DriGuy

There was a lot there that resonated with me, not just in the details, but how much you threw yourself into recovery and and made it part of your being by exploring your own desires and reactions. The thoughts and desires do diminish. It happens naturally when the addiction cycle is broken. It can be helped along, by your "zen" approach. I've heard some people describe "urge surfing," which seems somewhat related to what you were doing, and many people in AA claim God takes away their desire to drink, but I believe the diminishing experience requires our active participation first and foremost. I didn't call my experience "zen". It just involved a lot of self awareness, but that is similar to my understanding of zen.

I've often wondered if the big plan in AVRT is enough by itself, or if recovery is predicated on a greater desire to quit than to continue the life of an alcoholic, and I lean toward the "greater desire to quit" as playing the bigger role. But doesn't every alcoholic in recovery have that greater desire? I've wondered about that, and I'm not sure that's always the case, and I often explain away those relapses years into recovery by the fact that the issue of "desire to quit" had never been fully resolved. People often explain a relapse as caused by that common sensation that long periods of abstinence, which makes us feel well enough to drink with moderation, are the reason for drinking again.

But I still have to wonder if it isn't because they still want to drink. Thoughts and pleasant memories that whiffle through our brains are just laughable curiosities, but I'm not sure they can be so easily disregarded if a person still wants to drink. I know where I am in recovery that desire is but a distant memory, while the actual desire is gone completely.

As to Dusty's concern about the time involved, I think these things happen in their own time, not by magic, but by personal diligence. And then, they happen when they happen, and those become benchmarks of a sort, but for me, recovery seems to be an ongoing process. It never ends. The laborious nature of early recovery is no longer difficult, but recovery keeps deepening all the time. There is no time when I regard recovery as being over. It just becomes second nature.

nez

Thoughts of alcohol (both of drinking and of not drinking) slowly disappeared from my thoughts more and more as time went by.

I couldn't tell you exactly when (pretty sure it was some time after a year sober) that alcohol had completely disappeared from my thought processes, I just know that it had happened long before I became aware of it's disappearance...because I was no longer thinking about it!!! That thought put a little skip in my mental walk as I realized...I am free!!!

I walked forward from that point with the realization that alcohol can do nothing for me and has nothing I want, so it was gone from my thoughts.

The struggle was over! It was worth the work!! It can and does happen!!!

ElizaD

While I have been sober for just 30 days, I was sober for 2 years and 9 months before I started drinking again 13 months ago. I think it was about 9 months for me before I stopped having those thoughts. I guess those thoughts/cravings can pop up at anytime and so I'll try to not to be complacent this time so I don't start drinking again.

Evoo

I just want to second this. Externalizing the addiction voice in my head really helped. I’m one year sober and I no longer romanticize alcohol or dream of being able to “drink moderately someday.” The AVRT exercise was life-changing, and I didn’t even read that much about it, I just used it to attempt a radical change in perspective.

For awhile I felt like Gollum — but eventually the AV faded into the background and it’s mostly gone now. It’s wild, because that “AV” used to be me…

Free2bme888

We WANT to walk the walk. If we believe we HAVE to, basically we feel like we are missing and wanting something we CANT have.

We don’t want it, that life, that toxic relationship,anymore. We see it for what it evolved to, and like being free.

Big difference. 😘🥰😍🤓

samwitch

This. Absolutely well said, thanks Free!

Zebra1275

I've been sober quite awhile now, so I don't really remember. I would guess probably a few years.

silentrun

Aahhhhh 3 years to lose your love for the heaters? I was hoping more like 3 months.

It depends on what you mean. At 6 months I no longer had cravings but I still had thoughts of using. That went on for years but it wasn't uncomfortable cravings or anything like that. I wasn't completely comfortable until two years sober but that had less to do with wanting a drink and more to do with getting my butt handed to me trying to heal.

dustyfox

Perhaps my question is not just 'when will the desire for a drink go away' but a wider one of 'when will I feel 'whole' when will I feel ' at 'one'' - Inner exploration maybe will result in feeling 'at peace' - it seems a weighty task.
Drinking obliterated that need for feeling 'at one' , masked it, buried it for years and years and years. When we find ourselves sober, suddenly we are casting around looking for sensation or belief or purpose to fill the void that drinking stopped us from seeing or feeling.

I guess many of us might be parents, sons or daughters, wives and husbands, professionals, people with jobs, pets, and so on but despite all those responsibilities we are addicts and ex addicts who, in order to recover, need to find a way to exist in the world and feel good, feel 'at one'. If we don't feel 'good' at some level it would be very hard to stick at recovery.
AVRT has worked for me, a programme or framework for recovery surely is essential for that recovery -

The relationship with alcohol for all of us was toxic, powerful, and, in many cases, long lasting. Once that relationship has ended it can feel, like the breakup of any long relationship, hard going, as is often evidenced here by many of us struggling to maintain sobriety. Without some kind of structured programme of support it is difficult to just 'go it alone'.

That old relationship with drinking will fade, it will become less significant. The knowledge and memory of the damage it did is important to keep alive somewhere, to keep relapse at bay.
A bit of a ramble but helpful sorting out my thoughts.

DriGuy

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I know what you mean by "feeling at one." It's what I call congruence, and others sometimes refer to as "getting your $hit together." And yes it's weighty task, harder I believe than putting the plug in the jug. I think it says somewhere in the book, Rational Recovery, that the goal of RR is just to quit drinking, and that frees you up, only if you so desire, to purse "being at one," although it doesn't use that description. And I agree with that comment in the book, but with big reservations. I believe that if all I ever did was sober up, I would still be grateful for that, but there can be so much more.

Many recovering alcoholics consider this additional step of being at one as essential, and I am a huge fan, but I don't personally connect this with recovery. I see it as a separate issue, with even bigger rewards than sobriety itself. In my case, I was already on the track when I started drinking, and then slowly, drinking derailed me off that track. I was not able to pursue being at one again until after I quit drinking. I don't know if it's the same for everyone. But alcoholism redirected my entire focus toward drinking and not personal growth. Weird.

Oh, look here, you already said the same, so I really didn't need to write those last paragraphs:

AA advocates the 12 steps, possibly for the same reason. For me, I found being at one through self exploration, behavior change, and self honesty, rather than through spiritual means. But lets return to your original observation of when does being at one occur? It's not same as breaking the addiction cycle, which is done when it's done. Keeping the addiction cycle at bay requires some maintenance, and recovery becomes more solid with time, but "being at one" is never done in the same way. It is evolving and not something you can ever check off your bucket list. It's one of those things where you must learn to enjoy the journey, because you are never finished. And what I want is just to enjoy the journey.

Dusty, I have confidence in you. You have said things during the last months that tell me you are embracing recovery fully. For some reason I want to say, "Don't worry so much about timelines. Just keep doing what you are doing, stay in touch with others, and share your experience and questions." I think you have what it takes to do this.

Free2bme888

What Driguy so wonderfully articulated. 😁❤️🤓

Dee74

I think the 'feeling whole' thing is very largely dependent on what we do with our lives.
I needed a life with purpose and a life I was happy in and did not want to escape from or jeopardise...so I built one

D

least

For me, feeling 'whole' means being content with what I have and not focusing on what I don't have. Above all, I am at peace with my sobriety, it is who I am now and it's a comfortable place to be.

nez

Without a doubt this was a big key for me for staying sober. However, just being sober, left me feeling some rudderless.

I embarked upon a journey of inner exploration. Who was I really? What did I believe? What was important to me? What was my moral code, principles, and ethics? and on...I didn't realize at the time, but this was recovery and a journey. Sobriety was a starting point, not the end destination.

As the journey progresses, I am finding myself feeling more and more complete and at one. With that comes a peace and serenity from wanting what I get, as opposed to getting what I want, which always left me feeling incomplete, lost, and empty.

What I have been searching for, has been searching for me; and we are getting to know each other on the recovery journey.

MissPerfumado

Everything comes at the right time. Have to say, Dusty, this line of inquiry of yours makes complete sense for me. It's the trajectory I went on myself.

First I sobered up, then I sought purpose. In Year 3 of sobriety, that journey kicked off in earnest. I found it so absorbing, it overtook the recovery journey in importance.

I could never have embarked on the purpose journey without sorting out sobriety.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Obladi

Jack Trimpey himself explicitly stated that AVRT had nothing to do with our current definition of "recovery" - it has only to do with recognizing the AV/beast for what IT/they are. Basically, he says, "Separating from the beast is essential - there you go. You're welcome." The rest is outside of the realm of AVRT.

The Rational Recovery book helped me quite a bit, but it didn't get me across the line of living sober. Intellectually recognizing the Addictive Voice for what it was didn't help me to deal with the stuff that was underground. When that junk bubbled up, I seemed to be in a state where I wasn't capable of even thinking, you know? It doesn't make any sense to 'find myself' drinking, but it happened. Repeatedly.

Looking for that one-ness, actively working on overcoming my dis-ease; those are the things that help me to live sober. So I get it and agree that you are on the right path with this line of thinking.

What really struck me about your clarifying question is that you have set about answering it in an academic manner - you step out of focus and into the crowd of people who need to recover, then observe "us" as a whole. As a person who might be qualified to call herself a sociologist, I get this perspective and think there is merit in this line of investigation. In fact, I've engaged in quite a lot of this thinking myself. But here's the thing: it didn't help me to gain that one-ness. Because I was observing, not doing.

For me, wholeness hasn't 'happened' - it seems to need to be to be sought. This is a theme I hear/read from recovered people of many perspectives (see me getting sociological there? ). We need to "fill the hole in our soul" ourselves. fini recommended a wonderful book to me that might be helpful to you, too: The Spirituality of Imperfection. Brene Brown's book, The Gifts of Imperfection, was a good warm-up to the former. RobbieRobot, a beloved member of this community, also hosted a long discussion here on SR about authenticity. I can dig that up if you can't find the link.

I believe you're right in surmising that personal wholeness and losing the desire to drink go hand-in-hand. That's how it's working for me. It can be as uncomfortable as hell, for sure. But when I stack my dis-ease sober against obliteration and all of the troubles I experienced drinking... it's really no contest. Authenticity beats the pants off of living as an addict, even when it does suck

O

Obladi

Wow, I love this. I feel the same way.

silentrun

For me that started about the 9 month mark and slowed down at 2 years.

Triggered

When you think on it, you've spent all your addictive years seperating from 'self'.... I know that for me anyway, I drank to escape from the identity that previous experiences had moulded me into. You often hear about people wanting to 'get out of their heads' or ' into oblivion' etc. The language used isn't a mistake. Getting sober is just part of the journey back to reconnecting to yourself, the work I do alongside of getting sober is to make a more comfortable place to return to and want to stay. And dont ignore the journey. Every single little step or achievement is something to be cherished. For me it's as much about the journey as the destination.

user1

It fades after 3 weeks.