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(Being new to forums please let me know if i violate any rules, such as not reading an entire thread before posting, or changing the topic of an established thread, or posting links to material...)

In my first post on SR soberlicious mentioned avrt which I looked up today. I'm sure there is a lot of material out there to read, but I found this:
{not enough posts in the SR community to post a link}

Soberlicious suggesting this topic seemed an interesting coincidence since I'm an atheist (it's not that I don't believe in god, but that I believe there is no such thing as god). Also that i have always heard and recognized the AV all my life and usually willingly surrender to it.

I'd like to read more about it. Can anyone provide a short-list of material? Perhaps the best place to start it the beginning of this thread!

Terminally Unique

I sent you some pertinent links via Private Message, but this is what I recommend.

1. The free "Internet Crash Course on AVRT" at the Rational Recovery web site, which you can find with any search engine.
   
   
2. The book Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction by Jack Trimpey
   
   
3. This entire thread, from the beginning. Parts 1 and 2 are available here:
   
   #1
   
   #2

Thrifty

I am really getting so much out of this thread. I just finished part one and have learned a lot. I know it's been mentioned here before, but I am really interested in hearing from people who have read the Easyway to Stop Drinking book as well. I read it several times and it has really helped me shift my thinking about every aspect of drinking.

For example, my thinking about not drinking several years ago: My husband and I went away for a weekend trip to NYC and right before that he found my secret stash so he "forbade" me to drink for the entire weekend. I was miserable the whole time, feeling deprived, feeling like I wouldn't have any fun at the clubs, feeling jealous of all the drinkers around me, feeling like I lost my best friend forever.

Fast forward several years later and after reading Allen Carrs book: We went away for a weekend with non drinkers and I was so excited at the prospect of an alcohol free weekend, I finally felt that I got all the message, that everything we've been made to believe about alcohol has been a scam. I was elated instead of miserable. Same situation, totally different mindset.

However, the beast doesn't seem to care that I got the message and I'm ingesting poison. It is indeed primitive and wants what it wants when it wants it. I was really discouraged when I still had a desire to drink after reading Easyway, but I think the missing piece for me was AVRT. Any more thoughts from people who have read both books?

Terminally Unique

I read Allen Carr's book, The Easy Way to Stop Drinking, and like you, found that it did nothing to change the Beast's agenda. Viewed through the lens of AVRT, the entire EasyWay approach is essentially wishful thinking, since a primal urge cannot be reasoned with. Since AVRT does not provide any motivation to quit, however, I do recommend Allen Carr's book, as it might help some people in that respect.

Allen Carr mentions a very rudimentary form of AVRT when he speaks of the "little monster" (and not you) who is dependent on alcohol near the end of the book, but I am not sure if he was aware of AVRT when he wrote it. That said, any serious discussion of Allen Carr's method should probably take place in a separate thread.

Thrifty

I am so glad I got the RR book. I am on page 124 and am really getting into the explanation of the structural model of the brain. A few days ago I thought that just reading the free material online and reading through this thread would be enough for me to grasp the AVRT concept completely. So if anyone is stalling on getting the book or not reading carefully through it, my advice is don't.

My midbrain, or beast, has a tendency to tell me to breeze through "boring" parts. The part on the structure of the brain, is certainly boring to my beast, but not to me, and I make the decisions.

I like the explanation of moderation in light of the structural model. Pages 124-125: "With every drink, your midbrain generates an increased desire to drink another, and you enjoy the pleasurable sensations more and more. This desire is your Beast.....At the same time that your desire is increasing, the action of alcohol on the neocortex (you, or your conscious brain) is reducing your self control. Even though you want to drink moderately, you are soon in no shape to drink moderately. Your beast explodes with desire, and you fell it's cry "yes, another!"from head to toe. Your Beast understands that moderate drinking means no more deep pleasure, but it likes the idea because it knows it will very likely get the upper hand with just a few drinks. The next day you wonder, "Why" "

A good part of the book to ponder for me.

DrivenHeart85

I tried moderation management before I read the book. If you ever want to know for sure whether or not you have a Beast for alcohol residing within you, moderation is a good test because if you do have one, you will fail at moderation, A LOT. lol My AV was pretty damn sure that the 2-3 beers I was scheduled to drink the next week were "borrowable" for the present moment, in fact I was even allowed to "borrow" them from the next 10 years+infinity if I had to...it's called Beast accounting. lol

FT

Beast accounting:

kanamit

We come from very similar backgrounds. Feel free to PM me or start a separate Easy Way thread for anything non-AVRT so we can keep this one solely AVRT.

Terminally Unique

Like anything else, AVRT is a learned skill, and there is an initial learning curve. Yes, some people do in fact "get it" from the free materials, but the book is far more comprehensive, and considering that it costs $12 new, and less than half that used, it would be foolish not to get it. There are some good tips in this thread, and there are more I haven't posted, but they are not a replacement for reading the book. The Beast is quite comfortable with passivity and procrastination, and we won't be doing anyone any favors by spoon feeding them wisdom.

AVRT is not something that "works" on you and produces results, it is something that you learn and then put to use. Considering what is at stake, it is far better to actively and aggressively learn AVRT from the start than to go about it haphazardly. I recommend that people read the book, then this entire thread, from the beginning, and then read the book a second time, paying close attention to the exercises. By doing this, and posting questions, they should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly.

Thrifty

I am further along in the book and am hung up on the"never-now" approach of Rational Recovery on pages 140-141. I don't get what Trimpey means by that. Specifically on pg 140, he says "With the big plan, we meet the beast on it's own turf, eternity. We reduce our understanding of time to reality as the beast understands it. Because it is always now, we may firmly make a plan for the rest of our lives based on the clear understanding, "I will never now drink". Huh? I don' get what he's trying to say.

also, on page 141... "By collapsing the big plan for endless abstinence into the never-ending now, the task is made quite feasible although there is probably no way to stave off the initial but temporary anxiety and grief over this life saving decision."

I think I get the second half of that statement.... Your beast will never be OK with the decision of you trying to kill it off, especially in the beginning and the beast will probably try to make you feel anxious and sad about the decision. But as long as you separate it from yourself, you will be fine. So, you shouldn't wait for the beast to stop bugging you all together before you make the Big Plan, it's not going to happen. I don't get "by collapsing the Big Plan for endless abstinence into the never ending now, the task is made quite feasible". Anybody have any thoughts? I appreciate it.

FT

Hi Thrifty,

TU will come along with a much better answer than I can give, but I'll give you my take on it.

Syntactically, "I will never now drink" is immensely irritating to me. However, the gist is that this sentence removes the "future intent" from the stated intention not to drink, because it is always "NOW" when we are making that crucial decision.

The same principle applies to "collapsing the big plan for endless abstinence into the never-ending now". Many of us came into this with "future intentions" to quit drinking. It is always easier to make plans than it is to actually DO them.

"Never" and "always" are abstract time concepts, and the Beast loves them as a tender spot for attack. The idea is to forget about those abstracts and just make your decision not to drink NOW. Future and "always" events are just a repeated series of "NOW's" if you think about it.

I think you've got it. I have a tendency to overthink and to abstract things out too much. For me, it was just a lot easier to identify myself as a "non-drinker". As a non-drinker, all drinking decisions are non-decisions. I do what other non-drinkers do. I just don't drink. Period. No thinking or argument required.

FT

Terminally Unique

The only time you can abstain is now, and the only time you can drink/use is now. Sure, you can drink tomorrow, but by the time tomorrow actually comes, it will also be "now." Additionally, by following that line of thought, "now" is the only time that you can quit. Therefore, it will never be any easier or any more difficult to quit than right now. Put off quitting longer than necessary at your peril.

The Beast has no real concept of time as humans understand it. It can't think ahead to your retirement or your pending funeral if you keep drinking. For the Beast, which is a survival drive, it is always now, and now is always a good time to drink/use. This is why plans to "cut back" for a week, or 90 days often fail. "If you are going to drink in ninety days, why not now?" the AV will argue, and more than a few agree with that Beast logic.

You don't need to get hung up on this, though. Take your pick - "I will never drink again," or "I will never now drink" — whichever works for you. This "time" factor confusion may very well be the Addictive Voice trying to convince you that there is something missing, something you aren't getting, and that if you don't figure out the metaphysics of time, you will be doomed. When the time comes, just make a plan for permanent, unconditional abstinence, however that makes sense to you, and let the Beast worry about the mechanics of time.

Terminally Unique

You are right on target here, by the way. Just recognize any sense of turmoil or feelings of discomfort at the idea of abstaining as the Beast, and not you. A pernicious belief in recovery circles is that addiction recovery is a constant struggle to stay sober. In AVRT, we just let the Beast struggle with abstinence, and that includes counting time since IT'S last drink.

Thrifty

TU, thanks for pointing out that getting caught up in a concept in the book and not understanding it IS the AV voice telling me...... "see, you're not getting it. This is more complicated than it seems. You might as well just give up now because you'll never be able to get it until you thoroughly understand the never now thing, you'll never get anything so just give up now and give yourself a break". I didn't think of it that way until you pointed that out. Thanks for that.

Terminally Unique

Thrifty,

I sometimes joke that the Beast can read, and that, sensing danger, will almost certainly chime in the first time you read the book. This is why I recommend reading the book twice, but don't let that deter you from moving forward. Set a reasonable time limit for reading the book and this thread, such as a week, for example.

DrivenHeart85

Oh yeah, I remember that part too. There was a point where I thought it was far too complicated than it seemed and I obviously didn't understand how to do it. Thinking you're incompetent at AVRT is your AV. I think my AV purposely twisted the heck out of things and tried to make something complicated out of something simple just to drag things out more.

GerandTwine

Hi, I'm new to soberrecovery, having recently learned it had this discussion. I used AVRT a long time ago to guarantee my teetotaling and more recently to quit caffeine and then chocolate.

I feel that my simply knowing AVRT has provided me with some of the motivation to quit the last two.

Terminally Unique

A fair point. I put off really quitting smoking for a while, since I had stopped and started about 157 times, and I was getting discouraged. I knew from experience that the first 72 hours after stopping were the worst, since it takes that long for the nicotine to flush out of your system. Eventually, I figured I should just use AVRT for smoking as well. Once I finally made a Big Plan for smoking and unleashed AVRT on the nicotine Beast, it didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

Welcome, BTW. We can use a few more people versed in AVRT.

FT

Wow -- dueling feline avatars!!!! Cool!

I just wanted to post a quick comment about the "Addictive Voice". I MUST come to the defense of the POOR ADDICTIVE VOICE!

I mean, ALL it is trying to do is HELP. It sees the POOR BEAST over in the corner, shivering and quaking. Now, WHO can blame the AV for trying to remedy that?

I stopped "hating" my AV a long time ago. Once I realized that the AV was just a part of me that represented "wants" and not "needs", it was no longer so uncomfortable to hear it pipe up. Understanding that helped me to be able to rationally sort out what was real and what was not, in terms of whether to view the AV's "requests" as legitimate or not.

With the exception of drugs and alcohol, I even let my AV have its way once in awhile. I might let it have that piece of cake. But not the whole cake, and not every day or even every month! I've never been a smoker, so I don't ever let it smoke -- even though it has even asked me for a cigarette once in awhile! Once in awhile it asks me for something REALLY ridiculous, like going bungie jumping or skydiving, but since I am the one with the final say, I turn down most bone crunching requests.

Yes, here are my silly analogies once again. But, as an Advanced Nephalist, I now have the luxury of taking a little more lighthearted view of my AV. But never so lighthearted I do not forget that my AV really does not have my best interests at heart. It still lives in the stone age, and what does it know from computers and space age technology and stuff anyway?

FT

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(failedtaper: thanks for the adding the word "nephalist" to my vocabulary. Interesting word of Greek origin.)

Observation: I used AVRT to quit smoking without knowing it, which I've read is not an uncommon occurrence. It did not occur naturally to me, though, my BF was the one who said "if you can't imagine yourself never having another cigarette ever again then you may as well not bother quitting.".

Litmus test for addiction: ive found that people who do not have a problem with drugs/alcohol can't even conceive of the panic and unease caused by imagining never again imbibing. Say that question to someone "trying to quit" and you'll get a face full of wide-eyed dismay.

Disagreement: "Hope" is a negative and pointless emotion. I despise it as much as "faith.". Couldn't "hope" also be known as the AV?

Reminded me of: "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind" by Julian Jaynes. Anyone read it? If not google "bicameralism.". The first 100 pages are especially interesting with several thought experiments that clearly illustrate what "I" isn't.

I've always been very interested in trying to define "I". As it applies to my (previous) addiction I am satisfied as defining it as the part of me that knows I will never drink again.

Especially liked: "and I will never change my mind.". I bet that kicks many people's beast into high gear!

Didn't care for: the weird anti-AA vibe of the article. I see his point, and I've never been to AA but to me that part sounded like his own personal baggage rather than a detached "rational" evaluation of a different process.

Final thoughts: While my moods have been tough at times to deal with, overall I derive a lot of peace from knowing that I have decided to never drink again...and that it truly is that simple (albeit not easy)