AlericB

My answer is 'yes if I apply the method'

dwtbd

"Yes , I can stop drinking and not ever drink again, if I apply the method of stopping and never starting again " ?

AlericB

"Yes , I can stop drinking and not ever drink again, if I apply the method of recognising and separating from my AV".

That's my take anyway.

Greenwood618

This is a point I have hoping to have the chance to make for some time now.

The obsession with "method" and "technique" is not limited to overcoming addiction.

Is it embedded in human life now, part of the Collective AV with respect to most all human endeavors.

It is the collective voice that says "you were not born with the equipment as a live born human being required to successfully navigate life. You need training manuals on:

Love, relationships, food, house cleaning, child rearing, your inner child, your child's outer behavior, your co-dependent parents, your codeine dependence, how to be independent.

Etc.

No, in fact, life is so difficult and perilous you require lots of help. Books written by gurus on every aspect of behavior. Psychotherapy, psychology, drug therapy, group therapy. You are defective and cannot be trusted to aid yourself. You are sick. Your disease is humanity."

This is the Collective AV writ large. You are incapable of doing anything without a sanctioned, lab-tested, scientist-approved, village-applauded, Oprah-authored Capital M "Method."

To which I say, we need to grow up, or we will cede all of our autonomy to authorities deemed greater than us.

AlericB

But... I thought the 'T' in AVRT stands for 'technique', one that is laid out in great detail in the New Cure book. But perhaps not.

Greenwood618

Quite right, yes there is that. Indisputably.

Perhaps one of the limitations of language.

See, some people become injured or ill in various pulmonary or thoracic aspects. Terrible thing.

Some recover via something called "respiratory therapy."

They spend months and weeks on inhaling and exhaling.

The lucky ones recover and live the rest of their lives without another thought about it.

They don't go around saying to themselves, "okay, the technique is inhale on the way in, exhale on the way out."

They just breath, like the rest of us.

So I suppose it is a "technique" to recognize that something is harming you and that you should quit it.

And I suppose like the injured lung people, if the Collective AV has stripped away your ability to "breath," you might have spend a few months on inhaling and exhaling purposefully.

But it is something that you were born with and at one time did perfectly naturally.

Trohyn

For myself, I came to SR and read and applied (as I understood it) AVRT because yes, I wasn't coping with addiction problems. I did need help from gurus that wrote books. If I could have managed on my own I wouldn't have felt the need to come here.
Why did you come here Greenwood?

Greenwood618

Because sometimes it is required to identify Collective AV which might lead someone to inaccurate assessment of AVRT.

AlericB

Greenwood,

If I was to explain AVRT to someone who had never heard of it I would say something like this: you make a plan (a Big Plan) to never drink again and never change your mind. You say 'never' because this means that not only will you never drink again, you will never have to deal with all the unhappiness of fighting your addiction ever again. The word 'never' in your plan is needed because it prevents an endless struggle and debate that you would otherwise have about whether and when to ever drink again and so it will allow you to be happy and secure about not drinking. That is your plan. It will come true for you if you really want it, and you will know in your heart whether you do or not. So, you have a plan, one that you have freely adopted after careful consideration and one that you will commit yourself to as if your life and everything you value depends upon it, as it does. This plan is to recognise and separate yourself from any thinking, feeling and imagery that will lead you to drink again and never again to consider these things as coming from or in any way speaking for you in anyway - it is your AV, not your voice. And it's on you to do this for the rest of your life."

Now, that's the gist of what I would say and it seems to me that the application of the technique is an essential part of the recovery, as important as it was to make the decision in the first place. The same commitment, it seems to me, is needed in continuing with the plan by applying the technique as it was in making the decision at the very start. The decision was an event, sure, but it started a process, not of building up a recovery over time, but of maintaining the recovery that the decision created.

Greenwood618

That is a good explanation.

As long as teaching is the point, there obviously will be some
verbiage about method or technique I suppose.

But internally, or to just casual people encountered, I hope it simply becomes: I don't drink.

Do you see the AV in some of your previous responses?

Specifically, "as long as I apply the method."

That is creating an opt-out clause. If you don't apply the method, you never made a Big Plan.

AlericB

Greenwood, dwtbd,

I've been thinking about whyTrohyn and I are saying seems to be so different from what you are both saying. I want to get this right because it's of obvious importance.

Are you saying that once you have made a BP then, as long as you were sincere when you made it (and of course it wouldn't be a BP if you didn't really mean it), you can't possibly fail in not drinking again?

This may be right but the problem for me would be that if you do fail and start drinking again, what do you do? I guess you can look at the reason why you picked up again. Let's suppose this is simply because you just wanted to. So what does this mean? Does this mean that you weren't sincere in making your BP or that you failed to apply the method and separate yourself from the clear AV "I fancy a drink"?

Are you saying that the reason must be that you weren't sincere in making your BP? As I said above, you may be right if you're saying this and I'm not trying to argue, I'm just trying to learn.

So what do you do? Presumably make a BP but this time mean it. And this is what my question comes down to. Is there a way of making yourself mean your BP when you're still aware of reservations when you come to make it? In writing this down, the answer suggests itself that you would simply regard any such reservations as AV. Would you agree with this, and is there anything else you would like to say?

dwtbd

In the frame of AVRT, yes all reservations, doubt in your ability to remain forever, irrevocably, unconditionally permanently abstinent are AV prompted by latent desire, the Beast.


"Not one drop , pint, jigger or hot toddy , never again to feel the refreshing tingle of an ice cold beer after a hot afternoon in the yard, forever foregoing the bracing effect of a stiff three fingers after some terrible news or circumstance, never again to enjoy a long slow evening of casual vine sipping and gossip, oh the humanity."


Or, or," I have decided once and for all to never put that poison down my throat again, for what ?"

Identifying and 'seeing' the motivations of the former two statements is rather easy, from an AVRT frame, yes ?


edit:
I'd actually like to amend at least part of that, it isn't necessarily a poison, it's (alcohol) just a chemical substance and only as lethal as any treated accordingly. "I have decided to never consume alcohol again, for what?"

Greenwood618

What dwtbd said is what I would say.

As I stated before, recoveryism is all around, society is teeming with it.

If someone makes BP after BP with lots of drinks in between, the only explanation from AVRT is that the BP's weren't serious.

I don't know what to say to that person. Other than stop drinking. I would say lots of other things actually but this web site frowns on adults being spoken to as adults as opposed to children, so I will refrain.

Many AVRT critics have said, well, it is just another willpower ploy, when you come down to it all that is being said is don't drink.

There is some truth to that. JT refers to a "powerful burst of self-determination." AVRT isn't some magic spell that removes the desire to drink.

But the structural model, separating and shifting and the solemn nature of the Big Plan are powerful tools in assistance of that powerful burst of self determination.

If what you are saying, Aleric, is that unless you are serious about not drinking, not drinking will be a problem, well, I don't think anyone would disagree with you.

AlericB

I think my main concern is what can you say to someone who wants to quit but feels that they can't: who is in the state of ambivalence that is the actual definition of addiction in the AVRT paradigm.

They want to stop because of all the negative consequences their drinking is having in their life, but at the same time they don't want to for ever give up all the pleasure. They are looking at their dilemma in the two ways described by dwtd above.

It seems entirely natural and reasonable for someone in this state to think "Well I can't do anything about it. I can't decide to quit for good because I know I don't really mean it and so I won't succeed." AVRT offers a way to cut through this Gordian knot by advocating that you consider all your doubts and reservations about making your decision to quit as AV, as not 'you'. The AV then drops away from your decision like mist from a hill and you will see that your decision is, after all, clear cut and pristine.

I think a common idea, and again IMO quite a natural one to hold, is that for a decision to be 'truly' made it must be almost mystical in nature and unfathomable in depth. But that is just more AV

dwtbd

To try and tie this all back into the OP, reminds me of an old Steve Martin routine:
" How to be a millionaire and not pay taxes.... first get a million dollars.."~

I think many recovered people would attest and promote the idea that abstinence 'produces' certain long term effects , physical , mental, and spiritual and most likely both as a goal and then natural outcome.
The leap of faith required , at least what I would /do tell people is to believe this is a universal effect.

"how to be abstinent and then basically forget what it feels like to 'want' to be drunk, or even fathom why someone would want that ... first get abstinent"

Greenwood618

That is precisely what I have been trying and perhaps failing to say.

Recoveryism rampant in society is of the belief that you are first defective and must get lots of other things straightened out before you can ever stop drinking.

AVRT says stop drinking and lots of defects will disappear.

If making the decision to no longer be ambivalent comes described as mystical or deep or profound, that depends on the person. Any adjective will do I suppose.

Wholesome

From what I've observed, it seems that most people take awhile getting ready to quit, they have many starts and stops as the consequences pile up, but I think fear holds them back, sobriety is an unknown and drinking is very familiar. It takes a leap of faith in oneself to make that final decision, I think most people doubt their own abilities more than they doubt whichever quitting method they choose. Plus they've got their AV's picking apart their decisions and choices, planting seeds of doubt, and unless they chose AVRT to quit they won't even know what their AV's are up to.....

LBrain

A thought crossed my mind from an earlier post. Have you ever seen the movie "Raising Arizona"? You will notice that in almost every scene when one of the characters 'steals' the baby, they either pick up the 'baby book' or go back to retrieve it. It's an interesting metaphor in the story line line, everyone wants the baby, but they have no clue what to do with it - they need the book. Since Dr. Spock published that book in 1946, the beginning of the end of common sense in our society was launched. How on earth did parents raise their children before someone came along and told them how to do it?

Same thing with that 'other' book that people have pushed on others for a few decades. How in the World did people ever get sober before that book arrived?

Maybe Spock got his idea of a book in 1946 from the one first published in 1939 and figured he could profit from it? People need to be told what to do.

Just as mothers have raised children without the use of some book forever, and have done so without a book ever since, so have people gotten sober without the use of a book, or the need of one. Remember, a very, very small percentage of people who decided to get sober needed a book to do it. Some need an idea or provocation to get them motivated. The simpler the better.

Whether you wish to call it a "method" or "technique" doesn't really matter. What matters is one's motivation and resolve to get sober. If a simple idea as put forth in the 'AVRT' literature works for some, then let us not debate what to call it. But by all intents and purposes, it is the simplest and most rational solution to the problem.

nez

I did that for years. Little surprise I kept finding them. Time spent looking for holes was taking time away from looking for solutions. A shift in focus from holes to solutions yielded the results I sought.

GerandTwine

As time passed for me, having that next drink required a huge mass of faith involving scores of elements. Me and my Beast were as one, hoping hoping everything would turn out okay by the time the drunk was over. Faith and good fortune was paramount.

When fortune finally went bad enough and I made the Big Plan I look back and see faith as being absolutely no part of not drinking or even knowing I would never drink. That certainty was the opposite of faith.