Doesn't every method require an element of faith?
 

I like what I've read about AVRT.
But it does strike me that to apply any model of "recovery" requires a level of faith. If even in that model.

I suppose what I'm saying is, I seem to question the rationale in things. AA I did but could never take it seriously, as I don't believe in a god. They told me I didn't have to but then said the Lord's Prayer at the end of meetings, which suggests it's not only god based but Christian based.

I apply this critical analysis to all models too. So, I'm looking at AVRT and wonder where I'll find holes.
Does anyone else do this?
I know I'd probably find things easier if I could follow instructions without question but it's just not me.
Anyway, I've made my Big Plan.
And I immediately don't believe it, which I understand is my AV.
My AV led me to a drink last night and I wasn't watching out for it.
I must become more attuned to it.

Hey Eric,
I'm a devout atheist too. Probably more of an antitheist if I'm honest, but I've decided not to get too hung up about that. Here in Ireland it would be all too easy to get hyped up about the hypocrisy of it all as you probably well know.

You say you have a problem having "faith" in a recovery method. The very word faith has religious overtones which is clearly anathema to you. Try the word trust instead.
"I trust AVRT." That sounds OK to me.
I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning anything. In fact, it's very healthy. I too have questioned AVRT and can absolutely find no holes whatsoever. And I am as headstrong as they come.
My BP is cast iron solid. I WILL NOT DRINK AGAIN. EVER.
What's not to believe?
Any other hint towards straying from my BP is the beast's AV. It's a neural pathway that I've nurtured for years. Of course there's resistance to my SELF actively changing the way I choose to react to the AV.
But, and here's the beauty of this simple method, I control my motor faculties. Not a, soon to become defunct, neural pathway which is after all merely a thought.
Modern brain scanning has shown that the brain can and does physically change. It is known as neural plasticity. So in time, my brain structure will change and the thoughts of drinking will become progressively weaker.

So it's ME who decides whether my hands lift a drink to my lips and, tough tittie beast, that's not happening.



-

I had faith that if other drunks could get sober, so could I.

Your AV didn’t lead you to drink. It can’t , It’s just a thought , you agreed with a thought and acted on it.

The only thing that is required is to abstain from drinking alcohol.

AVRT is the best method for that.

Philosophy, logic, rhetoric, etc, blah blah blah don't matter.

AVRT is not a philosophy, it might well not even be logical and it probably can't stand up to 1,000 questions.

But it doesn't matter if it computes or not. It is only designed to outwit the rogue survival drive which itself is illogical, deceitful and paranoid.

For that, it works great. Why complicate things?

You will find holes wherever you want. The people who do this are the ones looking for holes. It is just your AV in a sense.

Faith is essentially a belief in something that cannot be proven. However, having faith in yourself is nothing more than a mindset - self trust.
So just have faith in yourself that you will never drink again nor will you change your mind - if that's what you want for yourself. There are no holes in that concept at all. If you drink again, you made the choice to drink again. Faith has nothing to do with it. It's a decision. That is all.

.
RecklessEric ~

You raise a fair question that is well-covered above, and can be distilled down to these laudable Behaviors posted by Trohyn:

'But, and here's the beauty of this simple method, I control my motor faculties. Not a, soon to become defunct, neural pathway which is after all merely a thought.'

'So it's ME who decides whether my hands lift a drink to my lips and, tough tittie beast, that's not happening.'

My Wife was a Volleyball Player, and Coach. She was an Early Adopter - Decades ago - of 'Muscle Memory' Regimen. In Practice, you slam down Spikes until your Brain is out of the Response Loop. The Chinese Olympic Team, for one, trains this way. Mercilessly. In a like manner, before he hit the Links daily, Tiger Woods would reportedly drive 500 Balls off the Tee to hone his Muscle Memory.

Read above. Trohyn has reduced his response, Muscle Memory-style, to not lift a Drink. Picking up that First One just ain't a happenin'.

This is what I did, and continue to do. It is not an Article of Faith. It is the establishment of an Autonomic System Response and 'Firewall' where Alcohol is involved. This approach simplifies Sobriety tremendously while we re-tool ourselves ground-up to no longer submerge in Alcohol.
.

Thanks for your responses.
All good points and very helpful.
I will trust the AVRT model and I will never drink again.
That's a pretty awesome statement.

I usually use the word 'trust' too because 'faith' has religious connotations that can confuse matters if you're not religious but also if you are!

There is a difference though, for instance I'd use the word 'faith' with AVRT in the sense of commitment, as in being faithful, to the model rather than looking to try out different approaches, and 'trust' in the more active sense of having complete confidence in the technique and in my ability to abstain.

I think that in order to be successful quitting permanently, you need to have an element of faith.

Whether it is faith in a hp or faith in yourself or just faith that if you quit, things will get better you have to be able to look upward, inward or forward in order to make some permanent effective changes.

If you don't then it means you are just stuck in a hopeless situation with no way out.

Faith is a difficult word to use sometimes because many people can't think of the word 'faith' without also thinking of the word 'irrationsl'!

I don't think that making a BP is an irrational leap of faith. It's a rational thing to do. But it's not purely rational because the decision cannot be fully confirmed by your prior knowledge and experience. It's a new and deeply changing experience and one that you haven't gone through before.

Even if you find yourself making a BP more than once, each time you make it is still a new experience because you've had to analyse why you failed and account for this in your new decision.

I don't think anyone would embark on any course of recovery without some faith, belief or trust in a reasonable expectation of a positive outcome.

whether people choose to base that expectation on science, demonstrated results, or something more supernatural is down to personal preference.

So you can justify drinking again? ;) I didn't use AVRT and can't speak to that particular approach, but I do recognize that sort of attitude from my own drinking days, and I promise that if you're looking for holes, you will find holes. If we keep drinking until all the planets are aligned and everything is perfect, we'll drink ourselves to death because that will never happen, and so perfect becomes the worst enemy of "good enough". My favorite approach is, take what you can use from wherever you can find it, don't get hung up on anyone else's dogma, and don't drink no matter what happens. :)

How about this angle? I heard from TU often to set one's confidence in their success arbitrarily at 100%, and assign all doubt and fear to the beast. It's a neat closed construct that serves the purpose well.

I suppose the words faith and confidence have similar meanings in our context. I much preferred to see faith in myself through self empowerment as essential to my success rather than faith in the existence of a supreme being. A matter of personal choice.

Yes, and I think it's intriguing why our personal choices are so different. Whenever I read through the Newcomers forum I often read something that makes sense to me but clearly it didn't mean too much to the OP and they preferred other suggestions.

I think this goes to show that our choice of recovery method is not made on purely theoretical grounds for which there is overwhelming scientific evidence on which we can all agree.

But while theory is hesitant here we still have to act with the 100% confidence TU spoke about. This strikes me as not irrational but as a very reasonable way of accounting for our human freedom of choice.

Perhaps we could say our choice is made by a leap of reason, not a leap of faith!

What does science have to do with abstaining from alcohol?

There is developing here lately the erroneous view that AVRT is just another alternative, less preachy and religious than some, but still just another alternative route to abstinence, distinguished mostly by the fact that you don't have to go to church of one sort or another.

This is incorrect. Everyone quits via AVRT whether they call it that or not. And have for centuries. AVRT is simply the collected lore of instantly recovered people who made a powerful burst of self determination.

As does everyone, regardless of how much hand holding, praying, cursing, list-making, attempts to distract oneself all day long, etc. preceded it.

Further, AVRT is mute on religion. It is perfectly compatible with any and all religious views, or none at all.

Science in the sense of a verifiable rule: If you follow method X you will recover. As you say, there isn't one.

And this is why a resource like SR is so important.

Someone might be stuck in their own alcoholic despair and others members share their approach. Hopefully, something will click and make sense and that person will be able to get "unstuck" and move forward.

It is a bit like someone being stuck in a pit and crying for help: Tomsteve, Freshstart, Opivotal and I can come and throw them our ladders.
Hopefully, that person will have confidence that one ladder is strong and sturdy and use it to get out of the hole.

The ultimate goal is to make it to the surface so the more ladders, the better...the person still has to take action, grab a ladder and climb out though.

I haven't noticed this. I'm curious, Greenwood, is there evidence?

" Just stop drinking and don't ever drink again, do you think you can do that ?"

any answer other than "Yes" is 'recovery' , the answer is yes or a method , pick one

My answer is 'yes if I apply the method'

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.