Dalek

Is the absence of AV activity good?

Is the presence of AV activity bad?

Does such thinking not suggest that abstinence is dependent on, or improved by, AV silence?

Is such thinking itself not therefore AV?

Aussiebutterfly

Presence of AV means we are healthy. It is normal to want pleasure.

I don't know the answer to this debate so I really better read the book again.

Maybe it doesn't matter if we think it's poison or not as long as we aren't using the thought it's poison because we are worried about AV activity.

Galita

How I can find that book? Is just avrt ? Help!

Aussiebutterfly

To learn AVRT better read Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Subtance Addiction by Jack Trimpey.

Lenina

The way I see it is, the Beast is like a Tantruming toddler. It wants what it wants. There's no reasoning. I read some place about the eternal Now of infants and toddlers. I think the Beast is like that. I wouldn't argue or debate with a baby and I'm not going to debate with the Beast or AV. I acknowledge the stirring and let it go.


Galita, welcome! you can find the book at most books stores in the self help section or order it from Amazon. I think the title now is "The New Cure." Jack Trimpey wrote the first one as Rational Recovery. He's a little rabid against AA but it's a good theory and works for me.

Love from Lenina

RobbyRobot

Good questions, Dalek. Thanks for the discussion.

Neither the presence or the absence of AV activity is valuable in itself. My AV is a normal experience. My AV is any idea, or feeling, or behavior, which supports drinking alcohol. My Beast is a timeless thing, an eternal monster, and time is conceptually completely unknown to my Beast. So, the intervals between my AV are unimportant.

My abstinence, if discovered to be mistakenly dependent on whatever, including your examples above, would be routinely disqualified by my AV, and I would begin struggling with my alcoholic addiction in that case.

My Big Plan, (Which I did not, at such time, know it to be called a Big Plan) was forever set into my psyche more than 3 decades ago, my free choice, that I would never ever get drunk again, has no conditions. None. Nada. Zilch. Totally unconditional.

My sobriety, on the other hand, is loaded with conditions, lol. I hope we can both see the differences, yes, between sobriety with my alcoholism, and my being simply existing sans-alcohol by way of abstinence. This is important to grasp to understand where I'm coming from.

My AV can never be silenced, or defeated. My AV can be recognised, and that is sufficent. Nothing more is required for my successful abstinence to continue. As already said, sobriety is another story, yeah!

My wording about my AV not becoming active when I state my subjective understanding of alcohol as a poison was my response to what was being said about whomever stating that alcohol is a poison. The suggestion was their AV would jump all over the poison statement. My experience is that my AV dosen't respond either positively or negatively to my intellectual stance.

Exploring

Has anyone heard from TU? He is fine no doubt but I miss his presence here on SR.

RobbyRobot

Yeah, I miss him too. Sadly.

Lenina

I miss TU too. I have to wonder how many lives are saved because of this thread. AA is fine program and helps many people but RR worked best for me. I think the AVRT technique is amazing and the theory was like a light going on for me.

Love from Lenina

Aussiebutterfly

I felt like throwing the biggest party ever(without me drinking!) when I found out I didn't have to spend the rest of my life getting to some meetings every week. I can do whatever I like instead. I did about 3 years of them.

Aussiebutterfly

Oh I'd also like to say that this thread is what got me to go to the Rational Recovery site and to buy the book so it saved my life. I'd stumbled apon the site myself about a month before but only glanced at it because I thought you had to go do a course so it'd cost lots.

It would be better if the course wasn't on the front page since for people like me California is a LONG way and so many people would just move on like I did if they don't find this thread or AVRT explained elsewhere. The course is only for if you need extra help.

harry101

I have strong suspicions that TU has reincarnated as another poster!


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Dalek

I didn't mean you in particular, Robby. I was drawing on your "drinking poison is not pleasure" remark to make a general point. Obviously, to the Beast, alcohol is simply not poison, regardless of what anyone says, so it will see through all such ploys. It isn't even a minor threat to the Beast, and won't slow it down one bit. This is why all those warnings on cigarette packs don't stop any nicotine fiend from opening the pack and lighting up.

I suspect from your remarks that you intuitively know this, but bear in mind that others without thirty years off the bottle may not. Trying to see alcohol as poison or something that "doesn't feel good" in order to deter or ward off the Beast is a very common rookie tactic. I would wager that most people have tried this trick at some point. Not realizing that the Beast will practically laugh that off, many are soon dumbfounded, wondering "why, oh why, did I drink again, if I know I will feel so bad the next day?"

(They may feel bad the next day, but the Beast feels damn good!)

Well, this is part of what AVRT is about, a know thy enemy sort of thing. AVRT is patterned after the addictive voice itself, and we match the Beast point for point. The Beast knows that alcohol feels good, so instead of denying what alcohol does, and saying "I won't drink because it won't feel good," which is an unprovable assertion that the Beast can exploit, we say "I won't drink even if it did feel good. I reject that one, single pleasure." By meeting the Beast on its own turf, in the trenches, instead of from an ivory tower, we call its bluff.

harry101

Hi RobbyRobot,

For me, abstinence and sobriety mean the same thing but you differentiate between the two. What do you see as the difference?

What are the conditions for your sobriety?


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RobbyRobot

Hmmm. Well, I'm not all that different, am I? <GRIN>

I agree, and always have, alcohol is nothing but pure pleasure to the Beast. The Beast has no functional way to understand or appreciate alcohol as a poison. For me, my experience and understanding, it dosen't 'see' through what ever ploys. The Beast cannot be tricked or deceived. It simply cannot grasp any kind of mental understanding, and so is not smart enough to be fooled by something smarter. It really is amazingly stupid. The Beast is all about alcoholic pleasure. Period.

I am simply saying, my subjective understanding that alcohol is a poison has no downside for my sustained abstinence. Nada. None. Zilch. Not even for a moment. Okay?


I know what I know from my collective life experiences with alcoholic drunkeness, abstinence, and sobriety. My thirty years of living sans-alcohol started with one day, yeah?

Yeah, perhaps some persons have tried to fool their Beast with clever tricks, as you describe, but this would require a complete misunderstanding of the nature of their Beast. In that case, many other highly more complex troubles are already in play, and for all the combined reasons, yes, a person would (could) very well return to drinking.

People who wonder why their bad experiences don't deter the Beast have a real need of learning to skillfully recognise their AV. Their AV is playing them emotioningly, and winning the game, because abstinence is not an emotional experience. Abstinence is a behaviour. Not to say people don't feel emotional about their abstinence, of course they do, but those emotions are created because of a state of pre-exisiting abstinence, which supports the real-time experience of those respective emotions, not the other way around.

Frothy appeals don't work.


I completely agree. Truth weakens the Beast. Lies and deceptions, untruths, generalities and moralities, emotional energies -- these strengthen and excite the Beast to no end.

Interesting discussion. Thanks. Lotsa good stuff being worked through.

:ghug3

RobbyRobot

Don't ask much, do you, eh?!

No problemo, thanks for asking, harry.

My conditions for sobriety exist because of my existing conditions for alcoholism, which are defined as described within the pages of the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, 1st ed., and as well as AA's Twelve Step program.

To be clear, I am a recovered alcoholic drug addict, and I live a sustained spiritual life of sobriety. My alcoholism illness is not cured, but arrested. My alcoholic mind is alseep, unempowered. I have a new sober mind, a new sans-alcohol psyche, and have had for almost as much time as i have been not drinking, back when I detoxed in 1981. My sobriety, to be clear, is AA, and includes my work with gestalt therapy. I was a very sick puppy.

There are increasingly disturbing gaps in my living experience, which are not being answered by my AA sobriety, and so, I'm looking into AVRT to have another honest look at myself, with fresh 'eyes' so to speak. So far, its working well.

Spiritual sobriety and abstinence are not the same experience, yeah?

This is not the thread for much discussion of AA, of course. We can finish this quickly with our agreement that obvious conditions exist to maintain my AA sobriety. No conditions exist to maintain abstinence. Awesome times for me in both cases, and I'll never trade one for the other, and they don't cancel each other out either, is my experience.

Elphaba

I miss TU as well now, this use to be a great thread.

RobbyRobot

Use to be a great thread?

Aussiebutterfly

Lol@ the use to be comment. In anycase there really is enough on these threads for anyone wanting to learn AVRT to know what to do now. Much solid AVRT information was given at the start but no reason people can't discuss it more if they feel like it.

GerandTwine

Since TU has signed off, this thread has witnessed two good debates, first Dalek and me about AVRT on his smoking and my eating sweets (both uses ending in Big Plans), and now one on AV recognition between Dalek and RobbyRobot. Good stuff, for sure.