adventures in AVRT
 

About a month ago, I read Trimpey's "Rational Recovery" and starting practicing AVRT (after about 15 months sober). I wanted to share my experiences with that.

I made a big plan as I was reading the book. My AV got really noisy in the days that followed -- and has continued to be noisy on and off this month. It tends to conjure up future scenarios in which drinking might somehow be justified -- such as, I get cancer and need/deserve to drink, or my husband dies so there's no one around to notice/care if I drink again, or I get a bad cold and can then drink half a bottle of cough medicine. It also likes to imagine scenarios in which I'm isolated -- on an out of town business trip, or holed up in my sailboat for a few days -- where I can drink and then go back home to sobriety, as if nothing had happened. These thoughts are annoying, but not seriously confusing, because they're so obviously desperate fantasies of the beast.

These thoughts are different than the ones I had my first year of sobriety (in which AA was my only method). During that year, I had fewer fantasies of drinking, but I had a lot of confusion about whether I was "really an alcoholic". At my worst, I was drinking 3 -4 glasses of wine a night (sometimes on top of a single painkiller), with no blackouts or big obvious consequences (yet). So I really wrestled a lot with whether or not I belonged in AA and was really an alcoholic, or whether I might somehow be able to moderate. I was really confused by these thoughts and very identified with them -- in other words, I thought they were real questions belonging to "me".

I can see now that those thoughts & that confusion were just the beast, very much objecting to my sobriety. I can see that whether or not I use the label "alcoholic", there has developed in me a beast that wants alcohol so badly, it is happy to imagine scenarios such as cancer or my husband dying, that might allow it to drink again!

If the beast is this loud, persistent and demanding, after "only" a 3-4 drink/day habit, how much louder would it be if I had continued drinking? It makes me glad I made the choice I did.

It hasn't necessarily been a comfortable month, but it has been an educational one.

You have the identifying and separating aspects of AVRT down cold, Tursiops, it would seem to me. Well done.

I like that you recognize that whether or not the term alcoholic fits, it is irrelevant. It is completely outside the realm of consideration when it comes to your Big Plan. Since you have decided to quit drinking no matter what, included in all those possible scenarios of sobriety are those where you are or are not an alcoholic. It just doesn't matter.

Likewise, the degree of comfort or ease doesn't matter a whit either. The fact remains that it is possible, and your Big Plan means you will find that way. No matter what. Unconditionally. What could be simpler than that?

I found that once my BP became clear, my AV settled right down, and this sobriety thing got much easier. There was too much to do to keep fretting about this AV thing anyway.

Hope you keep posting, Tursiops999. You got this one. Onward!

I was more of a binge drinker. I drank every day almost but sometimes only a couple beers. Other times I'd get so drunk I'd puke or I'd drive drunk. Strangely my body doesn't tolerate alcohol very well. I get MASSIVE hang overs. I'm in bed sick the whole next day. I'll get physically sick after only 5 or 6 pints. And I do all kinds of weird obsessive things like buy kombucha and pour out half and pour wine in so my spouse and others don't know I'm drinking. That's freaking weird. Drinking causes probs for me. It closes my life. Breaks my spiritual connection. I'm an alcoholic.

Pmtih, If you decide someday to learn some more about AVRT, and to actually take the Big Plan pledge: "I will never drink again", you will be able to look back upon your post here as a way your Beast managed to get you to keep it on a fairly robust form of life support.

In your post the Addictive Voice is breathing life into your Beast through the use of verb tense switching.

You appropriately start out in the past tense talking about how you used to drink. See the parts of your post I highlighted in red.
Then along comes the perception you have of the condition of your body at the present time.
Your AV wants you to think this way. It wants you to accept that you don't drink at this point in time because you have a bodily condition, and as time passes, IT would love for you to reflect upon that bodily condition and experiment upon whether or not your body still "doesn't tolerate alcohol very well."
Well, that future time to reflect is suddenly thrust into the present with all the verb tenses about your behavior that sound like it's going on at the present time. See the parts of your post I highlighted in green. This is what the AV loves. Yes, this is no longer what YOU DID, it is what YOU DO. Ahhh, yessss, oxygen for the Beast.

People who have made the unconditional pledge, or Big Plan, "I will never drink/drug again." fairly quickly find it very weird to hear such self talk in the present tense. It just makes no sense except understanding it as the AV trying to reclaim the pronoun "I" for itself.

GT

999,

You have a lot of self insight. Thanks for sharing.

For me, I see the AV as one aspect of my aggressive self/super ego, and my addiction as an aspect of my passive self allowing that a$$hole to run the show. But that is over now.

I am running the show and I don't drink and can stand up to that mean gal. I don't need to justify myself or appease the a$$hole, just tell it like it is. How I see it.

I also don't need to be perfect. That is not the standard, just be me -- not my passive self that listens to that mean gal, but me. Who knows I am OK, that I don't drink, and that I can do anything I put my mind to.

I realise this is not 100 percent AVRT, but I would really highly recommend the website Why We suffer. It was life changing for me.

Update on my adventures.

I had a tooth go bad last week, and scheduled to have it pulled out late Friday afternoon. I knew that they would likely give me painkillers, and my AV got very excited about that ... very noisy about the prospect of taking pills. I ignored that, and said to myself if I am honest, and follow dr's orders, there's no reason my AV gets to take over. I told the dentist I wanted the minimum prescription, and he gave me just a few pills.

It took 90 minutes to get this dang molar out. I did have a lot of pain and took a small dose of Vicodin as prescribed for the first 24 hours. It helped with the pain, but actually I didn't like the feeling it gave me ... foggy in the head, kind of nauseated, and kind of "absent". I didn't have the euphoria I remembered from the past (of course in the past, I combined it with wine). I find I have become accustomed to being awake and present, and I really like that feeling better than being loaded.

This morning I woke up, still had some pain but it was much less, and I could manage it with Ibuprofen. The AV is still slightly interested in taking pills, but because I don't actually need the pain relief, I could see that voice is clearly just the AV. So the vicodin went down the toilet.

This is a big relief to me. I have felt pretty confident about my ability to distinguish the AV in regards to alcohol. But I didn't know how I would do with painkillers ... painkillers haven't been available to me in sobriety the way that alcohol is (because alcohol is everywhere), so I hadn't been "tested". It's good to know that AVRT works here too.

Boy, my AV really reacts to dental work.

I ended up back in the dentist's chair, as that tooth extraction from 2 weeks ago went bad ... was not healing and dentist said it was infected. I went in for what I thought would be a routine follow up, but he ended up doing a bunch of oral surgery, for which I was unprepared. The whole time in the chair, I just wanted to be out of my body. I usually get nitrous oxide at the dentist but I guess he forgot this time, and by the time I realized how extensive this procedure was, it was well under way. So I just toughed it out. But I felt kind of traumatized.

When I got home I felt like hell, opened the frig, and there was a beer (my husband keeps a few beers around, which he drinks very sparingly ... like a half a beer, the rest goes down the drain). My AV said, "it would be ok for you to have a beer because you were so traumatized by what just happened, it's like a medication for you." For a split second that felt totally justified, but since I no longer drink, I was able to recognize it as just the old AV.

Sheesh. Tiresome beast.

That is exactly how you do it! Well done, Tursiops. You have made your decision about the future use of alcohol, and because of your Big Plan, that thought of drinking can have only one source - your AV. It isn't you. This is the recognition thing done right.

It's a good time to be mindful and appreciate the magnitude of what you just accomplished. This is big. A milestone. A game changer. At a real low point, you put the machinery into action, and you did it. Congratulations, tursiops. Well done!

You can remember this next time you hear that AV, and use this success to remind you that you really can do this. Onward!

(((Tursiops))) dentist stuff really does suck, but way to kick ass and put AVRT to work! Sweet!
Xo

You did really great Tursiop.
I need dental work myself and I am dreading it. I hope that this time around everything goes right with the healing process so you don't have to go through that again :hug:

Thanks for the support, SR friends. :grouphug: Other than a sore jaw, I do feel really good ... it feels good to face challenges sober, and come out the other side feeling stronger. Thanks again.

So True! Totally empowering! :hug:

Hi all,

I've been around for a while- still trying to kick this thing. Read up on AVRT and it makes a lot of sense to me. I feel like I've made progress already in recognizing even some of the pre-pre drinking thoughts as BEASTLY ...

Such as, "... I want this to be my last day but I'm just not as strong as other people who have quit this thing ..."

That's the BEAST! The AV!

And it's TRUE- that JUST RECOGNIZING that totally changed my thinking ...

Up until now I haven't even challenged those thoughts. I had thought of the AV as the more obvious, right before you drink ones ...

Even though I maybe haven't hit a "rock bottom"(although I feared for my life in the middle of the nite when my heart was beating out of my chest ...), I've had a hard time up until now giving up the nightly wine habit.

Thanks for listening :)

Izzy

izzy
Great to have you around, time to send that AV packing, you got this!
(btw I think the term 'rock bottom' came out of an AV convention) :), you certainly don't need one, (who the heck would try and convince someone they needed one ?) and hoping you never 'get there' :)

Hi izzy, welcome! I too had a nightly wine habit, and felt unsure about sobriety early on, because I thought I wasn't that bad and maybe I hadn't hit a "rock bottom". The more sober time I get, the more I'm glad I quit when I did, instead of waiting for things to get worse. You are strong enough to quit.

Great stuff happening here, congrats on facing the dentist, getting through it and then facing the beast and putting it back down where it belongs.... A BP is truly the most amazing thing I've done and I think the same holds true here.... Keep up the good work & well done.
As for rock bottom, I've hit so many low low low places in my life and will probably have more to come but never felt I've ever reached the bottom, I seriously don't want to... My last drunk & drink was low enough and the relief I feel now knowing I never have to go to certain places due to my horrible habit of getting wasted is such that it's a HUGE RELIEF to have ended my suffering with AVRT. The beauty is the simplicity.
The longer I am sober the easier life gets, even with its low points, rock bottom feels like a scary foreign place I never want to visit.
Anyone can choose to stop NOW and forever because now is all there ever is....
Keep on keeping on

Driving my wagon of hope through beautiful views on my road to myself

So, my teeth have calmed down. But I've had some stress lately, as I'm a tax accountant ... worked a lot of overtime the last six weeks. I just wanted to report my thoughts & feelings on how I'm coping with the stress.

Last spring was my first sober tax season, and it was tough. I was working 55 to 60 hours a week for 8-10 weeks in a row, not getting exercise, sporadically going to AA meetings. I didn't drink, but I felt horrible, and at the end of tax season I vowed "never again". I renegotiated my work arrangement so that I would have a little better ability to limit my work hours.

This tax season I worked less -- 50 hours/week was the worst, and that was only the last 3-4 weeks. So I was less stressed overall.

I coped with it pretty well and didn't have thoughts of drinking, until I was reaching the end (this past 7 days). Finishing tax season is actually the hardest time ... the adrenaline starts to ebb, I start to slow down, and I start feeling the full impact of the stress I've been under. I also feel like I deserve some kind of reward, for producing so much work.

This past week I have had a lot of thoughts of drinking ... not drinking now, but drinking in some imaginary future time. Well, I know that any thought of drinking is just the AV, to be recognized and dismissed.

As I dismissed those drinking thoughts, I noticed other fantasies coming up ... I win the lottery and become a billionaire and think about how to spend all that money, all the people I'd help ... or maybe I'm off scuba diving on a tropical isle... or I get swept off my feet my some handsome rich guy ... or maybe I'm magically younger again ... or ... you get the idea, all just fantasies involving effortless pleasure and ease and comfort. The kind of easy comfort that I used to believe wine would give me.

I think maybe all of that is just the pleasure center of my brain, signaling that it's had enough punishment and wants some reward. And so I go through my toolbox and my list of healthy pleasures and rewards. The last couple days I've been exercising a lot, sleeping as long as I can, and starting each morning by writing a gratitude list. I got a massage, and started binge watching an old show I like. Bought a small bunch of fresh cut flowers for the kitchen table. Also scheduled coffee dates and dinner with a couple friends for next week.

I always prided myself on my toughness, my ability to take a ton of stress and chaos and just keep plugging away. Now that I'm sober I realize that is not really a virtue ... because it's unkind to my mind and body. I'm working now on staying mindful of my stress level, and adjusting my behaviors to reduce it.

Thanks for listening.

When I was drinking, the shame and guilt meant I felt as though I was never measuring up to anyone's standards, especially my own. This meant that I was brutal with myself - unforgiving, unaccepting, intolerant, impatient, ungrateful, demanding. And of course, alcohol became the escape, and the only reward I would permit myself. This was a reward with only a negative result, leading to more shame and guilt.

Now, I like to think that I am being a better friend. I am making better choices for myself in my relationships, in my health, for my happiness.

It sounds as though you are seeing similar things in yourself, tursiops. This is simply wonderful. Becoming your own best friend and advocate is vital to our self esteem and happiness. Being gentle and accepting and supportive are simply things that friends often do for each other.

You are doing great! And your post above got me thinking in this direction too. I can do more of this. And I will! Onward!

Hi pals. Just wanted to say I have been in the process of moving out of a state I've lived in for 34 years, back to my home state. I feel great about it but if I were still drinking I'd be terrified which would of course be eased and numbed with alcohol. This would then have generated more terror...

Here's what just happened. After single handedly packing and moving all my stuff into storage in my building'a basement (I'm still terrible at asking for help), I just realized somebody robbed me of some items. I was shocked as this is a 55 and over HOA Inhabited by Quakers and other nice elderly people.

Anywhoooo I felt so violated and exhausted that my beast found its voice and was barking loudly.

So I got some bubbly water and took a break. (Wow. A break! What a concept!) I grabbed my phone and read this inspiring thread. It didn't take long for the beast to quiet down. It's good to go through moments like this and experience how quickly the beast backs off if you refuse to give it any energy and instead seek out your sober wise ones.

Hi WhatBeast ... sorry about your stuff being lifted. I'm glad you found us here.