Cured

My addictive voice (AV) has been chattering away over the last 24 hours (First time in a while) and is up to it’s old tricks of complimenting me. I’m in a good place mentally at the moment and have had no desire to drink over my birthday weekend (this included a trip to the football and a meal out) but that never seems to be the route my AV goes down anyways, it likes to try and persuade me to make plans in isolation.

It’s never a good sign when my AV starts stroking my ego and telling me how well I’m doing because if I’m not careful I start to drop my guard and get drawn in by the tactics that are being used to make me drink again.

As you will know if you’ve read my Blog before, I use the Rational Recovery programme to support my abstinence from alcohol and up to now I’ve found it brilliant in terms of giving me the tools and confidence to overcome my prior dependency with the booze. Day to day I’m not even thinking about drinking anymore which in itself is a fantastic place to be given where I was in the past but I’m not ‘cured’ from my prior dependency and my AV will pop up and remind me of this now and again.

My addictive voice only wants one thing and one thing only – Alcohol. It will use all sorts of tactics to persuade me to pick up so I need to be aware of this and never forget the simplicity of it. Whether I’m happy, sad, mad or glad my AV wants ‘feeding’ and it will try all sorts of things to try and convince me that alcohol is the answer.

The mechanics of Rational Recovery are not complicated in the slightest but requires dedication and belief in it to work for you. I know I now have the tools to not pick up and I have built up a fantastic support group of peers within the Twitter Community to reach out to if I need a reminder of why I’m applying the ‘Addictive Voice Recognition Technique’ (AVRT)to my life.

There may or may not come a time in my life where my Addictive Voice disappears but the reality is that I may always have an AV to contend with even if it does only speak to me once in a blue moon. Some people will say they are ‘cured’ from their addiction because of Rational Recovery but I find the word ‘cured’ an extremity at this point in my journey. I can certainly for-see a lifetime of abstinence if I commit to applying AVRT today, tomorrow and beyond.

I don’t agree with everything that Jack Trimpey (the creator of Rational Recovery) says in his book but I can’t question the programme he teaches. I know that if I follow it each day I won’t drink and it really is as simple as that.

Cured? That’s not for me to say.