Nonsensical

This topic has popped up in the midst of other threads before, but I haven't made up my mind about how important it is to determine if some thoughts are AV or not.

The example thoughts that were discussed in the past:

"That drink looks tasty"
"I wish I was a normal drinker"

So my first question is "are these AV?"

And secondly - "Does it matter if they are identified as AV or not"

Obviously when my AV is telling me to buy alcohol or drink alcohol, it must be recognized as AV and given the appropriate response. But does it matter whether it is me or the AV who thinks a drink is tasty or wishes I were capable of 'normal drinking', as long as I am not going to violate the BP?

Thoughts?

freshstart57

Nonsensical, I find it simplest and easiest, and even most efficient, to lump em all together and throw them over the fence holus bolus. I neither entertain ideas of drinking, nor allow them to entertain me. If it smells like alcohol or looks like it, even remotely, that is my AV. Jerk.

soberlicious

Well, if I know what it is I can dismiss it. If I don't know what it is and I think it's me, I might entertain it. Over time I might give the motor control over to the beast.

Actually, I did that several years ago.

As far as this: Per AVRT (important preface), any thought, in words or images, that suggests (even remotely) the use of alcohol now or in the future is AV....so, according to AVRT, it's always AV, never you. The reason it is outlined like that is to make it simple. Continually questioning "is it?" or "Isn't it?" puts you in a position for beast take-over.

Weird analogy, but you know how you check out some leftovers in the fridge and stand there for a min like...."hmmmm, I wonder if these are still good...." It's not even worth knowing the answer because finding the answer would involve unnecessary risk. Even a remote possibility and it gets tossed. It's just easier that way.

Nonsensical

I don't see how wishing I wasn't an alcoholic suggests future use of alcohol. I wish I could throw a football like Payton Manning. This does not remotely suggest that I am about to quit my job and try out for the NFL. I might see a hot chick holding a beer, and think 'she's hot'. I don't see this as suggesting either future drinking or infidelity.

It's really just an academic exercise, in my opinion. I don't mind those. It was suggested to me that it was important to know some thoughts I found reasonably harmless were coming from my beast and I should be aware of it. Just exploring the concept.

This makes sense. I was also thinking of a surgeon removing a lump. She might have to scrape a little healthy tissue away with the tumor just to be certain.

SoberKnitter

I like to look at what the thoughts imply, or the thoughts behind the thoughts, if that makes sense.

For example, "That drink looks tasty," is, to my mind, obviously AV. I want to ingest things that look tasty, so the thought implies that I want to ingest the drink. "I wish I were a normal drinker" implies that drinking can be a positive experience for some people, and that I, too, would like to have a positive experience with alcohol. Someone with no feelings one way or the other about alcohol doesn't wish to be a normal drinker. Someone with a healthy aversion to alcohol certainly doesn't.

I view alcohol, when ingested, as dangerous and leading to ruin. Any thoughts that aren't congruent with my view of alcohol (e.g. "That drink looks tasty.") must be Its thoughts.

I think correctly attributing our thoughts matter, even in light of a BP. My AV really romanticizes alcohol, so, for me, I have to be really careful not to let it use first-person personal pronouns when it does that. There is no way that someone who has had my experiences could ever romanticize alcohol, so to attribute AV thoughts that do so to myself is to undermine the separation I have with the beast.

soberlicious

Wishing you could drink moderately is wishing that you could...um...drink...alcohol. It's AV.

That's because you recognize these thoughts for what they are...they are not things you would actually do and you recognize that that's why you are easily able to have them and dismiss them without analyzing them at all. You know that actually quitting your job to pursue an NFL career or having an affair with a hot chick are not really YOU. So you have the thought, part of you gets a little rush about the thought, then you go "nah"...

sidenote...it is logistically much easier to pick up a bottle than enter the NFL or hide a hot chick.

Nonsensical

My brain isn't processing this the same way. It seems very strange to me that it's considered a dangerous thought that I wish I wasn't addicted to alcohol.
I won't actually drink, either.

It can
I would like that. It isn't possible, but I wish it were.
So someone with no feelings one way or another about alcohol will naturally wish to be an alcoholic?
My healthy aversion to (or, rather, avoidance of) alcohol comes from my inability to be a normal drinker. If I didn't have an alcohol addiction why should I avoid, or be averse to, alcohol? There would be no reason for it. I wish that alternate reality existed. I recognize that it does not, and I don't dwell on it. I just enjoy discussing brain functions and the art/science of AVRT. I learned a little, and I want to learn more.

soberlicious

I don't think it's a "dangerous" thought. I'm not scared to think it, I just know what it is.

Well, there are many, many reasons why people do not drink alcohol. Having been addicted to it is just one reason people would avoid it.

Of course, all of this discussion is just in relation to AVRT as it is outlined as a method. It doesn't mean you can't think otherwise, Non.

SoberKnitter

Um, no. I was thinking of people who can take it or leave it. They don't make wishes about alcohol, period.

I had a grandmother who was a teetotaler. She wasn't afraid of becoming an alcoholic, but she didn't care to drink moderately either. It just wasn't important to her - she didn't see that it added any value. That is the attitude that I try to foster towards alcohol.

I think that wishing for an alternate universe of any kind is probably not good for one's mental health anyway. Wishing I could drink moderately is like wishing I were taller. It only creates unhappiness.

You are obviously the arbiter of what gets attributed to the AV and what doesn't in your own mind. I suppose if your Big Plan is solid enough you could feel free to stop even trying to distinguish what's you and what's your AV, but that isn't using AVRT, that's using mere willpower.

GerandTwine

Being an alcoholic is a belief system in which I do not partake.

While my experimentation into remaining a moderate drinker did not work every time I tried it, and while I knew that I loved the sensations of being high on booze, one reason I made a Big Plan was because I had a particular strength, not a weakness. That strength was being able to indulge in a wonderful deep pleasure that others avoided; and I was able to succeed fairly well at keeping bad things from happening because of it.

But as time passed I found when bad things DID happen, they added up, and they were unacceptable to people around me and my body was beginning to pay a heavy toll.

So the main reason I quit for good was because I finally decided that ANY further drinking (including ANY thoughts or feelings SUPPORTING the idea that I drink) were 100% WRONG - MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE - for ME.

Now, decades later, the moral issue is still in my memory, but it doesn't really matter to me any more why I made the Big Plan. I know it must have been a very good reason or I wouldn't have done it. So I don't care why I will never drink again, and WOW, does that make it super simple. I don't know how it could be made any simpler. I won't let alcohol into my body. What a miniscule, tiny, trivial aspect of my life that is now. (From ten months ago here on SR, my Big Plan for sweets is whittling my sugar Beast down to size very quickly, too).

AVRT will show you how to get there.

What RobbyRobot (who I think, against his own objections, IS a wonderful AA poster-person) calls ignorable rhetoric when AVRT explains about avoiding the Recovery Group Movement (RGM) is actually a free ticket on how to save yourself from a HUGE, INVASIVE, EXPENSIVE, TIME-CONSUMING, GROSSLY LIFE ALTERING, WAY-OF-LIFE IMPOSING NEVER ENDING RECOVERY; DRAGGING OUT THE CORPSE OF THE BEAST AT EVERY MEETING AND PROPPING IT UP TO WORSHIP AS A POWER SO MUCH GREATER THAN THE ALCOHOLIC HUMAN BRAIN. THE RGM has such weird belief systems. (Not quite so weird with an understanding of the history of temperance in the Western world. A sort of Neo-religiosity often co-opts social/moral movements.)

Yes, you can avoid all that, too, and live YOUR life.

Nonsensical

Wishing I could drink moderately is like wishing there was world peace, an end to global hunger, or bipartisanship on Capitol Hill. I think about it, I wish it could be, I realize I can't make it so, and I move on with my day.

jkb

I get your point Non and at first I believe it is very important to focus on AV and create the seperation to ensure you are aware of it. This is where I got into trouble. It was difficult for me to recognize the sneaky thoughts that would pop up throughout the day as AV and by evening I was "white knuckling" and not sure why. Once I discovered that the subtle thoughts (that beer on TV looks really good or today is a day I would have enjoyed a glass of wine) added up to make me unhappy I had to take a different look at them.

However, I understand you to be stating that they are not affecting you so "should you be leery of every thought that may be AV". I dont think so. Besides with your BP in place you are not going to drink no matter what thought sneaks in.

Nonsensical

I still get enough full frontal assault from my AV that even if the borderline issues we have been discussing are subtle AV, they are inconsequential at this time. If, at a later time, they start wearing me down I will fine tune my AVRT-fu and karate chop the beast's Adam's apple. He sounds funny after I do that.

2

SoberKnitter

One of these things is not like the others...

Received

One of these things just doesn't belong...

SoberKnitter

Can you tell which thing is not like the others?...

Received

By the time I finish my song?

Nonsensical

You guys are fun.

I'd have to go with Bipartisanship on Capitol Hill. That actually happens every once in a while. The rest of the things on that list are pure fantasy.

Received

So are you, non. So are you.

RobbyRobot

Are you guys ever going to be done kicking me around? I've said time and time again... I've shared MY experiences with AA and AVRT. I never came on this forum to sell or push whatever. I was asked and invited to talk about how I work the two together.

The idea that members can just take shots at me based on my sharing of my experiences, as if I have an agenda, is really starting to **** me off.