To anyone with an addicted spouse or significant other (ASS) in the family, this probably sounds too good to be true. It is sad to say that if your ASS came to you and said, “Honey, I've been thinking things over, and I've decided that I'll never drink another drop of alcohol for the rest of my days,” you would not likely believe it.
Good for you, because your mistrust is well-earned, and you would have to have a screw loose to actually believe such a well-intentioned promise. It would be perfectly stupid for you to trust a chronic drunk who has betrayed you over and over, year after year, while you suffered under the dark cloud of addiction. Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and it takes quite a while for anyone to live down a bad reputation.
However, we would also say to your special ASS, “Good for you!” That is because we believe strongly in the ability of any ASS to permanently quit drinking or using any other substance that unleashes unspeakable pleasure. In fact, self-recovery is commonplace, and much easier than getting outside help. I, Jack, know this for certain, because I did it myself.
For many years, I was a complete ass, destroying the happiness, hope, and harmony of my own family, Finally, when I feared the worst, I went to my wife, Lois, and said, “Honey, I've been thinking it over, and I've decided that I'll never drink another drop of alcohol of the rest of my days.” I found within myself a natural ability to stick to my decision, just as millions of other ASS’s do.
When my life brightened up, we decided to make better guidance available to addicted people everywhere. Based upon my own experience and the thousands of other ASS’s I’ve seen return to the human side in the last two decades, I have compiled the common experience of successfully recovered people to serve as a roadmap out of addiction. It’s called, Addictive Voice Recognition Technique® (AVRT®), which is the lore of self-recovery from substance addiction in a brief, educational format.
You and your ASS can both get the essentials of AVRT® right here, right now. When you’ve finished reading this page, just click “Recover Now,” in the left sidebar to get started on AVRT-based recovery. If you haven’t seen materials on AVRT® before, it will come as quite a jolt of truth, and your family will be on the way to life after addiction. You and your ASS may undiagnose yourselves, casting off the crippling labels of chronic addiction, “alcoholic,” “addict,” “codependent,” and “enabler.”
Protect your family.
Addiction is a pleasure centered survival drive hijacked by a substance that produces greater pleasure than eating, sex, or any other requirement of life. Although we humans are perfectly equipped to resist any temptation, defeat any animal desire, we are prone to self-destuction if we believe we are powerless over desire, or if we do not expect ourselves to cease and permanently desist from self-intoxication. Addiction is a black hole that will suck inside itself every financial asset and emotional resource of the entire family. You must protect the family from the ASS within, or the family will be destroyed by addiction and its jealous cousin, one-day-at-a-time recoveryism.
No family can survive addiction, because addiction is a ruthless, mindless pleasure drive that captures one’s highest loyalty — loyalty before God, before country, before family, before self, before life itself. The ASS proves through action a loyalty to the alluring substance greater than loyalty to the family and marital bonds. Because the pleasure produced by alcohol and other drugs dwarfs the fires of marital relations, addiction is first-class adultery. An ASS who is a parent proves through action a love for the substance that is greater than parental love.
An ASS is two beings in one, a human and a Beast, each struggling for control, with the Beast winning out. While addicted, your special ASS isn’t really in the family except as a memory of the original person who existed before the betrayal of addiction. With AVRT®, the original soul emerges as a familiar stranger long lost to addiction, but offering hope of reconciliation to those those who still wait.
AVRT® is a family-oriented approach to addiction recovery because it is based upon your original family values, the native values and beliefs you knew as a young child, an ancestral heitage stored within you today as a treasure of strength and wisdom. AVRT® is old-fasioned common sense in action, which is why it fits so well with any family’s original foundations. AVRT® contains no wisdom of its own; it is just a thought pattern for self-monitoring that allows addicted people to effortlessly resist the desire to self-intoxicate.
Once we see the enemy within, which we call the Beast®, we are the victors, released from the grip of addiction forever. There is no reason for anyone in the family to change their basic beliefs or values unless, of course, your family is involved with recovery groups, including Al-Anon. In that case, the family might gather together to assert their adequacy to solve the problem independently, without hanging out the family’s dirty laundry at the town square, without the stigma of addictive disease, without years of expensive, futile addiction treatment, without the bad company of recovery groups, and without surrendering native family values to social cultism.
Jack Trimpey was seriously addicted!
Let me, Lois, say that if my special ASS could quit and stay quit, then anyone can do it. He was often drunk nights and weekends, and a smooth-talker by day who played me like a violin every which way for years. He told me he was an “alcoholic” whose drinking had mysterious causes. He used clincal terms and said if I'd get my act togther I'd feel better. I doubted these views, but the clever language of recoveryism I heard at Al-Anon and in the mainstream media made me doubt myself. Finally, I just knew in my heart that an “alcoholic” was nothing more than a self-excusing ASS, so I took action. When I finally showed him the door, he became a true believer in my willingness to get rid of him, and the rest is history.
Jack attended recovery group meetings for many years, off and on. He said I couldn’t understand him unless I attended Al-Anon. Right. Living with an ASS who demands that the family accept the weirdness and incorrigibility of group recoveryism can be more destructive than active addiction itselfl I could defend myself much better against the ugliness of addiction in my own living room than seated with a roomful of people who believe in the family disease of alcoholism. In recovery groups, e.g., Al-Anon, you will learn to wrap your ASS’s ugliness in clinical gauze, to make it look innocent, as though caused by a disease. You’ll think inverted ideas like “tough love,” making it appear you should love a traitor by getting tough in order to make the traitor loyal. This is upside down!
It was only when I stopped loving the animal shell of Jack Trimpey, and had the nerve to put the Beast out, that my original lover finally stepped forward to take control. Now, Jack’s back, and together we intend to make self-recovery available to every family in need. I enjoy meeting with the families who come for the AVRT: The Course, to let them know that their hopes for reconciliation are realistic, while cautioning that because addiction is a choice, we cannot predict what anyone will finally do. Only time will tell, but in AVRT-based recovery, we are going for the prizes of freedom and dignity, not humble pie and one-day-at-a-time indecision.
Very importantly, AVRT-based recovery for the family is always affordable, always totally confidential and off-the-record. AVRT: The Course is conducted here at the national office, in a Northern California rural retreat atmosphere.
Zero-tolerance
We stand opposed to interventions in principle and for practical reasons as well. It is impossible to coerce addiction recovery. Instead, we recommend the zero-tolerance ultimatum of AVRT-based recovery, so your special ASS may choose between addiction and family membership.
When you take The Crash Course on AVRT®, you will notice that the Big Plan is nothing more or less than a zero-tolerance ultimatum, “I will never drink again.” Making a Big Plan is a wonderful experience for an addicted person. The problem is finally over. No new problems from addiciton. Depression immediately fades or disappears. Real hope for a better life emerges. If you go on to take AVRT® Couple’s Course, described in this flyer, you will see that addiction recovery is always the same, a vow of commitment followed by a grand sense of relief. We call this the Abstinence Commitment Effect (ACE).
You may now finally choose to decide how much longer you will tolerate having an ASS in your family, ranging from “Till death do us part,” to “Not one more drop.” Remember, a “relapse” is not a symptom, but a planned, defiant, self-indulgence. When you decide, tell your ASS what you’ve decided, in very clear terms, and tell him/her exactly what you are going to do when that limit has been breached.
Why shouldn’t the entire family enjoy the benefits of zero-tolerance? Why shouldn’t you demand that your special ASS guarantee you lifetime abstinence as a condition of family membership? Yes, when the vow of lifetime abstinence is made, you’ll have to live with uncertainty until your guts finally settle down, many months or even years down the line, but the prize is there to be won. Would such a guarantee be too much to expect? If so, then you have chosen the animal version of the original soul you once loved.
In our opinion, any ASS who would refuse this offer may be worse than just an ASS. Your ASS may be a genuine, perfect ass who chooses the pleasures of addiction over you and the family. In that case, the call of the wild should lead to its source, out of the home and into the barnyard. Of course, that’s not very scientific, is it? The choice is yours.
AVRT® is not a form of addiction treatment, therapy, or counseling.
It is the the lore of self-recovery from substance addiction in a brief, educational format.
