Greenwood618

What dreamland do you live in? If you didn't do it because you liked to get blasted, why did you? Because it improved your stochastic calculus? Or you thought it developed muscle mass or brain cells?

AlericB

I assume that was directed at me. See Tatsy's previous post for a list of possible reasons.

Greenwood618

It is directed at anyone with a purported knowledge of AVRT who says that drinking is for reasons other than obtaining intoxicated pleasure, and that he or she was unaware, after months or years, of the immoral nature of the self-indulgent, adolescent behavior therein. The post you refer me to is non responsive to the question.

In other words, later knowledge of AVRT don't get you an absolution for the behavior that preceded it.

Fusion

I'll reply to your comments shortly, Greenwood. I'm a she. I have dogs to exercise and an animal to pen for treatment administration. I'll reflect on what you've
written whilst doing so.

Greenwood618

While you are doing so, think about this:

What possible reason in the whole wide innocent world would your Beast have for insisting as sincerely and kind heartedly as possible that, "You weren't so bad back then. You can look back and say it wasn't even your fault. You didn't know! So it wasn't so bad, just having a few beers or whatever. Loosen up a little, you are so serious."

AlericB

The subjects of morality and ethical behaviour are simply not susceptible of being pinned down in the way you would like. They are personal questions, not scientific ones, and cannot be answered in a way that would be accepted by everyone.

This is why they have been debated for thousands of years and will continue to be. If there was a view agreeable to everyone do you not think someone would have written it down by now?

Greenwood618

AVRT pins them down and pins them down but good as far as drinking goes.

ScottFromWI

Folks - a reminder that we aren't in the business of directing comments at one another. Please keep the discussion on topic and personal arguments to private messages if you must.

Greenwood618

I am not interested in the history of philosophy or the great arc of humankind.

I am only interested in AVRT.

AVRT conclusively proves that drinking is for self pleasure and immoral when resulting in chronic drunkeness.

Wholesome

The letter in the article touched me as both the child of an alcohol and as a mother who was an alcoholic. To this day I can feel my back go up and myself tense up the moment I hear in my mother's voice that she's been drinking. I revert back to being a kid in an instant, it brings an immediate emotional response from me. She changes as soon as the alcohol enters her system, her voice, her demeanor, her attitude, posture, everything changes. Her Beast takes over and there is a notable difference. And I grew up to be just like her. I know that my children have witnessed the same change come over me and lived with that same uncertainty of not knowing what they were coming home to. They lived with the same volatility and extremes. It causes me deep shame still to really think about. I still cringe and lament about what I've done. How could I have done that knowing what I know and having lived the way I lived?

To me AVRT is a quit drinking manual. As far as my morality when I was drinking, it was wrong and immoral, a sin even. I made mistakes without a doubt. The reasons for my alcohol dependency go deeper and and more complex that just labeling me and all others who get addicted as immoral. I believe there is a genetic factor, whatever that gene is, I've got it, from the very beginning I didn't drink "right". My sister on the other hand doesn't have it, her personality doesn't change with her first drink and she can leave it alone after one or two. We came out of the same parents and the same house.

Greenwood618

Thank you for the acknowledgement. Acknowledging the fundamental immorality - which requires no religious belief - of chronic drunkeness is a fundamental precept of AVRT.

There is no scientific consensus on a genetic basis for chronic alcohol consumption, as you and your sibling demonstrate.

Fusion

Zen, time after time I'd tell my husband I'd stopped drinking. Years ago, he'd return home later than me, I'd have drank just a few by then (trying to pretend not to have). He'd ask me if I'd been drinking, I'd deny it, he'd say....."you have, I can hear it in your voice, you change when you drink". I'd later proceed to drink to oblivion. I was pure Beast. Years later, I proceeded to drink all day. No longer.

Fusion

Greenwood, I drafted a lengthy reply to you, with your recent numerous posts quoted and my responses contained therein. But I'm not posting it, because the only reason I'm still here on SR is the hope that I might guide others towards a technique to stop drinking, for good. To engage in debates over my purported understanding of AVRT would serve no purpose, to that end. I will say though, that I was writing earlier, with the benefit of hindsight, I did think folks would understand that perspective.

As GerandTwine says, nobody but the self knows that a Big Plan is set in stone, that the person will never drink again and never change their mind. I know that my BP is inscribed in my core, in my heart, in my true and authentic self. My Beast may occasionally rattle its dummies or try to throw its toys out of its pram: to no avail as IT no longer has power over me.

Wholesome

I find the whole nature vs nurture debate to be interesting. If my mother had gotten sober and not made me her drinking buddy as a teenager would I still have become dependant on alcohol? Do my children have the gene if there is one? Will the fact that I've quit make a difference in their choices regarding alcohol and drug use?

What about people who are adopted? I know a guy who's adopted from a very religious family so was raised by parents who were not drinkers but he's an alcoholic for sure. Was there alcoholism in his biological family history?

I know these questions don't matter much within the context of AVRT. And I'm not offering any of this up as excuses, but perhaps as explanations. My gut tells me that I inherited a disposition, vulnerability to alcoholism, just like I inherited my mother's green eyes. But there's no doubt that there was a social and family conditioning there as well. Children learn what they are taught.

GerandTwine

While we know that scores of millions of people HAVE taken the vow of permanent abstinence through statistics of alcohol consumption studies, there is absolutely NO WAY for any particular avowed abstainer to guarantee permanent abstinence to anyone else.

In AVRT the very best a Phormer Drunk can do is acquiesce to THE ultimatum from family and friends. "If you are ever again shown to be or have been drunk, our relationship is OVER, kaput, adios. Go your way, do your thing, and I will do mine."

And since the other side of the Quantum Uncertainty Principle of the Big Plan is the Individual Certainty Principle of the Big Plan, a Phormer Drunk who makes the Big Plan can remain completely confident and relaxed that those relationships that reached the crossroads of the ultimatum will continue with love and mutual care.

GerandTwine

Verb tense problem in red.

I knew every single time that drinking some more was ALWAYS a challenge to stay out of trouble. For me it was ALWAYS an awareness that I was about to regain that wonderful deep pleasure, and it was worth whatever bad things I did, (up until that last bad drunk).

I do not understand how just learning about AVRT suddenly conceives an immaculate innocence from ingrained past intentions that led into reprehensible drunken behavior.

GerandTwine

I think people choose to make different intensities of investment of time and effort to repeat that deep pleasurable experience of being under the influence of alcohol. I chose a high intensity. I gradually became infatuated with that pleasure. Whether some people experience it as a deeper pleasure than others is possible. (The Bach family chose to make great investments of time and effort to repeatedly compose and listen to their music. Maybe that's genetic, too. Maybe none of this is.) In AVRT it is a nonissue until it becomes AV. It's really quite easy for me to see if that idea becomes AV for myself.

dwtbd

Zen
Inside or outside the context of AVRT , what is 'alcoholism' ? Is there an 'ism' separate from addiction ? Or chemical dependency?

AlericB

Agree. It is sad that others suffer more than we do for our past actions.

Agree/agreed.

I must have been unclear because that's not what I meant to say. I agree that drinking is always for pleasure and if it is drinking that harms others or yourself then IMO it becomes wrong - the action becomes absolutely wrong in itself. However the person drinking is only morally accountable if they know that what they are doing is wrong. If the Beast has taken possession of the personal pronoun "I" and you are all Beast, you are seeing things, looking out at things through the Beast's eyes, not your own. And the Beast has no moral agency - it is merely a blob of brain matter. It is only once you make a Big Plan that "I" will never drink again and claim your identity back that you will see the Beast for what it is, as something that is not you. It is then you become a moral agent, responsible for whether you change your mind or not about never drinking again.

I would say that while we were not morally responsible when we were addicted we nevertheless did wrong by hurting others and by not being the person we should have been and we are not innocent of that.

I think it's more important anyway to focus on moving on. We should say sorry to those we have hurt, ask for their forgiveness and forgive ourselves. Forgiveness is not about forgetting, but about moving on. Self-forgiveness does not have to mean that we are going to gravitate towards drinking again as has been suggested above. It is a necessary part of healing.

dwtbd

It is impossible to do wrong, without being morally responsible (.) If it were, doing 'right' would be a matter of happenstance.

Empathy and compassion have their place, but they become tools of the Beast if used for absolution, moral equivalency.

Getting falling down drunk is to put yourself and others in harm's way, no matter how many times one does it.