Monster or Beast
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Posts: 98
Monster or Beast
If anyone feels what I am about to write is wrong or I am mistaken in my understanding, please do not hesitate to pull me up on it. I will not be offended or defencive about it
I do not see the Beast of AVRT as a monster. Monsters are scary, their intention is to kill you and your survival instinct would kick in and you would run like the clappers away from it.
But what if the thing that was killing you was one of your own survival drives?
Jack Trimpey called the Beast the Beast, not because it is a monster but because it resides in the beast brain, sometimes called the reptilian brain, because all animals have this primal brain, even lizards. His specific meaning Beast, capitol letter, though, refers to the one particular biological appetite in NCS, the appetite (or desire) for alcohol/drugs.
The beast brain is the organ of physical survival. It is like a control panel that regulates bodily processes for survival such as breathing, temperature regulation, release of hormones, digestion, heartbeat and the natural biological drives and appetites for oxygen, food, sex - this brain has no thinking abilities - it runs on instinct. Therefore it needs to motivate you, the controller of the neocortex , which has the higher thinking abilities, reasoning and motor control of the body, to go out and get the "goods"
When a survival drive delivers the "goods" eg food and sex, (via you) the whole brain is rewarded with a flood of feel good chemicals, which is a good motivation. The beast brain lives for these rewards, each survival drive when it delivers gets a chemical reward for itself and the whole body to enjoy.
Also a good motivation, is the discomfort it/you feels if you do not deliver. If you do not deliver the food you/it needs to survive, you will feel hunger, irritation, tired etc. If you do not deliver sexual release you will feel sexual frustration. If you get into a situation where you cannot deliver the oxygen, the body (courtesy of the midbrain/beast brain) you will be flooded with panic. The beast brain doesn't like discomfort, if a drive doesn't deliver, discomfort reigns throughout the body
These things are essential for survival as a whole, both yours and the species, both the part of the brain you think of as you (the neocortex ) and the beast brain.
As the beast brain has no higher mental facilities, it has to appeal to you, through your neocortex for whatever commodity it needs to be brought into the body. If say it needs food it will do this by using your mental images, memory, reasoning, emotions etc to focus on food, the craving for food will be your priority until you deliver the goods. Then comes the reward, a chemical release which causes pleasure and relieves discomfort and tension. Your life and the continuation of the human race depends upon these survival drives being able to get you to deliver what they ask for. Their needs when they arise, take priority.
So far so good, clever evolution, for setting up a system so cleverly geared towards personal and species survival.
Then you introduce alcohol/drugs into your body and you do it often. They produce an artificial "high" in the brain. Rewards come that are normally reserved for delivering survival based commodities, only intensified many times. So a "new" survival drive is born. The drive, desire to get the high alcohol/drugs bring.
Chemical highs are a reward, all survival drives (even legitimate ones) are geared to obtain the reward of a high, and to end discomfort but by striving to obtain it they guarantee the body gets what it needs to survive.
With the drive created by the artificial high of alcohol, a dangerous thing is born.
Here is a perverted survival drive. It "acts" in the same way as other survival drives, uses the same motivations to get you to deliver the goods. But the goods it is striving to get you to consume are deadly to you, literally.
Now, this drive, this desire, this appetite, like all the other legitimate survival drives, has one thing in "mind" to get you to deliver the "goods" it has been created to deliver.
It's asking you to deliver poison. Not out of "evilness" not because it wants to kill you, but because it MISTAKENLY believes you need this poison to survive. It and you are rewarded very highly chemical wise for delivering
A FATAL MISTAKE... the error made by this drive could kill you. At the least it will severely impair you, your mind body and life. It has all the primal tools of the legitimate survival drives at its advantage. It will use your mental images, memory, reasoning, emotions etc to focus on alcohol when it needs a "hit" You will feel the power of this drive directed towards you consuming alcohol.
What can you do about this? You feel the need for alcohol, you can't stop thinking about alcohol, the craving for alcohol is your priority, you feel driven and motivated to go and obtain alcohol to consume.
You feel stressed, depressed, irritable (negative motivation). Drink, it urges, alcohol will make it go away
Strong survival based appetites are a sign of good health, so there are times you feel happy, there is that drive again, eat, drink and be merry!!
You need alcohol or you will die, is it's basic message, so you come to believe that, or at the very least believe that life is not worth living without it.
You don't know what to do, this thing is consuming you with its compulsion for drink. Even when you deliver the drink, it isn't satisfied (drink is an addictive substance)
Then you read AVRT.
This perverted/mistaken survival drive/biological urge/desire for alcohol becomes the Beast. IT is singled out as a force of destruction.
ITs methods of procuring the "goods" for the mistaken belief it is helping the body to survive are labeled the AV
You understand ITs mistake, you have reasoning powers and intelligence. IT doesn't
You cannot communicate with a biological drive, you cannot tell IT, "you are wrong, you will kill me with this stuff"
YOU separate yourself from IT. You actively take over the job of self preservation from IT
IT will keep on doing ITs thing, sending you messages that you need this alcohol to survive, using everything at ITs disposal via the AV to get you to deliver... ITs timeless, living in suspended animation.
You have moved on, you see the true situation.
ITs not capable of moving on, so now it's just IT looking for a way to get that alcohol, for the reward of that chemical high and IT is the only one left "needing it to survive"
I do not see the Beast of AVRT as a monster. Monsters are scary, their intention is to kill you and your survival instinct would kick in and you would run like the clappers away from it.
But what if the thing that was killing you was one of your own survival drives?
Jack Trimpey called the Beast the Beast, not because it is a monster but because it resides in the beast brain, sometimes called the reptilian brain, because all animals have this primal brain, even lizards. His specific meaning Beast, capitol letter, though, refers to the one particular biological appetite in NCS, the appetite (or desire) for alcohol/drugs.
The beast brain is the organ of physical survival. It is like a control panel that regulates bodily processes for survival such as breathing, temperature regulation, release of hormones, digestion, heartbeat and the natural biological drives and appetites for oxygen, food, sex - this brain has no thinking abilities - it runs on instinct. Therefore it needs to motivate you, the controller of the neocortex , which has the higher thinking abilities, reasoning and motor control of the body, to go out and get the "goods"
When a survival drive delivers the "goods" eg food and sex, (via you) the whole brain is rewarded with a flood of feel good chemicals, which is a good motivation. The beast brain lives for these rewards, each survival drive when it delivers gets a chemical reward for itself and the whole body to enjoy.
Also a good motivation, is the discomfort it/you feels if you do not deliver. If you do not deliver the food you/it needs to survive, you will feel hunger, irritation, tired etc. If you do not deliver sexual release you will feel sexual frustration. If you get into a situation where you cannot deliver the oxygen, the body (courtesy of the midbrain/beast brain) you will be flooded with panic. The beast brain doesn't like discomfort, if a drive doesn't deliver, discomfort reigns throughout the body
These things are essential for survival as a whole, both yours and the species, both the part of the brain you think of as you (the neocortex ) and the beast brain.
As the beast brain has no higher mental facilities, it has to appeal to you, through your neocortex for whatever commodity it needs to be brought into the body. If say it needs food it will do this by using your mental images, memory, reasoning, emotions etc to focus on food, the craving for food will be your priority until you deliver the goods. Then comes the reward, a chemical release which causes pleasure and relieves discomfort and tension. Your life and the continuation of the human race depends upon these survival drives being able to get you to deliver what they ask for. Their needs when they arise, take priority.
So far so good, clever evolution, for setting up a system so cleverly geared towards personal and species survival.
Then you introduce alcohol/drugs into your body and you do it often. They produce an artificial "high" in the brain. Rewards come that are normally reserved for delivering survival based commodities, only intensified many times. So a "new" survival drive is born. The drive, desire to get the high alcohol/drugs bring.
Chemical highs are a reward, all survival drives (even legitimate ones) are geared to obtain the reward of a high, and to end discomfort but by striving to obtain it they guarantee the body gets what it needs to survive.
With the drive created by the artificial high of alcohol, a dangerous thing is born.
Here is a perverted survival drive. It "acts" in the same way as other survival drives, uses the same motivations to get you to deliver the goods. But the goods it is striving to get you to consume are deadly to you, literally.
Now, this drive, this desire, this appetite, like all the other legitimate survival drives, has one thing in "mind" to get you to deliver the "goods" it has been created to deliver.
It's asking you to deliver poison. Not out of "evilness" not because it wants to kill you, but because it MISTAKENLY believes you need this poison to survive. It and you are rewarded very highly chemical wise for delivering
A FATAL MISTAKE... the error made by this drive could kill you. At the least it will severely impair you, your mind body and life. It has all the primal tools of the legitimate survival drives at its advantage. It will use your mental images, memory, reasoning, emotions etc to focus on alcohol when it needs a "hit" You will feel the power of this drive directed towards you consuming alcohol.
What can you do about this? You feel the need for alcohol, you can't stop thinking about alcohol, the craving for alcohol is your priority, you feel driven and motivated to go and obtain alcohol to consume.
You feel stressed, depressed, irritable (negative motivation). Drink, it urges, alcohol will make it go away
Strong survival based appetites are a sign of good health, so there are times you feel happy, there is that drive again, eat, drink and be merry!!
You need alcohol or you will die, is it's basic message, so you come to believe that, or at the very least believe that life is not worth living without it.
You don't know what to do, this thing is consuming you with its compulsion for drink. Even when you deliver the drink, it isn't satisfied (drink is an addictive substance)
Then you read AVRT.
This perverted/mistaken survival drive/biological urge/desire for alcohol becomes the Beast. IT is singled out as a force of destruction.
ITs methods of procuring the "goods" for the mistaken belief it is helping the body to survive are labeled the AV
You understand ITs mistake, you have reasoning powers and intelligence. IT doesn't
You cannot communicate with a biological drive, you cannot tell IT, "you are wrong, you will kill me with this stuff"
YOU separate yourself from IT. You actively take over the job of self preservation from IT
IT will keep on doing ITs thing, sending you messages that you need this alcohol to survive, using everything at ITs disposal via the AV to get you to deliver... ITs timeless, living in suspended animation.
You have moved on, you see the true situation.
ITs not capable of moving on, so now it's just IT looking for a way to get that alcohol, for the reward of that chemical high and IT is the only one left "needing it to survive"
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Posts: 98
Originally Posted by GaryB1 
using everything at ITs disposal via the AV to get you to deliver...
And so IT only cherry picks what IT wants you to acknowledge where alcohol is concerned, with the intention of getting you to deliver the goods.
quat
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: terra (mostly)firma
Posts: 4,823
I put my Beast in a locked cage. My AV though will remind me from time to time that IT still exists and through some twisted logic will try and convince Me that ITs existence means something. When all it really means is that IT exists, the illlusion that ITs mere existence gives IT any power has been broken, irrevocably .
I realize that it is entirely possible for me to remain abstinent even though IT exists. The desire for alcohol is not an actual threat to abstinence that was the illusion.
Locked in ITs cage deprived of ITs supply means all the tantrums IT may throw are impotent, annoying at times perhaps, but as only a desire IT has no agency. IT will use my AV to gain agency, by convincing me that the recognized presence of desire means something, it doesn't . All IT means is that the pathetic little weasel in the cage didn't get the memo about smashed illusions.
I realize that it is entirely possible for me to remain abstinent even though IT exists. The desire for alcohol is not an actual threat to abstinence that was the illusion.
Locked in ITs cage deprived of ITs supply means all the tantrums IT may throw are impotent, annoying at times perhaps, but as only a desire IT has no agency. IT will use my AV to gain agency, by convincing me that the recognized presence of desire means something, it doesn't . All IT means is that the pathetic little weasel in the cage didn't get the memo about smashed illusions.
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Posts: 98
Personally, I don't visualize IT as anything. IT is just an urge that exists and is generated in my mid-brain. IT doesn't need locking away as IT is already impotent without my cooperation . And I would imagine, that even if I imagined IT locked away somewhere, that the AV would still have full access to all of my higher mental facilities, so I don't see the point.
To me ITs not some dangerous monster ITs just a maverick dangerous urge But ITs already imprisoned, in the mid-brain, with no access ,except through me, to be able to satisfy ITs appetite.
To me ITs not some dangerous monster ITs just a maverick dangerous urge But ITs already imprisoned, in the mid-brain, with no access ,except through me, to be able to satisfy ITs appetite.
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,109
I think a lot of the addiction is that we had built strong neural pathways by constantly reinforcing the behaviour, which is why relapse is so common early on, the addict hasn't formed new ones yet and the default is still to use.
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 1,183
I think it's really as simple as brain chemistry. If it helps people to visualize the thoughts and urges of alcohol-altered brain chemistry as an external beast with particular attributes, that's perfectly fine, but I think we should be careful about putting too much energy into conceptualizing the metaphor.
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Greensboro, NC
Posts: 94
This is an interesting conversation. I think as Jeffrey, touched on, we all learn or process things differently - some are visual, some analytical, some vocal, etc...
I think using whatever works for you to remain sober is what works for you to remain sober. We can all share and in this way, we can add more tools in our toolbox!
I think using whatever works for you to remain sober is what works for you to remain sober. We can all share and in this way, we can add more tools in our toolbox!
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Posts: 98
Thanks for the replies. I have no intentions of getting into a debate lol, people will do what they think is best for them regardless. I maybe named this post wrongly.
What I was doing, was trying to get across the basic concept of AVRT in an understandable way for any visitors that are looking into it. I was a visitor for a long time before I joined this site, and was grateful to the people who were using AVRT for explaining the concepts of it.
Among others Terminally Unique and Alogrithms posts were especially helpful and insightful to understanding AVRT.
But there was a lot of misinformation and misconceptions from a lot of other posters too.
So I just thought I would try and be helpful, and see if I could set down some of the principles of AVRT in an understandable way. As in, trying to explain the things that I found it hard to digest when I was learning (I couldn't understand how the Beast "thought" it would die without alcohol for example)
Like I said, I should have given it a different title and made it plain that this was AVRT but it was too late to go back and change the title once I had posted it.
I also thought only AVRT called the drive for alcohol the Beast
What I was doing, was trying to get across the basic concept of AVRT in an understandable way for any visitors that are looking into it. I was a visitor for a long time before I joined this site, and was grateful to the people who were using AVRT for explaining the concepts of it.
Among others Terminally Unique and Alogrithms posts were especially helpful and insightful to understanding AVRT.
But there was a lot of misinformation and misconceptions from a lot of other posters too.
So I just thought I would try and be helpful, and see if I could set down some of the principles of AVRT in an understandable way. As in, trying to explain the things that I found it hard to digest when I was learning (I couldn't understand how the Beast "thought" it would die without alcohol for example)
Like I said, I should have given it a different title and made it plain that this was AVRT but it was too late to go back and change the title once I had posted it.
I also thought only AVRT called the drive for alcohol the Beast
Being Sober is Awesome
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Oregon
Posts: 507
Originally Posted by GaryB1
Thanks for the replies. I have no intentions of getting into a debate lol, people will do what they think is best for them regardless. I maybe named this post wrongly.
What I was doing, was trying to get across the basic concept of AVRT in an understandable way for any visitors that are looking into it. I was a visitor for a long time before I joined this site, and was grateful to the people who were using AVRT for explaining the concepts of it.
Among others Terminally Unique and Alogrithms posts were especially helpful and insightful to understanding AVRT.
But there was a lot of misinformation and misconceptions from a lot of other posters too.
So I just thought I would try and be helpful, and see if I could set down some of the principles of AVRT in an understandable way. As in, trying to explain the things that I found it hard to digest when I was learning (I couldn't understand how the Beast "thought" it would die without alcohol for example)
Like I said, I should have given it a different title and made it plain that this was AVRT but it was too late to go back and change the title once I had posted it.
I also thought only AVRT called the drive for alcohol the Beast
What I was doing, was trying to get across the basic concept of AVRT in an understandable way for any visitors that are looking into it. I was a visitor for a long time before I joined this site, and was grateful to the people who were using AVRT for explaining the concepts of it.
Among others Terminally Unique and Alogrithms posts were especially helpful and insightful to understanding AVRT.
But there was a lot of misinformation and misconceptions from a lot of other posters too.
So I just thought I would try and be helpful, and see if I could set down some of the principles of AVRT in an understandable way. As in, trying to explain the things that I found it hard to digest when I was learning (I couldn't understand how the Beast "thought" it would die without alcohol for example)
Like I said, I should have given it a different title and made it plain that this was AVRT but it was too late to go back and change the title once I had posted it.
I also thought only AVRT called the drive for alcohol the Beast
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 847
Originally Posted by zenchaser
I think a lot of the addiction is that we had built strong neural pathways by constantly reinforcing the behaviour, which is why relapse is so common early on, the addict hasn't formed new ones yet and the default is still to use.
The idea that you must first wait for brand new neural pathways to develop before you can definitely avoid "having a relapse" very obviously contradicts never drinking again, and never changing your mind. It is AV, because it supports, and suggests, the possibility of drinking some more alcohol, at least until those 'new neural pathways' develop.
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 847
Originally Posted by JeffreyAK
If it helps people to visualize the thoughts and urges of alcohol-altered brain chemistry as an external beast with particular attributes, that's perfectly fine, but I think we should be careful about putting too much energy into conceptualizing the metaphor.
See: The Birth of the Beast
The Beast gives rise to a new, comprehensive style of thinking, organized around the addictive mandate ("you will drink/use again"), and the cardinal rule of addiction ("never say never to the possible future use of alcohol/drugs"), which in AVRT, we term the Addictive Voice. The Beast 'speaks' in our mind's eye and ear, but until recognized, the AV is subjectively experienced as self ('me').
See: Functions of the AV -
The Beast is ultimately just some brain tissue, and we can know its nature without having to actually conceptualize its appearance. The Beast is just there, and it will define itself in various ways through the Addictive Voice, which is heard in our mind's ear, and seen in our mind's eye.
In AVRT, we simply recognize the Beast by its bark.
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