I do think the absence of AV is good. It is my preference really and why the hell wouldn't it be? I don't however think that the corollary is bad - if the AV is present I will recognize it and act appropriately. I am simply thinking that there are ways in which we can create a better situation for ourselves and that is a worthwhile exercise to work towards a state of harmony with the world where we seldom find ourselves at odds with the primitive brain.

Maybe I'm missing your point.

The Beast is just a souped-up version of a legitimate survival drive, like your sex drive. I'm sure the expression of your sex drive, which one might call the Animal Voice (AV), tells you to do things that you know you shouldn't do. Would you want to be neutered in order to stay out of trouble, though?

I've been thinking about just this point.

I blamed the stress of my job for my drinking. First thing on most weekday mornings I would pick up a couple of mickeys (two because it's too dangerous to go out later in the evening if I still need a drink as the police stake out liquor outlets) and drive around drinking straight vodka until I had summoned the resolve to go into work. I didn't drink on the weekends.

I thought that if I could just chuck my job my alcohol problem would be solved.

It's true that my job provides my beast plenty of ammunition. But now that I've been sober for a little while, and have reflected on the matter, I'm persuaded that even in the absence of my job I'd still have to deal with my beast.

The only certain path to my continued sobriety is to remember that I have decided that I do not drink, and that I will never change my mind concerning this, regardless of my circumstances.

I sent a thank you email to Trimpey and noted how much I like to have my identity back with AVRT and this was the response...

"You’re very fortunate to learn about AVRT, because our health and social service systems actively suppresses informed consent to recovery group participation and addiction treatment services. You’re right, your original family identity is blooming once again, now that you are denying addict-identity. That means you’re again a family woman without the need for a surrogate family of substance abusers. Stay away from recovery groups of all kinds, set your confidence for lifetime abstinence arbitrarily at 100%, recognize all self-doubt as your Addictive Voice, and you'll do fine. Regardless of your circumstances, may you enjoy this holiday season as a celebration of the free will (not “will-power”) that has ended the bondage of your late addiction."

I hope sharing the emails isn't off topic, I'm just shocked at how nice the guy is (I'm a self-admitted skeptic when it comes to all people). lol Plus for anyone out there, it goes to show that if you'd like to maintain your original identity, AVRT is great for that...I'm really happy to be free of the shared identity I had before and am free from labeling myself as defective for the rest of my life. I'm just a non-drinker now...it's just "normal life minus alcohol"...that was all I ever wanted in the first place. :)

My job was my reason for using opiates, riel. I identify with that. Since discovering avrt, I recognise that as beast talk. I still get stressed, I still find it hard, but I'm not using anything but my natural chemicals to get through it (and coffee!)
I hear the voice, and all I seem to have to do is know where it is coming from. I don't fight it or try to make it go away. It rises up and then it subsides, by itself.

My job was my reason for not wanting to quit drinking. I had to run the department alone when I first started working there and since I did it successfully then while drinking every night because of the stress, I thought I needed to do it again while drinking every night so I could be a success again. Before I ran into AVRT, I was absolutely convinced of this plan until I brought it up on SR and everyone informed me I had a screw loose. I've been running the department alone now for almost 2 months...WAY easier and less stressful this time around without alcohol. lol Just one example of how the AV will gladly do your thinking for you if you let it.

I have started using avrt for some other aspects of my life. I am beginning to recognize when a feeling or thought is coming from my beast brain and needs to be ignored for the good of "me". Like over eating! Especially sugar based things! I think my beast brain has been running the show for quite some time!!!

Just been out for anotherChristmas do and drank gingerale. What is weird, is that I felt like I was getting drunk. Is this beast activity?
I got all my drinks myself and watched them being poured at the bar, so I know there was no alcohol in there, but it doesn't half feel like it. I was nervous to drive home.
Is this like a drinking dream?

I found the imfo in Sugar Blues, really helpful as it exposes , not only the health associated problems with heavily processed cane, beet and now corn, but also the moral imperative. Learning just how recently ( evolutionary anyway) the chemical, sucrose, has become so prevalent in most so-called food products is just plain scary for anyone remotely interested in personal well-being.

I mention "moral imperative" because of the tens of thousands (slaves)who lost their lives initially in the sugar industry's infancy. Now we have millions on track for a lifetime of diabetes treatments and obesity.

Anyway, AVRT helps me trmendously identifying any sugar cravings for what they are. More importantly, reframing my identity as a non-drinker;... instead of the many other more popular terms, has been just one more thing I thank TU for clarifying.

Again, to everyone keeping this thread vibrant, a big THANKS !!

I think this your natural loss of inhibitions once you feel comfortable in a situation. If you've read the Allen Carr book he mentions how children arrive at a party shy and nervous and then twenty minutes later they're running and shouting and having fun—all without drugs!

I realised this at some point today, kanamit. I wasn't drunk, I was having FUN! Old av has been telling me for so long that I couldn't have fun without a drink, the feeling was completely alien to me. Full of lies, that beast!

Kanamit and Lost...this was huge for me when I first quit. I think this has made the biggest difference in my life now as opposed to my life then. Of course, it's about putting the alcohol down and for good, but beyond that the single most important change for me has been throwing aside those inhibitions. It is a wonderfully freeing feeling to be uninhibited without booze. As you said Lost, drinking=fun is the biggest lie ever...took me awhile to save face after realizing I had believed it for so long.

The fact that most people lose that childlike passion about living is sad I think.

There really is some sort of higher level of fun without drinking. I think when you're a drinker, you're always trying to just get through the day until you can drink again but as a non-drinker, the fun is in the moment. You're not buried in heaps of anxiety, cravings, depression, fatigue and worry all the time, trying to figure out how you can get to that one moment when you have your booze all to yourself again and can relax. To me, abstinent life includes higher highs and lower lows and being a drunk is just living in a constant state of just getting by. As the Eagles put it best, "You're losing all your highs and lows, ain't it funny how the feeling goes away". That's what being a drunk was to me...just a constant level of existing rather than actually living life. It's like being a lamp that's plugged in but isn't turned on.

I used to hate going out because it took me away from the beloved drink. Even resented the kids school plays. It feels like my whole life just opened up. I just spent an evening ordering ginger ale from a bar all night, and it wasn't hard. I know from experience that that would have been a white knuckle night. So grateful I stumbled upon this method. Thanks all of you.
LB xxx

I'll take issue with this, speaking only for myself. Can't entirely tell you why I've had no craving whatsoever to drink or drug since cleaning up 8 months ago, but the fact is I haven't. Most of what I've changed isn't specific to addiction. It's been more general changes in how I relate to myself, others, the world; I'm guessing the answer lies somewhere in there.

Again, this is just my experience. Not at all comfortable making any universal claims about addiction and recovery.

I figured someone would, since one of the most vexing forms of the Addictive Voice is the idea that it is good if we do not have the desire to drink or use. It implies that one had better hope to continue to not have a desire to drink/use, or else. It is a classic Beast set-up, and you can bet the Beast will chime in when the desire inevitably returns someday. In AVRT, it is neither good nor bad to desire to drink or use.

Viewed through the lens of AVRT, these are the relevant questions for you:

Is it good or bad that you haven't had a desire to drink or drug?
What if you did have the desire to drink or drug?
What if the desire came back? What then?
Would you drink/use again?

I don't know if this is relevant or not but I always found, for me, that prior to a period of quitting I'd have a night where I had just two or three drinks and feel sated with it. In fact, in the week of quitting for good I had just a single glass of wine one evening.

I'd say to myself, is it really worth quitting? If you drank like that a few times per week you could even stay within the UK government's recommended limits. Why not just cut down?

I don't know whether I'm right but I now attribute those brief periods of moderation to the Beast. I decided to quit so I was strung along by my AV. Of course if I played into its hands the moderation would go out the window and the Beast would use me to fill its boots.

Perhaps if your Beast knows you're serious about quitting it will devise a long-term strategy and stay dormant for a few days, weeks or months, biding its time.

Personally, I think it IS the addictive voice itself that is proclaiming the lack of desire to drink. What better way is there to let down your guard than to have the AV itself crying "Uncle".

Early recovery is often accompanied by a sense of accomplishment, that something has been achieved in a tangible sense. However, self-identifying as a non-drinker is not anything really "tangible", nothing has been "surrendered", because the individual is still left with being subject to the condition of being human.

Drives, and wants, and desires, even the one to drink, are normal for the human condition. It is not the presence or absence of those things, but the behavior that accompanies them. I do think it is somewhat dangerous to link the lack of desire to drink to the conviction or self-identity as a non-drinker.

Yes, I suppose not drinking approaches almost a position of activism, especially for newly self-identified non-drinkers. Later on, there seems to be less of a need to deny the existence of the thing we tried for so long to shed. Here and there, especially under conditions of high stress or emotional pain, the desire to drink does surface in me. These days, that feeling is more "interesting" than threatening.

When I fell in to opiate addiction surrounding orthopedic surgery, I was caught off my guard, not realizing my Beast had picked right up on a "new" idea for stress relief. I made the unfortunate mistake of not taking that new "threat" seriously, and it was only after I realized I had to look at opiates in the same way that I now view alcohol, that I was able to let that addiction go the way of my old alcohol "problem".

I guess what I'm saying is to be careful to recognize the addictive voice for what it is. Sometimes it is not what you think.

FT

Ahhhhh, I get it now. Saying it's good for your desire not being around or bad if it is around, is essentially assigning the Beast power. The Beast has no power, so its trick will be the AV telling you it does have power...through negative emotions related to its presence and through positive emotions related to its absence.

I have a sleeping tiger that resides in me. It lies dormant, but isn't dead. All I have to do is add alcohol and I believe that beast will rage to life.

I haven't had a drink in over seventeen years. I can think of one "perfect storm" of events that almost led me back to taking a drink about three years ago. I was enraged about a situation. I should also say that I had successfully quit smoking cigarettes for a period of a year and a half at the time, and remember making a decision to buy a pack of cigarettes. I thought it was the better choice given my circumstances. For both addictions, I was way, way past the point of obsession and had not had cravings for either one in ages.

Incidentally, the one pack of cigarettes that day sent me back up to the two pack a day habitI had before I decided to quit the first time. It only took me about a month to get back to the two-pack a day level. I smoked for another year and a half after that, and had to quit all over again.

The object lesson: never, ever think the Beast is dead. I proved to myself that when it comes to addictive substances, the sleeping tiger always lies in wait.