Susan80

Hi, could someone please shed any light on this and how it works please? Are there books/groups etc?

I would be particularly intersted to hear any success stories! :-)

many thanks

ReadyAtLast

Hi susan

It's Addictive voice Recognition technique. It is about recognizing that when you want a drink it isn't 'you' that wants a drink but 'it' wants a drink. 'It' is the beast part of your brain that has urges but has no control. Only 'you' have control and power and do not want to drink- the idea is to separate you from your beast and its urges to drink. that's my understanding of it-hope it makes some sense

The book is "rational recovery" by trimpney which you can get off Amazon. I love it and found it very useful especially in the early days with urges/cravings etc.

Saskia

Hi Susan,

As I understand it, AVRT is part of Rational Recovery, a movement started by Jack Trimpey as an alternative to AA. He has a book called Rational Recovery that explains his technique. In the early days there were Rational Recovery groups as in AA but he abandoned that because he felt it was no longer necessary.

My interpretation of his method is that we need to learn to recognize the Alcoholic Voice (AV) inside of us that lures us into drinking/continuing to drink. He gives methods for handling the AV or "the beast". There is a thread in SR under Secular Recovery that specifically addresses Rational Recovery. It can be used together with other methods.

I find it helps to think of that AV as "the beast" - a deaf, blind and gender-less creature. I think that the idea is not to talk to the beast but rather to learn to recognize his "voice" in our heads and ignore it/block it.

I won't vouch for my understanding of this as being totally accurate but there are some pieces of it that I use and find helps.

Later on, there was an other group that broke with Jack Trimpey and it is called "SMART Recovery" which uses behavioral techniques to address alcoholism. They have a web site with tools and explanations.

I hope that helps a little.
Sassy

Anna

I think you will find that when you recognize that AV for what it is, you can learn to hear it and dismiss it. It's just a feeling, a thought, and it doesn't control you.

freshstart57

Susan, RR and AVRT is described as a 'non-12 step' sobriety technique. SoberRecovery has an entire forum devoted to it and other secular recovery tools called Secular Connections.. There is a long running thread with over 2000 entries devoted to the discussion of AVRT called AVRT Discussion. Great title, huh?

You also asked for success stories. There are many of those, but the nature of AVRT says that once you have achieved your sobriety, you are done. Sobriety is an event, not a process. As a result, folks generally just return to their lives, filling in the hole that is left by alcoholism, and there aren't many that hang around SR. They get busy with their lives.

There are always exceptions to generalities and I am one of the exceptions for this one. I am happy to share my understanding and experience. http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ined-long.html. I invite you to see if this makes any sense to you.

You can also go right to the source for the AVRT crash course, right at the other end of your web browser. It may be what you are looking for.

hypochondriac

In a way I consider myself an AVRT success story. It really helped me in the beginning to not pick up again. I would argue with myself on my way home from work whether I would drink or not and I always would. Once I understood that I wasn't arguing with myself but my AV and that the trick was to not engage rather than try to win, then I feel I was able to stop drinking. But I am definitely not an AVRT purist. The book Rational Recovery actually made me really angry at times, especially all the anti AA stuff. I had absolutely no experience of AA so I didn't need 'deprogramming' as it were which is what the first part of the book seems to deal with. It did introduce me to some AA ideas which I thought were pretty cool which clearly wasn't its intent. The thing I liked about AVRT which really worked for me though was the 'forever' concept rather than 'one day at a time'. The reason behind that is if giving up alcohol is so difficult why do it one day at a time, why not just rip the plaster off and do it in one fell swoop - 'I will never drink again and I will never change my mind'. I knew that if I just tried to do it one day at a time then I would just be making plans to drink tomorrow. The forever thing just sat better in my head for me. I think AVRT is really aimed at people who have been in and out of AA for years and not managed to stay sober, but that doesn't mean there is no value in it for newcomers to recovery, or y'know, just not drinking If you are interested in this approach then it might be worth checking out SMART too. SMART recovery has a behavioural approach too but is compatible with other recovery methods whereas as RR can be quite adamant about certain ideas. This is one of the reasons I fell out with AVRT a bit at the beginning. I found it quite hard to engage with early in my recovery and quite dictatorial. I know that all my messed upness after quitting could be credited to my AV according to this method but I really just didn't feel like I could 'move on' after quitting drinking. I needed more help than that. I am revisiting AVRT now though and I realise that my feelings aren't necessarily incompatible with AVRT. Basically the problems I have after quitting (depression etc...) are separate from my recovery. I don't need to cure my other problems in order to be sober, I can recover from alcoholism and then deal with any other problems I have, but my sobriety is not contingent on them. I hope that makes some sense. That was my experience anyway. There's lots of info out there on AVRT and I hope some of it helps you x

bemyself

Susan, the two main long threads freshstart referred you to: I call them the AVRT seminars. They're that good...very in-depth, lively, erudite, and expand a great deal on the book with real (SR) people's experiences and practices and thoughts.

You'll need to make quite a bit of time to work through them - think of it, if you will, as intensive study :-)

Best wishes to you