Recovery: Non-Traditional, immediate, painless and lasting.

WARNING: AA's there is great potential here of full invalidation of all you know to be true. CONTINUE RESPONSIBLY. Welcome newbies, If you are ready to stop using and do it painlessly, once and for all, there are those that have done just that and support it. Here is where you start. I have no credentials other than unwavering sobriety and chutspah. Ben

Hello, if you are here after realizing you have a problem, congratulations. Here you will be encouraged and supported in your decision. Please go to www.rational.org here scroll to "The Plan" . This is where AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Tequnique) is introduced. From there you are going to "RECOVER NOW" which is the internet crash course in AVRT. You will go through 28 bullets the last of which celebrates your full recovery. Put your skepticism aside and do it. Read all these 2 sections, please be straight and enjoy. Please post experience here. Love ya

5 months no alcohol
5 months no illicit or overprescibed drugs.
1 week non-smoker.
Thanks to *ME*.
Feel empowered and free.

Here's to our INDEPENDENCE! Happy 4th. Boz

Congratulations bmoz...

Each day an addict is clean and sober can be viewed as a miracle. I say this only because the vast percentage of us do not enter any door of recovery.

Keep doing what your doing,,,cause it's working.

Lenny

Thanks for your support. Though I am not an addict I appreciate your sentiments. Boz

Below is a comprehensive, 200-word description of AVRT, providing enough information for you to end your addiction, right now.

Observe your thoughts and feelings, positive and negative, about drinking or using. Thoughts and feelings which support continued use are called the Addictive Voice (AV); those which support abstinence are you. When you recognize and understand your AV, it becomes not-you, but "it," an easily-defeated enemy that has been causing you to drink. All it wants is pleasure. "I want a drink," becomes, "It wants a drink." Think to yourself, "I will never drink again," and listen for its reaction. Your negative thoughts and feelings are your AV talking back to you. Now, think, "I will drink/use whenever I please." Your pleasant feelings are also the AV, which is in control. Recovery is not a process; it is an event. The magic word is "Never," as in, "I will never drink/use again." Recognition defeats short-term desire, and abstinence soon becomes effortless. Complete separation of "you" from "it" leads to complete recovery and hope for a better life. The only time you can drink is now, and the only time you can quit for good is right now. "I will never drink/use again," becomes, "I never drink now." It's not hard; anyone can do it.

Are you starting to get it? AVRT is an insight into the nature of addiction which places you in complete control over the decision to drink or use drugs. Some people figure it out on their own, others learn by reading, as you are here, others learn better in group discussions, and others learn through skilled, personal instruction at Rational Recovery Centers. AVRT, like the Heimlich Maneuver, can save your life, is extremely simple, is based on common sense, and it's free here at the RR-Web Center.

Although AVRT is very, very simple, you have to know what you're doing, and learning it can be tricky at first. This is because your AV uses your own intelligence and personality in order to remain concealed from you. It is ruthless in its pursuit of alcohol or drugs, but it can also be quite subtle, forceful, seductive, persistent, patient, and has many other qualities.

The disease concept of addiction is without merit on scientific grounds and as an aid to recovery from addiction. Therefore, Rational Recovery has replaced the disease model of addiction with:

The Structural Model of Addiction
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bottom line is this: It is understandable if you are skeptical of the people behind RR, our motives, and the whole idea of abrupt, complete recovery. However, when you doubt AVRT, you are simply doubting your ability to succeed with AVRT-based recovery. And that, of course, is your Addictive Voice, loud and clear!

Interview: A Doctor Speaks

George E. Vaillant, M.D., joined AA's General Service Board as a Class A (nonalcoholic) trustee in 1998. He is professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, director of the Study of Adult Development, Harvard University Health Services, and director of research in the Division of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital. The author of The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited, a comprehensive study of alcoholism, George lectures widely on alcoholism and addiction and is one of the foremost researchers in the field.

This article appeared originally on the AA Grapevine Magazine on May, 2001, Vol. 57, No. 12. Available on: http://www.aagrapevine.org. Reprinted with permission.

Grapevine: In an article about alcoholism in Harvard Magazine, you were quoted as saying that 50 percent of the people brought into emergency rooms with fractures are there as a result of alcohol, but that blood-alcohol levels are never checked. It made me curious about the way medical professionals view alcoholism today. Can you tell us something about that?

George Vaillant: What happens in emergency rooms is actually much more dramatic than that. Probably 50 percent of all the people brought into emergency rooms had blood-alcohol levels over .25 - which is enough to make any nondependent person comatose, not just prone to accidents. And even though this is a clear biochemical fact staring doctors in the face, no referral is made - nothing is done about it - because when it comes to treating alcoholism, the medical profession feels so helpless, so without hope. And for a doctor, feeling powerless is reason enough to put his head in the sand.


Grapevine: Why do you think that feeling persists?

George Vaillant: You have to remember that very few doctors have ever seen a recovered alcoholic. If you're recovered, you don't have any reason to tell your doctor you're an alcoholic. And if you're not recovered, you go back to see him a hundred times, so you're forever etched in his memory. Consequently, doctors overcount the failures and have no knowledge of the successes. They don't understand that 40 percent of all recovery has probably occurred through Alcoholics Anonymous.


Grapevine: What could be done to change that?

George Vaillant: The two simplest ways that I know are both within the power of the Fellowship. One is to take your doctor to open meetings so he or she can see for themselves these well-dressed people in nice suits who look like anybody else and have been in recovery for years. It was terribly important for me to get inside of open meetings and see sober alcoholics for myself because they're terribly inspiring.

The second is to twelfth-step your doctor - not to teach him about alcohol or Alcoholics Anonymous, but to give him a list of names that motivated patients could call. Doctors aren't experienced enough in their practices to find recovering alcoholics, so recovering alcoholics must either say "I will talk with patients," or give doctors referrals. What medical professionals need is a list of referral sources, clearly typed, and some success using those referrals, so they have hope rather than hopelessness.


Grapevine: How did you, a nonalcoholic, get to know AA?

George Vaillant: I was working for an alcohol clinic where it was a condition of employment. I had to go to a meeting a month. In addition, half the staff were recovering alcoholics, and they were the first people whom I'd met at Harvard in ten years who knew anything about the disease.


Grapevine: Is there any movement afoot to establish that kind of requirement for medical students today?

George Vaillant: For the last ten years, medical students in many medical schools have been required to go to one or two AA meetings, due in large part to the activity of AA's CPC (Cooperation with the Professional Community) committee. But the problem is that in your first two meetings, there's so much going on that you don't always get the feeling of, "My God, these people are recovering." It's more about learning what a terrible disease alcoholism is and not about realizing that the people in the meeting are the same people you see in your emergency room with the fractures.

What people are only slowly learning is that you can teach medical students anything that's noble and good about people and they get it right on the exam. But where medical students learn how to be doctors is on the hospital wards and in the emergency rooms, where they're working with residents. And interns, for very good reasons, hate active alcoholics with a passion. Therefore, the educational program has to begin again after residency. And that really is something patients can do for their doctors - not by teaching them about AA, but by telling their stories and offering whatever suits them of the Twelve Steps. And, as I said, by giving them a number to call when the roof is falling in.


Grapevine: You said about 40 percent of the people who remain abstinent do it through AA. What about the other 60 percent? Could we in AA be more open, more supportive of these?

George Vaillant: Yes. You know, if you're batting 400, it's all right to miss a few. I think the fact that AA knows the answer to an extremely complicated problem is probably all right.

But it doesn't hurt at the level of GSO for AA to have humility and understand that 60 percent do it without AA. It's also true that most of those 60 percent do it with the AA toolbox: their spirituality doesn't come from AA; their support group doesn't come from AA; and what I call "substitute dependency" doesn't come from AA. But they still use the same ingredients that AA uses.

And I don't think there's anything that the other 60 percent are doing that AA needs to learn from, except: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If you meet someone who has stayed sober for more than three years and they're pleased and boasting that they did it without AA, thank your Higher Power for another recovery. You know, there's "little" sobriety, being dry, and there's sobriety with a big S, which includes humility and not thinking that you're the center of the earth. So if someone is doing something without your help, good enough.


Grapevine: What have you discovered about AA since becoming a trustee? Or as you put it, what if anything has made you say, "Aha!"

George Vaillant: I'd never seen the General Service Manual before, and to me as a nonalcoholic, it is a great piece of world literature, like the American Constitution. It is a great contribution to human thought.

I've also learned something about spirituality. Every time there is a board weekend, I arrive thinking, "Oh my God, this is another weekend I'm not with my family." Then I spend the next two days bathed in love and acceptance that is not from my being anyone special. So I've learned another definition of spirituality: we are each like the beautiful wave that's about to crash on the beach, saying, "This is it. This is forever." Then a voice from behind says, "Don't worry, son. You're not a wave; you're part of the ocean."


Grapevine: There is still a great deal of debate about the role of addicts in AA. What are your views on that?

George Vaillant:This is a terribly important question. AAs should focus on alcoholism. They're right. They've got enough to do, and there are enough alcoholics to go around in the world that they should never fear for their primary purpose.

But because there are a lot of people with mixed addictions, it's important for individual groups that can tolerate them to be tolerant and inclusive. There are some groups that welcome white, middle-aged Protestant males. And that's okay; they should be there, even though the rest of AA may regard them as hopeless dinosaurs and politically incorrect. And there are other groups that tolerate people who spend a little bit too much time talking about their $5-million cocaine habit and not enough time talking about alcoholism. And that's the wave of the future. There are increasingly fewer alcoholics. So some groups are going to have to change.


Grapevine: What are some of the other challenges that AA faces?

George Vaillant: I think there are two, really. One is to come to some meaningful terms with the individuals who are frightened that AA is a religion. This will involve some work and growth in AA to incorporate its diversity without losing its traditions. This is in keeping with the question of keeping the first 164 pages that Bill W. wrote in the Big Book and at the same time including contemporary stories about things some groups might be horrified by.

The second challenge (and this may be more important to me as a class A trustee) is to convey to the world what an extraordinary organization Alcoholics Anonymous is - not only in its ability to cure alcoholism but in its ability to conceptualize the fact that we're all one planet.

Just as an example, groups that are supposed to know about human beings and to be peaceful - the Christian church, the psychoanalytic movement, and the peace movement - are constantly splintering and fighting with each other. And somehow for sixty years, AA has kept two million very diverse individuals, who in their past lives were often a lot less peaceful than the Christians, the psychoanalysts, and the advocates of peace, working together for a common good.

I'm not sure that's a challenge to the Fellowship, or necessary to keep people sober. It's simply to me a challenge that people appreciate the depth of this message, which is expressed more in the Twelve Traditions and Twelve Concepts that in the Twelve Steps.


Grapevine: When you spoke of religious skeptics or of those fearful that AA might have a religious agenda, were you thinking of professionals in the field of alcoholism, or alcoholics themselves?

George Vaillant: Oh, both. Alcoholics, because of the shame, are enormously sensitive to exclusion. So to say, "If you want what we have, you have to believe in a Higher Power; you have to be spiritual, or you have to fake it till you make it" is enormously threatening to some people. They're still at a point of self-absorption; the idea of depending on a power greater than themselves is something they're going to have to learn. Think of it this way: there are a lot of things parents believe, like the value of working hard and completing an education, that make no sense to an eighteen-year-old. And for some alcoholics, spirituality is like one of those things that you learn when you get older. AA has to constantly remind itself that it needs to meet people where they are and that it can only make loving suggestions.

Bill W. spells out very clearly that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religion. And he makes it clear that there should be nothing about AA that excludes anyone who's a suffering alcoholic. But how you get people who've grown up in one tradition to understand how the world looks to people who've grown up in another takes ongoing discussion. Universality is very hard to achieve. And AA, in its effort of world unity, is constantly having to evolve. It's not a question of changing. It's a process of growth.

Copyright 2001, AA Grapevine Magazine, Inc., All Rights Reserved

This is the introduction to the famous Crash Course on AVRT®, which has been posted on the Internet since 1995. Since then, many thousands of men and women have taken back their lives from addiction and recoveryism solely by clicking through the 28 flash cards which begin at the very bottom of this page, Bullets for my Beast.

To prepare you for the work in the Bullets pages, study this page carefully, as it lays a foundation of health for AVRT-based recovery, which is the polar opposite of the disease concept of addiction which underlies all recovery groups.

Considering what is at stake, many go on from this sequence of instruction to the Advanced Crash Course on AVRT® in the subscription area of this website, where monitored discussion of AVRT-based recovery takes place daily.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Structural Model of Addiction
© Copyright, 1996, Rational Recovery® Systems, Inc.

The disease concept of addiction has become quite popular, mainly because it is the nature of addicted people to dignify their deplorable conduct. The disease concept of addiction is pure Addictive Voice, concealing the actual reason people drink/use while it discourages individual initiative.

The structural model of addiction is unique to Rational Recovery. This simple idea helps make sense of your addiction and shows you why you have been behaving so stupidly. Ridding yourself of disease-thinking can help you recover from substance addiction.

The structural model presents your addiction as a function of health rather than disease. There are no hidden causes for your addiction; you drink because you love to drink. You use because you love the way it feels. Addiction is a natural function of the human body, based entirely upon the pleasure principle. Brain chemistry and genetics are irrelevant to recovery. Our 2-part brain model, below, is simple, but for our purposes, not simplistic.

There is no evidence that "alcoholism" or addiction is a disease or is caused by one. Nor is there any treatment for addiction, other than voluntary abstinence. To call abstinence a "treatment," however, is like saying that the treatment for the disease of long hair is a haircut, a needless complication that obscures the nature of the problem and the nature of its solution. When the disease concept becomes part of your Addictive Voice, you will feel like a victim of circumstances rather than someone who is responsible for becoming addicted, for staying addicted and for immediately quitting your addiction -- right now, for good.

In effect, you have two separate brains within your head which, among other things, compete with each other. One is primitive, similar to the brain of a dog or a horse. This we call the midbrain. It is basically the brain of a beast, and its only purpose is to survive.

The beast brain generates survival appetites which drive the rest of the body toward what it demands, such as oxygen, food, sex, and fluids. These survival needs are all associated with physical pleasure, i.e., the better something feels, the more necessary it seems for survival. Your crazy appetite for alcohol or drugs springs from the force of life, physical survival through the pursuit of physical pleasure. Your survival appetite is aimed at the wrong stuff, to be sure, but the desire to drink excessively is more a reflection of health than of a mysterious disease. The desire for pleasure fades among sick or diseased people, further suggesting that addiction is a reflection of health rather than a disease process. In RR, some call the human midbrain "the party center," because of the bond between pleasure and addiction. Of course, it is often quite stupid (self-defeating) to act on healthy desires or impulses, as in substance addictions.

It matters not how substances such as alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana get mixed in with the midbrain's real survival needs. Chemically dependent people feel willing do most anything to continue the use of that substance -- even if it means the loss of everything else that is important. Addicted people wish this was not so. The Beast of Booze, or the Beast of Buzz, is ruthless in getting what it wants.



But there is another brain that sits on top of the beast brain -- the cerebral cortex. This "new brain," or neocortex, allows you to be conscious, to think, to have language, to control your voluntary muscles, and to solve abstract problems. Your neocortex is "you," and you are capable of defeating any appetite, even for oxygen or food. (Anyone can stop breathing until unconscious or stop eating until dead.) Your voluntary muscles (hands, feet, etc.) are "wired" directly to your neocortex -- to you. Your beast-brain is essentially a quadriplegic, unable to get what it wants.

We call your desire for the pleasure of alcohol and other drugs the Beast. It cannot speak, it cannot see, it has no arms or legs, and it has no intelligence of its own. But it enlists your thoughts and intelligence, sees through your eyes, creates strong feelings, and persuades you to use your hands, arms, and legs in order to obtain its favorite substance. It must appeal to you to get alcohol or drugs into your bloodstream.

Although your beast brain has no language ability, it uses your language and thinking centers to get what it wants. It is an animal mentality that can talk in your head. For example, if you wisely decide that drinking is bad for you, and that you will stop, you will soon hear that old, familiar voice telling you why you should continue drinking. You may even imagine a picture of what you want to drink. That is your Addictive Voice, expressing the Beast's demand for alcohol. Addictive Voice is to Beast as bark is to dog.

There are two parties to your addiction - you and your Beast. You can easily recognize your Addictive Voice using the following definition:

Any thinking, imagery, or feeling that supports or suggests the possible or actual use of alcohol or drugs -- ever.

AVRT allows you to become acutely aware of Beast activity and dissociate from it so it can no longer instigate action.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To follow, are 28 flash cards called "Bullets for my Beast." They are cues for action, directing you to complete recovery, while online. If you have been drinking or using today, sign off and return here during a day when you have been abstinent. Make a safe plan for detox. You are responsible to protect yourself against acute withdrawal symptoms. If you are in doubt, consult with your physician.

If you believe you can stop your addition once and for all and can go it alone give AVRT a chance. Nothing to lose.

Wan't to hear your addictive voice? Notice your thoughts after reading each of these assertions.
1. I will NEVER drink/use again!
What is it saying?
2. I will drink/use whenever I please.
Notice what you hear.
Master your addictive voice

Do unquestioned truths have you trapped? Ask yourself 1. Am I powerless? 2. is it people places and things or my belief that I am powerless? Is permanent abstinence really beyond my lifes possibilities? Must i live in constant fear of weakness and relapse?