RobbyRobot

That goal would best be served, in my opinion, by speaking of your experience of more than 30 years, and using THOSE experiences, brought forward and into the light of an insightful discussion, as examples for others to learn from within their own lives.

Having experienced your critical posts firsthand, I rarely hear from you of your earlier experiences brought forward to support your evaluations of my experiences. I often feel you 'listen' to me as one who is only listening to discover my Beast speak its AV, meanwhile I am unnoticed. Yeah, that sums it up for me anyways.

So is your goal for your own benefit, or have you placed yourself in a place of taking responsibility for others to teach them YOUR understanding of AVRT?

soberlicious

I would strongly agree. So many of these assumptions are so deeply ingrained they appear to be truths. When uncovering some of those, often times people can't seperate how they feel about certain information from how their beast feels about that information...hence the bristling against certain statements.

mecanix

As a natural born fence sitter i suppose it depends on how i see AVRT as either subjective or objective .

Ponderingly , M

ntmu

I was under the impression that bemyself's recovery takes from a variety of methods and that this was not a strictly AVRT thread.

Can you help clarify this for me bemyself?

Thanks

Received

Coming from both sides of the pond (so to speak) I understand and appreciate RR's and GT's posts.

What I don't do is get all bent out of shape and try and dice and slice posts from those trying to help. Selfishly speaking, it doesn't serve me and I find my beast starting to grumble with protest "see you don't really want to quit", "see they're hurting your feelings", "they're suggesting your are stupid", "you have a resentment now so how about a little drinkie poo to show them"...ad nauseam. Annoying, useless, PITA!

Fact is, AVRT showed me, put into words, what I had felt for years and years.

So, yeah, whatever. I am permanently abstinent or sober or whatever. All that boils down to is one very simple decision and very important fact; I will never drink again and I will never change my mind. Otherwise known as my BP.

Yah know?

freshstart57

This thread is a sterling example of the same clarity of thought and succinct phrasing that made Terminally Unique a source of understanding and a pleasure to read. Thanks to the stalwarts for keeping this spirit of TU vital and present.

bemyself

Phee-ew, feel like I've stirred up a hornets' nest now.

Freshstart usefully quoted from an old TU point....the phrase which resonates for me currently is 'perpetual confusion'.

However - and this is a big rider, partly in positive response to ntm's question (along the lines of my 'range of recovery methods...[my gloss: not solely] AVRT'. The however is that I also note quite a bit of 'confusion' (if not perpetual, though it can go on a while) even when trying to learn and practice AVRT in the real world setting of our own unique minds / bodies.

Indeed, I notice confusion pretty much everywhere in individuals' ACTUAL experiences with getting - and staying - sober. I won't apologise for using that term, even though I have indeed considered how it's so often used as an excuse for tentative abstinence. For me, it currently and still has personal value to simply describe 'not-being-drunk', in the continuous present, grammatically speaking.

I also did indeed take some umbrage at feeling somewhat subjected to a degree of the same type / tenor (if you will) of zealotry (forgot the exact phrase from fresh's quote - I don't know how to go back to look whilst typing)....zealotry, which intended for other's 'best interests' or not, is, to be blunt: an effing turn-off. It is what I've encountered in much of those 'recovery groups', and was one of the reasons I started reading more and more of the conversations about AVRT here back dating to 2011.

meantime, yes, nmt, I do stay open to a variety of 'methods' from life in general, in part to keep me from going quite insane.

Perhaps it's best if I personally withdraw from this thread now, and perhaps start another another time. I hope that at the very least, my descriptions of my felt experiences (the ontology / phenomenology of it, if you will), and the useful supportive replies, may continue to help newcomers who stumble across it.

Hurumph. Bleh. Comme ci, comme ca.

GerandTwine

What you are suggesting I do is not recommended in AVRT. Part of the reason I disclosed that I had my last drink before you had yours was to observe the effect that knowledge would have on people's perceptions of what I say. It appears the significance of that one miniscule fact about me has been blown way out of proportion. I believe the reasons this happens has a lot to do with the institutionalized Addictive Voice and how 'sober time' is wrapped into self-identity, particularly when not drinking one-day-at-a-time is made into a group project.

In general, believe I have done a commendable job at self-disclosure to create a feeling of commonality. I think my recognizing the AV in your posts happens when you are explaining AVRT to others, not you disclosing your experiences with others.

Is my goal [practicing AVRT here the best I can] for my benefit? Wow, hmmmm, let me think. I believe doing it is an important service (see RR World Services webpage, for instance) I know it takes time, and life is short. So, I guess I have mixed feelings on that. I've never really thought of how doing this would be specifically "for [my] own benefit". I guess people who know me and that I do this have mixed feelings of various degrees for various reasons since my relations with different people are different. I certainly don't "need" to do this to maintain some sobriety. I'm simply abstinent.

As to teaching AVRT. It's all in the the two books, which I call manuals - RR:TNC and The Art of AVRT. I don't think my practicing AVRT on a web-forum implies I am "taking responsibility for others", quite the contrary. Frankly, AVRT is not an out-of-the-box technique (unless you mean the recovery group movement box! :-) ). AVRT is what it is, and attempts to change it are the Addictive Voice, according to AVRT. That's what makes it such an iron-clad technique.

So, I guess I'm not sure what you are driving at with the question.

RobbyRobot

Well, I'm driving at the fact that this entire SR site is all about supporting the individual, and their right to practice whatever ways and means they may choose as they make their journey away from a life of abusing and using alcohol and drugs.

Strictly speaking, using absolute AVRT, most of this site's supportive efforts flies in the face of AVRT yeah? How interesting for you must that be, GT?

I tire of your soapbox efforts at being such a purist in a few threads here and there, and yet, you turn a blind eye to the reality of how support is provided for the members of SR. As if somehow you think you get a free pass in the secular forum to be a AVRT purist.

AVRT does not in fact allow for such collective support. Such organised support would be quickly considered AV -- your example of the word sobriety comes to mind.

Well, you can pretend that somehow this forum is disconnected from SR, but the facts are this forum is indeed part and parcel of the greater SR.

There are real reasons Rational Recovery no longer does meetings or has support sites for people to "share" their experiences -- and this is because AVRT practioneers can quickly risk becoming disingenuous in such enviroments.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, GT.

mecanix

A continuous present of not being drunk.
That appeals to me as i try to live my whole life in the continuous present
I'm not the most erudite of posters but i wish you the best of endeavours bemyself , M

freshstart57

I know, eh? An hour being drunk is 60 minutes wasted of being sober.

Morning Glory

.

soberlicious

Actually one of the real reasons is because such groups are a breeding ground for the "collective beast".

Too much sharing about issues other than ending your addiction to alcohol via the big plan is fine, wonderful, and cathartic in many ways...it's just not AVRT, that's all. It then becomes...well... sharing about life. That is not necessarily going to be the means to the end, that end being quitting alcohol. period. That's all AVRT is concerned with.

Each method really does have specifics to it that are cornerstones. There are purists among the different approaches. They try to keep the methods from getting changed to the point that they lose efficacy.

My sweet grandmother was the finest example of Christianity you'd ever want to know, except she refused to believe in the existence of Hell. Heaven, yes...but not a horrible place like Hell for anyone. Well, really she was cherry picking. My point is...within any paradigm sometimes we miss much if we only choose to embrace that which is desirable, and reject that which is uncomfortable.

PS mecanix I find you quite erudite.

GerandTwine

Yes, well put.
I don't look at AVRT and the Recovery Group Movement as being adversaries. I look at them as being different choices. And frankly, I don't look at Sober Recovery as either. SR, to me, is an example of a brand new (well, brand new in a historical perspective) media form for people to use to enhance their quality of life in so many ways that never used to be this convenient. And I think it works because of the combination of flexibility within person-honoring boundaries, even troubled person-honoring boundaries.

Robby, I have a lot of faith in you. I've always liked your eclectic approach. I can tell you like your life. I like mine, too. I don't think of myself as an AVRT purist. But I do understand AVRT. I totally accept that anyone can stop drinking any way they want. We all have a free pass here, Robby. That is, if we behave decently.
I don't think AVRT even implies that SR is incorrect in the manner it operates these forums. Again, it's about choices.

I don't pretend that Robby. To me, the greater SR gives people way more to do than figure out how to stop drinking or using, and it's not just for addicted people looking for help.

LOL, AVRT practitioners are pretty much just self-recovered people who have no real interest in spending a lot of time "in recovery", so you're right, maybe they would become disingenuous if they tried to set up "support meetings to "share" their experiences."

Robby, you forgot one of my major self-disclosures here. Last May, I made a Big Plan on sweets!!! LOL

bemyself

Yes, well, I'm going back on my word to withdraw from this thread - but given that I started it - and it was the very first that I'd ever started here on SR:

Please, please, GT - I'm almost begging you: your responses to me did NOT help me. Please therefore start your own thread about AVRT and its minutely finer points. It's clear that you enjoy parsing ad infinitum, and I actually get that, in 'ordinary' life (y'know, about language, linguistics and so on).

If you feel it important to clarify aspects of AVRT for readers, why not, indeed, start a sort of new version, an AVRT 'seminar 2013' as it were, in the spirit of TU's back in 2011?

Just please stop haggling the finer points with RobbyR (with whose last post I actually agree, and wanted to say myself for I believe he hit that particular nail upon the head).

MorningG: I do of course apologise if my later responses to GT have been agin the rules. They too, however - the fine, very fine, distinction between 'discussion as conversation' and 'debate' as you define - are worded, however carefully, in such a way that very intelligent writers can somehow slip under the radar. Again, I apologise if I too have somehow (God knows how, because my head's spinning) broached that distinction.

Anyway, as some of the SR mods sometimes say....'moving on'.

bemyself

Quick correction: I meant 'please stop haggling the finer points.....' in this thread, which has truly been hijacked. My first such experience, and it ain't pretty.

thank you.

RobbyRobot

I'm seriously enjoying an excellent bowl of mint chocolate chip ice-cream with my wife, who herself is having coffee flavoured ice-cream, as we chill together getting into the 1973 movie Papillon. Good times.

I'm not going to argue with you, GT. There is no upside to my taking apart whatever it is your sharing. You've had your share, and I've had mine, and here we are... in disagreement.

I'm satisfied with what I've already shared. Thanks for your shares too. Have a good evening, GT.

A

RobbyRobot

Yeah, okay then. Thanks, Soberlicious. I'll still go with what I got though already for an understanding of the "real reasons."

Later.

bemyself

Ahhhh....icecream, and Papillon. Robby, you and your wife have very good tastes! :-)

Anyway, I've said my piece to GT, you've said yours, all's sweet.

ntmu

wow