when you're RECOGNISING the AV, not arguing with it, trying to beat it, nor trying to reason with it) it feels truly effortless.
i just typed something in another thread and going to tag it on here and expand on it a bit as part of my summary, because it's pretty basic AVRT, but took me a while at first to master:
as long as i tried to struggle with my beast/AV, treating it like an entity capable of reason, or at least something worthy of ANY interaction from myself (eg, arguing with it or trying to reason with it - or, god forbid, trying to UNDERSTAND it) i struggled and 'white knuckled' but once i accepted it as no more than a cold sore or other recurring biological fact, 99% of its power as 'dr beast' or whatever, by which 'it' could persuade me to drink against my better judgement by using images, concepts etc that supported drinking, all just evaporated.
and in the end i personally stopped conceptualising it as a 'beast' at all but just an addiction, a miswired part of me that sends erroneous thoughts up, which to me puts it on a more clinical, medical footing rather than somehow giving it a personality or any image of it (mine was wile e. coyote for ages!) that actually made me think it deserved even the most rudimentary consideration.
i have a medical fact, not an entity that promises me good times, or an animal urge, or anything like that, because those are concepts i find that tiny bit harder to reject.
BUT, the 'beast' imagery works for some people and i'm only mentioning this coz it wasn't ultimately where i went with it, the 'addictive voice' depersonlised it and makes me feel it's no more than an illness.
i just typed something in another thread and going to tag it on here and expand on it a bit as part of my summary, because it's pretty basic AVRT, but took me a while at first to master:
as long as i tried to struggle with my beast/AV, treating it like an entity capable of reason, or at least something worthy of ANY interaction from myself (eg, arguing with it or trying to reason with it - or, god forbid, trying to UNDERSTAND it) i struggled and 'white knuckled' but once i accepted it as no more than a cold sore or other recurring biological fact, 99% of its power as 'dr beast' or whatever, by which 'it' could persuade me to drink against my better judgement by using images, concepts etc that supported drinking, all just evaporated.
and in the end i personally stopped conceptualising it as a 'beast' at all but just an addiction, a miswired part of me that sends erroneous thoughts up, which to me puts it on a more clinical, medical footing rather than somehow giving it a personality or any image of it (mine was wile e. coyote for ages!) that actually made me think it deserved even the most rudimentary consideration.
i have a medical fact, not an entity that promises me good times, or an animal urge, or anything like that, because those are concepts i find that tiny bit harder to reject.
BUT, the 'beast' imagery works for some people and i'm only mentioning this coz it wasn't ultimately where i went with it, the 'addictive voice' depersonlised it and makes me feel it's no more than an illness.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 113
Originally Posted by DoubtfulDebs 
the 'addictive voice' depersonlised it and makes me feel it's no more than an illness.
just looking at it like my knackered ankle that i sprained so often it's never quite right, but the functional model of 'creating a beast' through excessive drinking is a different thing to the disease model, whereby drinking to excess is a result of numerous pre-existing emotional and spiritual flaws.
anyway thanks for the debates and stuff, i'm out of here now and wish everyone well and success in your recovery!!
i'll maybe pop by in another year's time to say hi - i'm darn proud of what i've achieved so far, in overcoming a life-threatening addiction, and this is about the only place i can share that excitement!
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Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 638
Originally Posted by DoubtfulDebs
as long as i tried to struggle with my beast/AV, treating it like an entity capable of reason, or at least something worthy of ANY interaction from myself (eg, arguing with it or trying to reason with it - or, god forbid, trying to UNDERSTAND it) i struggled and 'white knuckled' but once i accepted it as no more than a cold sore or other recurring biological fact, 99% of its power as 'dr beast' or whatever, by which 'it' could persuade me to drink against my better judgement by using images, concepts etc that supported drinking, all just evaporated.
and in the end i personally stopped conceptualising it as a 'beast' at all but just an addiction, a miswired part of me that sends erroneous thoughts up, which to me puts it on a more clinical, medical footing rather than somehow giving it a personality or any image of it (mine was wile e. coyote for ages!) that actually made me think it deserved even the most rudimentary consideration.
and in the end i personally stopped conceptualising it as a 'beast' at all but just an addiction, a miswired part of me that sends erroneous thoughts up, which to me puts it on a more clinical, medical footing rather than somehow giving it a personality or any image of it (mine was wile e. coyote for ages!) that actually made me think it deserved even the most rudimentary consideration.
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