hippybeachbon

Fresh Start, you are the first person I have known in recovery to be familiar with AVRT; addictive voice recognition training. Have you checked out the website for Smart Recovery? Also some great books out there on Cognative Behavioral Therapy. GREAT StUFF! It has helped me immensely.

jaynie04

[QUOTE] Beautifully put FS....I choose life.....I have that choice unless I pick up, then all bets are off.

LadyBlue0527

That's a great way to describe a craving! How big will your smile be when you wake up tomorrow and remember these words?

How good you'll feel will far outweigh the suffering from this evening!

Glad that you came here to post and are getting through it.

Tides

I'm a little late to the thread on this one, but your post hit home with me too. I haven't had too many cravings or stare-downs since quitting. Today, though, a beautiful afternoon/early evening... I drove through town. People sitting at sidewalk cafes, enjoying their time together, a glass of wine, a beer. I felt, for the first time ever during any sober period "Why can't I be wired like them?" In the end, the "why" doesn't really matter, its just the way it is.

So, I got through it. A little low, but better than the feeling I think I would have had tomorrow.

I feel a little bit like SR helps me with accountability. I want to be able to come here with a clean conscience. So another day in the books...

And yes, if I really wanted to, I guess I could have sit at a sidewalk cafe with my wife and son, and enjoyed a nice evening in town. That seems way to rational for me, my complicated and moody self! :P

freshstart57

HippyBeachBon, welcome to SR, and glad you found us. You will find a lot of support for you, whatever route you choose to take to sobriety, and there are a bunch of them.

SR has a forum dedicated to 12 step alternative approaches and techniques called Secular Recovery, and AVRT is a popular topic for discussion. There is a thread there with about 2500 posts called AVRT Discussion, an open forum on AVRT that is unmatched anywhere else to my knowledge.

There is also a thread about an experience with AVRT that can serve as a good introduction to the topic. AVRT Explained

The Secular forum also discusses SMART, CBT, meditation and zen, LifeRing, SoS, all self directed and self empowering approaches to addiction.

Nuudawn

It's called cognitive dissonance. It is human nature to want the power to choose. When our choice is taken from us, we naturally want to resist the resistance. In essence, we even want to buck our own authority : )

The early days are the hardest ones, it will get better. Promise.