Independent Recovery or Treatment?
©Copyright 2007, Jack Trimpey, all rights reserved.
I recently got this email from a suspicious person:
Why does the idea of rational recovery sound as if it is trying to provide a means of recovery or treatment? When one goes to sign up, the statement is made that AVRT is not a form of treatment. The feeling I get is that it is a legal disclaimer saying that all this is, is information on self recovery, but is not legally allowed to say it is a form of treatment. Can you help me understand this? — Matt P. MI
Matt,
Alcoholism and addictive disease are inventions, not realities. Alcoholism was invented by Bill Wilson, a common drunk who founded AA as a personal distraction from his own unrelenting desire to get drunk. All of the experts of the time knew there was no treatment for addiction, so they gladly yielded their obnoxious, addicted patients to Mr. Wilson’s fringe group of eccentrics.
Since then, AA has become an enormous fellowship of addiction, spreading its message of dependency through its zealous members in positions of responsibilty and opportunity. Consequently, the disease concept of addiction is widely accepted, a paradigm that makes it appear to you that addiction is a treatable condition, and that treatments do exist. These are faulty assumptions, based upon the false belief that addiction is or is caused by a pre-existing or acquired disease.
There are many who would like to identify AVRT® as a form of addiction treatment so they can (1) prohibit others from offering it to addicted people, and (2) charge fees for offering it as a form of addiction treatment. For example, the addiction treatment industry in California continues to lobby and legislate for licensure for substance abuse counselors, so that the only ones who can provide guidance to addicted people will be members of AA.
If AVRT® is identified as a form of addiction treatment, then it can be outlawed by the licensing authorities, unless offered by licensed substance abuse counselors, who are constitutionally incapable of explaining or even presenting AVRT®. Others may attempt to offer AVRT® as a professional service, as if it were a form of addiction treatment. Of course, that is both illogical, since AVRT® is independent recovery, and unlawful, because of the service mark. In other words, AVRT® is incompatible with the addiction treatment format, which presumes hidden causes, pathogenesis, addictive disease, and an elaborate array of worthless clinical servics.
Rational Recovery® is a refuge from the 12-step syndicate, which includes all of its groups and thousands of its false-front addiction treatment centers owned and operated by professional 12-steppers. Our mission page is here:
I am determined that AVRT® will remain free of charge, and never incorporated into the addiction treatment industry. The service mark simply prevents professionals and agencies from offering AVRT® to the public as part of addiction treatment. Although addiction treatment has become very popular, it helps no one, because there is no treatment or cure for stupidity, nor for immoral conduct.
The best outcome of addiction treatment is life in recovery, an outcome so depressing that most customers prefer active addiction and soon speak with their actions. Consequently, the only people who actually recover, and live as normal adults in freedom and dignity, do it independently, based upon their native beliefs and values. AVRT® is simply a description of the common thread of independent recovery, set forth in a brief, educational format.
Many thousands of addicted people recover simply by reading through the The Crash Course on AVRT®. However, AVRT® takes no credit at all for those success stories, because they are based upon the native beliefs and values of each individual who recovers. Here is one story that tells more about the nature of AVRT® than any amount of verbiage I can pour out:
Jack,
I came across your site through Wikipedia while researching for useful tools for a friend who recently confided in me his own alcohol addiction, and desire to stop drinking. I stoppped drinking myself a few years ago through some similar techniques I discovered on my own. I’ve been reading your website and you said you are interested in hearing how others have stopped their addictions on their own, so I thought I’d share what worked for me.
I was a closet drunk for a few years, basically starting drinking heavily through a real stressful part of my life, and then became addicted because I simply liked the feeling of being loaded really. Anyway, it’s pretty irrelevant how I got there now, but that I quit my addiction for good.
I’ve always been a very self reliant, independent person, and the idea of going to a shrink, or heaven forbid, a quasi-religious cult like AA was abhorent to me. I guess I just got to a point where this addiction was ruining my life in so many ways, I finally said enough! I can’t be drinker anymore, period, it’s simply not an option. It became totally unnaceptable to me.
I said I will never drink again, and I meant that. It was scary as hell at first making that commitment, I felt very insecure thinking of life without my old friend booze, I actually wanted a drink more than ever!. But I knew in my heart, intuitively that was the only way. I took a week off from work to do my “detox” on my own.
After a few days, the worst of the withdrawl symptoms were gone and I started feeling a whole lot better, but of course I still felt the desire to drink, but I wouldn’t go back to the hell of addiction, no way. I basically learned to let those feelings be, not try to fight them, but to just acknowledge them, but not act on them, and let them pass. I let my intellect be in control, not the booze hound.
It got surprisingly a lot easier after a while, just knowing that I’m in control, and those feelings would go away with just a thought, really, and would be powerless. Real easy, actually. It sounds very similar to AVRT in a lot of ways, perhaps anything that actually works is. And since I was a non drinker now, my moods, my energy level, my self confidence, all of it increased dramatically.
AVRT® was awesome and empowering, and no meetings or expensive shrinks. I can’t see the point in the “one day at a time,” disease model BS of AA. That seems like a very draining, unrewarding lifestyle that actually enables addiction. How awful!
I quit drinking, and once I realized I was in control, never went back, case closed. I made up my mind, and it’s behind me now. I rarely, if ever think about drinking anymore, it’s no longer part of my identity. It all reminds me of I believe a Zen saying I heard years ago, which I’m probably butchering to death: “A coward tries to hide from his desires; an enlightened person simply leaves them behind.”
Anyway, I gave my friend the address of your web site. It’s up to him whether he finds it useful or not. Your AVRT approach by far is the most sensical, honest, affirmative, and ultimately empowering one out there, I feel. Thanks for trademarking it and keeping it away from the whole “recovery” industry!
Regards,
Bill W.
Bill,
Thank you so much for the very interesting and well-written feedback on your own independent recovery. We receive thousands of “Thank you for AVRT®!” messages from people who have reclaimed their lives through our copyrighted and trademarked materials, but we get a special thrill hearing from people who figure out AVRT® all on their own, without ever hearing the words, ” Rational Recovery®,” just as I did back in the early 1980’s.
You and I, plus millions of others who have had serious drinking problems, and who fit every definition of “alcoholic” or “addict,” quit habitual vices every year, including alcohol and other hedonic drugs, gambling, sexual error, stealing, anorexia, bulemia, overeating, cigarette smoking, and other pleasure-producing substances and activities. Yet, when we do quit, demonstrating that we know something vitally important to others suffering from addiction, including their families, we are marginalized as “never had the problem in the first place,” “not a real alcoholic or real addict,” or worse, ” dry-drunk.”
It’s a good thing you trusted your intuitions about recovery groups and stayed away. You were on the verge of complete recovery, but if you had sat down in an AA meeting, you would have been jerked back from the brink and told that willful abstinence if futile, actually a symptom of the dread, unidentified disease, alcoholism. Against your better judgment, you may have conceded your better judgment and settled on one-day-at-a-time sobriety in order to consider the entire matter. Millions of newcomers succumb this way, and are soon visited by the sweet venom of recovery doctrine, which is truly 200 proof Addictive Voice.
Your experience was not “like AVRT®;” it was the generic, real-life drama of independent recovery I have synthesized into AVRT®. Remember, the definition of AVRT® is “the lore of independent recovery from substance addiction in a brief, educational format.” I’m determined to keep AVRT® free as the air we breathe, safe from the rapacious addiction treatment industry and its feeder system, the recovery group movement, both of which justify addiction, personal dependency, and substance abuse using clinical and occult language.
I will post your letter prominently at the website, so that others may be encouraged to undertake addiction recovery as a personal responsibility rather than as an anonymous, group project on the margins of society.
Thanks again!
Jack Trimpey
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June 12th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Why is it that I could use the AVRT technique to swear off alcohol forever but not to limit my consumption to just 1 drink per day?
August 15th, 2007 at 6:11 am
“Appearing in the July 26 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a study coauthored by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School and James Fowler of UC San Diego suggests that obesity is “socially contagious,” spreading from person to person in a social network.”……”Surprisingly, the greatest effect is seen not among people sharing the same genes or the same household but among friends.”
The above quotes are from the following link. You will find articles about this study in major publications everywhere. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725175419.htm
The article from the New England Journal of Medicine is here:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
The implications of the study should make one question the efficacy of a 12 step program, like Overeaters Anonymous, bringing food addicts together in lifelong relationships. The problem is compounded by the fact that only a small number of members in any local group (if any) are changing their eating habits and decreasing their body size.
Likely a similar study for other addictions, would show similar results. (Likely such studies are already in the literature.) A common sense belief has always been that if you hang out with people who drink or use drugs, then you are more likely to engage in those same activities. This belief system had not previously been applied to overeating.
CTMS
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:53 am
Dear Bill W.I cannot thank you enough for changing my life. Until I joined your fellowship and met members of your organization, my life was disastrous. I drank constantly and drifted aimlessly through life. When I was “12 Stepped” by two wonderful men (one a vacuum salesman, the other one a Dominos pizza delivery guy), little did I know my life would never be the same again.
They told me about a meeting at a nearby church that would tell me the ugly truth about my incurable illness. I wasn’t aware I even had an illness although I did get the flu quite often back then for some strange reason. I agreed to meet them at the church basement, perhaps they could help me.
At this meeting I was greeted by lots of warm, welcoming people. These people came from varied backgrounds but they had one thing in common. They were all alcoholics and were very proud of that. I often wondered if I too was an alcoholic, but could not find a precise definition of what an alcoholic actually is. They told me that if I thought I was an alcoholic, then I was one. That made perfectly logical sense to me, so from that day on I called myself an alcoholic. I too could be a member of this special group of people.
I was given a blue book to read and was told to find someone in this group to advise me on how to run my life since I am not able to think for myself being that I am an alcoholic. I picked an elderly, chain smoking man named Louie to be my sponsor. Since Louie had over 20 years of sobriety, I reasoned that he had special wisdom or a profound spiritual connection that I did not have. After all, since he had so much sobriety, he is much smarter and wiser than I. That day I decided to become Louie’s pigeon.
Being a pigeon is hard but I persevered. I followed Louie’s direction to the letter, read the book, took the 12 steps as outlined and went to lots of meetings all over the city. The people I befriended at the meetings were often very peculiar and even stranger than the guys I used to drink with. I found this to be a very strange disease indeed. Even if I don’t drink, my disease progresses anyways, and I could meet a horrible, tragic end unless I kept doing the steps and going to the meetings. I also noticed that my disease flared up a lot on Saturday nights, holidays and when I had days off from work, which I could not explain.
I noticed a lot of people didn’t stick around very long. Louie explained to me that these people would probably end up in jail, go insane (which many were already) or even die. If they stayed sober they were not real alcoholics at all and did not have our disease. I found this type of circular reasoning to be cunning, baffling and powerful, but it must be true. A well-known man of science named “Dr. Silkworth” proved it. His findings have saved millions of lives and I can’t believe has wasn’t given a Nobel Peace prize for this incredible discovery. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.
Anyways, thanks for giving me a new life, a whole new circle of friends and a completely different outlook on everything. I have even met a really neat girl called “ Penny”. She is cute, intelligent, and athletic and has a great sense of humour and we would like to spend time together. Louie advised me that I would not be allowed to do so for at least several months as this is called “13th Stepping” and that is against the rules. I didn’t know about this rule, we used to just call it “dating”. I guess Louie is better experienced than I on these matters since he was divorced three times.
Well, just as you promised, I really have been rocketed to a fourth dimension of existence that I could barely even fathom, in fact I never want to return to planet earth ever again! I hope to one day graduate from pigeonhood to something better, but only when I get enough time in.
Yours Truly
J. S.