I am not my Beast.

Old 09-22-2017, 06:53 AM
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The way I look at all of this is we are all miracles to have woken up sober today. Everyone has baggage and demons to slay. Whatever works for anyone is great! Whatever we can do to get out of that lifestyle and change everything.

Thanks for opening my eyes up to other possibilities, I learned that when someone goes against AA and 12- step recovery I immediately get defensive. That is not OK and is a character defect that needs some attention. I need to worry about Jessica and love my fellows like I am supposed to. Happy Friday All!!
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Old 09-22-2017, 07:29 AM
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Happy Friday to you too Jessicamae, we will be here if you want to ask any questions about AVRT, maybe for a Sponsee.

I used to be an AA member and worked the Steps a couple of times. It's about locus of control, I think. I never quite could wrap my brain cells around the belief that G-d would do for me, what I couldn't. Being raised a Catholic, I was indoctrinated in the belief that G-d gave me free will, certainly with regard to what I pick up and pour down my throat. I guess AVRT resonated with me, based upon my research into the mechanics of addiction and eventual understanding that my locus of control was inside myself (although perhaps G-d given as a creator?).

I am a spiritual person (not organised religion) and hope that there is a greater power than me. But I came to believe that power (if any - but certainly birth-right brain neurologically speaking) had instilled within me a sense of morality and a freedom of choice: and that's what I utilised when I made my Big Plan and learnt Addictive Voice Recognition Technique.

I get a little bristly when people critique AVRT, so I understand that you feel defensive regarding AA. But I don't think that's a character defect, just a natural reaction to defend something that's worked for us; and if you're like me, wanting to spread the word and guide others.

I'm really glad you've found your miracle in AA, as I did in AVRT: there are many paths up the mountain.
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Old 09-22-2017, 07:52 AM
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Originally Posted by Tatsy View Post
Happy Friday to you too Jessicamae, we will be here if you want to ask any questions about AVRT, maybe for a Sponsee.

I used to be an AA member and worked the Steps a couple of times. It's about locus of control, I think. I never quite could wrap my brain cells around the belief that G-d would do for me, what I couldn't. Being raised a Catholic, I was indoctrinated in the belief that G-d gave me free will, certainly with regard to what I pick up and pour down my throat. I guess AVRT resonated with me, based upon my research into the mechanics of addiction and eventual understanding that my locus of control was inside myself (although perhaps G-d given as a creator?).

I am a spiritual person (not organised religion) and hope that there is a greater power than me. But I came to believe that power (if any - but certainly birth-right brain neurologically speaking) had instilled within me a sense of morality and a freedom of choice: and that's what I utilised when I made my Big Plan and learnt Addictive Voice Recognition Technique.

I get a little bristly when people critique AVRT, so I understand that you feel defensive regarding AA. But I don't think that's a character defect, just a natural reaction to defend something that's worked for us; and if you're like me, wanting to spread the word and guide others.
Thanks for sharing that with me. Sometimes I think that now that I am sober and working a program I have to be almost perfect lol. I know it is not possible and that maybe I am too hard on myself. Also maybe because my 2 years is coming and sometimes I feel I should be further along...who know.
I am also spiritual and definetely do not define my higher power at the bible G_D. That was what I struggled with the most in starting my journey. I have a great sponsor and the first thing she said was G_D = Group of Drunks. She said do you believe that some of the people in the meetings believe there is a higher power working in their lives? I said absolutely I do, she said well that is the first step. Then the farther we got along she G_D= good orderly direction. I love that definition, basically do the next right thing and your life will change. About 6 months ago I stopped and looked at everything that had changed in my life and started crying because at that moment the only explanation I could come up with was a power greater than I had been working in my life. I tried for years to control this beast (I like that term) and I never could. Call it divine intervention but I believe the only way I am where I am today is because of the G_D of my understanding. I never prayed and never wanted to. Unless of course, they were the foxhole jail prayers. Now I wake up and try every day (sometimes I want to be stubborn and have a bad day) and thank G_D for waking up and then at the end thank for another day sober. It was extremely hard for me to get this concept and honestly I still struggle with it. I guess you could call what I have is faith and spirituality. I was the person who claimed to be an atheist and I LOVED telling Christians how wrong they were. I was a miserable and dark person.
Sorry, I am rambling, it is Friday and I am at work and have no one to talk to. Regardless of how you guys got sober, you are my people. I truly feel the best talking to others in recovery. Everyone else doesn't get me lol or my ego tells me they don't.
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Old 09-22-2017, 07:57 AM
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Originally Posted by Tatsy View Post
Happy Friday to you too Jessicamae, we will be here if you want to ask any questions about AVRT, maybe for a Sponsee.

I did in AVRT: there are many paths up the mountain.
I do have one question, are there support groups where people of AVRT get together and talk about this? Like in person, are there meetings in areas of towns and such?
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Old 09-22-2017, 08:01 AM
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Hi Jessica, I'm glad you were open minded enough to inquire about AVRT and please do pass the information along to anyone you see suffering and finding that AA isn't working for them. That's how I found AVRT, I had tried many other programs but I just kept drinking and drinking, I felt very hopeless and confused. This method isn't well known because AVRT doesn't have meetings and quitting is an independent event and AA is everywhere, our culture is steeped in it. I'd like to see more people be aware of this alternative because it does work and it is dignified and private and an event rather than a process.
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Old 09-22-2017, 08:20 AM
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Originally Posted by zenchaser View Post
Hi Jessica, I'm glad you were open minded enough to inquire about AVRT and please do pass the information along to anyone you see suffering and finding that AA isn't working for them. That's how I found AVRT, I had tried many other programs but I just kept drinking and drinking, I felt very hopeless and confused. This method isn't well known because AVRT doesn't have meetings and quitting is an independent event and AA is everywhere, our culture is steeped in it. I'd like to see more people be aware of this alternative because it does work and it is dignified and private and an event rather than a process.

Ok great, thank you for answering that. I want to help my fellow sufferers in any way I can so I will pass this on. Thanks again for your help!
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Old 09-22-2017, 09:20 AM
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Hi Jessicamae, yes, I understand your concept of the Higher Power, it's mine too, Good Orderly Direction is one name for it, I suppose I call it my Conscience, now that I practise AVRT. Was there a time when you drank and there was a little voice inside you, saying that you wanted to stop drinking? I had that voice and it was my conscience, or Higher Brain, cerebral-cortex, not the Lower Brain, or my Beast. I listened to that small voice inside me and after learning AVRT I realised that the small voice was in fact hugely powerful. I made the decision to ignore that louder voice which screamed for alcohol (AV) and rely upon the quieter, yet more powerful inner voice.

I'm too glad you have an open mind, many don't and it's to your absolute credit. I had a nightmarish experience with my first Sponsor, yet fortunately, my second Sponsor was worlds apart, a member for 30 years. It was also fortunate for me (AA wasn't a good fit for me, although it is for many others) that she decided to leave AA, after marrying a neuro-scientist. I then discovered AVRT. We are still in touch, and she hasn't crashed and burned as they predicted, thankfully!

It saddens me that the founder of AVRT decided to abandon the meetings he used to run. I understand the rationale, that he didn't want people to become dependant upon outside sources and instead, to empower and rely upon that source within them. Nonetheless, I believe that meetings for a short duration, to facillitate the learning of AVRT (like Smart Recovery does) would be beneficial.
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Old 09-22-2017, 09:50 AM
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Ugh, Jessicamae, my last post didn't read right! I know you're happily sober in AA! All I ask is, if you ever have a Sponsee who's thoroughly worked the Steps a couple of times and still hasn't found secure sobriety, then would you please refer them to other methods?

To balance that, I'll do the same if I find someone struggling with AVRT. The reason I say this, is because I lost years of my life in AA and I wish someone had told me sooner to stop flogging the proverbial dead horse. Hate that saying, as I'm a horse lover, lol. I truly mean you well, Jessicamae and I hope you don't take offence. I know you're OK in AA, but I'm concerned about new people who don't know about different options, when they've tried and failed at one option. I hope that makes sense.
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Old 09-22-2017, 10:35 AM
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Originally Posted by Tatsy View Post
Ugh, Jessicamae, my last post didn't read right! I know you're happily sober in AA! All I ask is, if you ever have a Sponsee who's thoroughly worked the Steps a couple of times and still hasn't found secure sobriety, then would you please refer them to other methods?

To balance that, I'll do the same if I find someone struggling with AVRT. The reason I say this, is because I lost years of my life in AA and I wish someone had told me sooner to stop flogging the proverbial dead horse. Hate that saying, as I'm a horse lover, lol. I truly mean you well, Jessicamae and I hope you don't take offence. I know you're OK in AA, but I'm concerned about new people who don't know about different options, when they've tried and failed at one option. I hope that makes sense.
I sure will be open-minded to doing that. All I can do is refer them to google about it as I have. Or maybe to join this site and get in touch with people like you to help explain it. One thing I have learned thus far is to never try to explain something I know nothing about, sometimes I think I know everything haha. I take no offense, this is good stuff for sure.
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Old 09-22-2017, 10:51 AM
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Thankyou, Jessicamae, that's very gracious of you. In my opinion, it would probably be best if you ever need to, to steer someone here in Secular Connections on SR. I encountered AVRT many years ago on the website, but I didn't appreciate the extraneous stuff that appeared there, lost a few years because of that, I might add. It was only when I landed here and started my own thread and read the replies of fellow SRers, that the efficacy of AVRT sunk in.

Are you going to celebrate your two years? Shortly after I began my sobriety last year I decided to face my fears of darkness, confined spaces and heights. I went on a full day caving experience, pitch black save for head torch, tiny tunnels and culminated in a Leap of Faith....attached to a flimsy rope and jumping off a small ledge into pitch blackness! It was the kick start to my new life. Feel the fear, but do it anyway. I celebrated one year sober recently and in a couple of weeks, I'm going to attach myself to a zip wire, the longest in Europe and fly at 100 miles an hour from a mountain top and over a lake! If I can stop drinking forever, I can do anything else I wish, that's my new motto, anyway.
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Old 09-22-2017, 10:52 AM
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Originally Posted by Greenwood618 View Post
Yes quite interesting. Don't quite know how what follows fits globally, however there is a common thread I see.

Buchanism, the religious group, was based on on utter, blind, prostrate confession and admission of no control over one's fate.

At same time, in other forums and posts, you can clearly see the dependence of people who identify themselves as alcoholics. Please, someone help me. Please, someone talk to me. I am desperate.

The first addiction to some is dependence, or perhaps more properly defined, narcissism light. They derive a supply of attention from their struggles, positive or negative, doesn't matter which.

Somewhat like the religious men sitting around in the 1930s confessing in front of each other, encouraged by each other, because the deal was, Supply me with some attention, and I will return the favor.

AVRT, however, as diplomatically as can be stated, stands for the supposition that if something is harmful, you should quit itl.
I find this concept of dependency as an addiction to be an interesting one. I know how alcoholism robbed me of my dignity and how needy and desperate and vulnerable I was the first time I walked into a meeting, I sat down and cried like a child in front of total strangers. I was so embarrassed but I couldn't help it. I was such a mess. In hindsight it was childlike of me, I wanted someone to help me, to fix it for me, to save me. I don't think anyone drinking themselves into a stupor on a regular basis is in an emotionally sound place. One can't see the big picture when they can't even remember all of yesterday. It takes some time being abstinent to come out of that fog and come back to your senses. I can see though why JT wouldn't want meetings, even if they could be beneficial in the early days, people could end up trading one dependency for another as we see in the traditional programs, where one's social life becomes meetings and they are what keeps one sober. For me, I don't know where I'd be if it weren't for SR, I've leaned on this place and this is where I learned about AVRT. I'm not sure I would have found out about it in the real world and I certainly wouldn't have had the advantage of so many people who had mastered it, like many of you who guided me.
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Old 09-22-2017, 05:40 PM
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One reason you may stay in a recovery group for perhaps too long is a kind of perfectionism where you have too high an expectation of how the group can help you change. You'd then only be able to leave if you accepted the disappointment of not having changed as much as you'd hoped. Reminds me of a Paul Valery line "A poem is never finished - only abandoned".

One thing I like about AVRT is that it's not about personal development, it's just a technique that you learn and so it's easy to know when the job's done.
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Old 09-22-2017, 10:12 PM
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Originally Posted by JeffreyAK View Post
Interesting. These both seem to me like manifestations of the disease theory, I have a permanent affliction and it might someday suddenly jump out from behind a bush and attack me, with interest or with some false allure. What if this, etc. Some have this perspective and combat it with permanent meetings, service, and so on, but it sounds like there's an element of this in AVRT too, where it's combated by falling back to a solemn vow? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
You are misunderstanding what I am saying. What if this, what if that, etc., is an attempt to expose the embedded plan to drink (the implicit AV) in certain ideas, mostly for the benefit anyone else that may read this thread. My line of questioning is definitely not of the "your disease wants you dead, it is doing push-ups out in the parking lot, and it might come in and pounce on you if you are not vigilant" variety.

Remember the definition of the Addictive Voice: Any thinking or feeling which supports, suggests, or directs your possible future use of alcohol and other drugs. The AV is a comprehensive style of thinking centered around the addictive mandate to drink or use again. Alternatively, the AV is simply any thinking or feeling which contradicts the Big Plan.

Hence, no Big Plan, no AVRT.

Regarding combat, AVRT is unforgiving. It is the mental art of all out war on the ruthless mentality that sustains addiction. Its logic is patterned after that very mentality, only with the precise opposite cardinal rule -- the Big Plan. The cardinal rule of addiction is, naturally, 'never say never' to the possible future use of alcohol and other drugs.

Originally Posted by JeffreyAK View Post
My own experience so far has been, triggers are part of a biochemical reactive phase that does fade away. They were mental knee-jerks, but in their absence - which has been always for many years now - there's no more desire to drink alcohol than to quaff paint thinner.
I presume that by 'triggers', you mean people, places, and things that stimulate the desire to indulge the addiction. In AVRT, that is simply Beast activity, and, once again, the object in AVRT is not to remove or to silence the Beast. The Beast is not the cause of the addiction, since it cannot run the peripherals (hands, feet, mouth). All the Beast can do is to 'bark' AV, which, until defined, is initially unrecognized as such, since the AV sounds a lot like one's own voice.

The Beast may indeed settle down and get more quiet with prolonged starvation, but the fact remains that abstaining purely because one has 'no desire to drink' (ie, no Beast activity) suggests that one might drink if they did. That sentiment is therefore Addictive Voice.

I have no desire to drink = I might drink if I did.

Originally Posted by JeffreyAK View Post
I can't imagine suddenly having interest in quaffing paint thinner, and I know I've had zero interest for decades in snorting coke or dropping acid, so it stands to reason that there's no alcohol tiger behind any bushes either. I've looked around a lot of bushes, been scared or anxious about some, but nope, no tigers. I guess I don't believe in tigers anymore.
The Beast of AVRT is not a tiger, but it is a rational, albeit amoral, entity. It is rational because its aim is survival, and it would be very irrational indeed for any living entity to not try to survive. Subcortically, the Beast interprets the deep buzz produced by alcohol and other drugs as necessary for its own survival. It will kill its host in order to survive, by leading it to ruin, but not because it wants its host dead. It simply doesn't want to die.

AVRT proper is not strictly dependent on this understanding of addiction as an artificially created survival drive, but others, such as Dr. Nora Volkov from NIDA, for example, have reached very similar conclusions. This understanding explains why addicted people often drink or use as if their life actually depended on it, and despite all the risks of doing so.

One doesn't stop breathing just because the air may be toxic, and the Beast doesn't stop trying to get its host to ingest toxic substances just because they may cause some side effects. To the Beast, those substances are the source of life itself. It is undeterred by scarecrows such as 'paint thinner', because the Beast understands that without that paint thinner, it will starve and die.

The 'insane' behavior and ambivalence characteristic of addicted people does not appear nearly so insane when one considers that there are two rational survival mentalities competing with each other. The human, moral host, and the mutant, parasitic enemy within, whose progenitors have kept us on this planet for eons through war, famine, disease, and various other catastrophes.
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Old 09-23-2017, 03:06 AM
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I just looked up Dr. Nora Volkov and she talks about what we've been talking about here with food being similar to substances, same dopamine and reward centers activated. It was interesting when she talked about dopamine spiking before the behaviour rather than during. What I took away was that that spike is where the AV is active and motivating the user to get up and go obtain whatever the drug of choice is. Here is the talk I listened to for anyone who is interested. Thanks for introducing her to me Algo, I'll listen to more of what she has to say for sure!

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Old 09-23-2017, 09:21 AM
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I watched another talk by her and what she explained is that part of the brain damage that happens when one gets addicted is that the frontal cortex gets hijacked, so decision making and impulse control gets compromised. It's gets much harder to say no which is why AVRT works so well. We are retraining our brains by being aware of these neural pathways that were created through repetitive compulsive use and not allowing those thoughts to come to fruition. As soon as those intrusive thoughts get going they get firmly shut down. NO! I never drink.
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Old 09-23-2017, 09:29 AM
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Originally Posted by Algorithm View Post
The Beast of AVRT is not a tiger, but it is a rational, albeit amoral, entity. It is rational because its aim is survival, and it would be very irrational indeed for any living entity to not try to survive.... The 'insane' behavior and ambivalence characteristic of addicted people does not appear nearly so insane when one considers that there are two rational survival mentalities competing with each other. The human, moral host, and the mutant, parasitic enemy within....
It sounds like the AVRT "beast" is more-or-less identical to the "devil"? I never understood AVRT as a religious program, but the parallels seem clear - living amoral entity trying to survive, two beings, one moral and the other an enemy, etc. Which is fine, there are after all lots of people who believe in the devil, but I never noticed this parallel before.

Back to my original question, I guess if one believes the beast never dies and is always there, waiting, then it is indeed a permanent affliction, and one can't drink because one doesn't want to because one always wants to, or part of one (the beast?) always wants to. So, thank you, I think I have my answer.
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Old 09-23-2017, 09:51 AM
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I would describe it not that a 'part" of you wants to drink but that "you" don't want to drink but your Beast does. After all, what does it really mean to say that part of you wants to, part of you doesn't? The statement "I want to drink and I don't want to drink" doesn't really make sense - you either want to or you don't.
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Old 09-23-2017, 10:07 AM
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Hi, JeffreyAK, its great that you have no desire to drink, neither do I. You've mentioned that you have your own website and forum. So I'll try to elaborate so that you can offer some alternatives to your readers.

In AVRT the Beast refers to the lower brain (sub-conscious desire to drink to feel better) and it's Addictive Voice (through which it transmits the desire to drink into the higher, conscious brain, via thoughts, emotions, imagery).

The Beast is the brain function we're all equipped with, pleasure/reward/feedback loop. The Beast is definately NOT the devil, just a normal function. Also, it isn't a permanent affliction. Once it's identified and separated from, it has no power whatsover, zero, zilch, nada.
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Old 09-23-2017, 10:21 AM
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Originally Posted by AlericB View Post
I would describe it not that a 'part" of you wants to drink but that "you" don't want to drink but your Beast does. After all, what does it really mean to say that part of you wants to, part of you doesn't? The statement "I want to drink and I don't want to drink" doesn't really make sense - you either want to or you don't.
Yes, as Aleric says, it's the separation from that 'part' of you that wants to drink, by 'You' that doesn't want to drink. I only have one 'me'. The Beast and it's AV, were NOT me.
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Old 09-23-2017, 11:25 AM
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Exactly. This ambivalence is the addiction. Once it is over, so is the addiction.
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