Rational Recovery

[dutchdemocrat]

AVRT is incompatible with the group format, and contradicts practically every concept presented in recovery groups. We believe strongly that your desire to attend recovery groups is couched in the belief that you will relapse if you do not attend meetings. In AVRT-based recovery, you will quickly recognize that self-doubt as an example of your Addictive Voice. Then, you will not want to congregate with others who would reinforce that crippling, dependent belief.

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.

Continue to: Bullets For My Beast

https://rational.org/html_bullets/Bullet1.html

[A-Schwarzenegger]

1. I love this part...

"Make a plan to resume drinking in two hundred years.
Decide exactly what you will drink (or use) in 2196
to celebrate two centuries of abstinence.
See?
The Beast is quite stupid,
so you can trick it this way.
But your Beast can live comfortably with a plan
for two hundred years of abstinence,
even though you will be dead by then.
It just doesn't get the time part.
It is functionally immortal,
and doesn't understand that you will die."

LOL. Hey, dutch, glad you're sober, whatever works.
Two Hundred Years At A Time!

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. That's how I stopped smoking, though I hit upon it by chance.

And I only put it off for a few minutes at a time... and then did it again and again. Sort of one moment at a time. Until, maybe months later, I forgot about smoking all together and certainly didn't want to start again.

But it may have helped that I'm a simple soul and my mind tends to only be able to handle one thing at a time. On a bad day, when I've had to cook for myself, I've cooked the meat/fish, whatever, veg and potato in successive operations, rather than try to do them simultaneously.

One day, when I was still at school, my mother, perhaps understanding this (and knowing what my response would be), once told me I could have anything I wanted (more or less, the sun the moon and the stars). I just had to ask her.

Slightly incredulous, though tremendously heartened, I told her I'd like a motorbike. "Ah, she said (and in all seriousness), that's the one thing you can't have...! You'll kill yourself". Definitely something of the eponymous film character, the Jerk, in me.

Later, when I did get a bike in South Australia, my step-father, a tremendous character, apparently told my mother, "I understand now why you didn't want his nibs to get a motorbike (he'd helped set her mind at rest). I saw him riding down Rundle street, looking everywhere around him - everywhere except in front of him".

I hope you don't mind my introducing some levity, pretty irrelevant, at that, as far as the topic is concerned.

[Tallison]

2. Main differences b/w RR and SMART?

I think they were related at some point until a few years ago, and I know of several people who work both SMART and conventional 12-step programs. Principal differences b/w RR and SMART if you're aware of them? I like what I've seen of both so far. Thanks.

on edit: (Great link , BTW, I'd always wondered what AVRT was; cognitive/behavioral modification essentially).

[anarchy1999]

3. There is no Smart Group in DFW Metro. Hard to fathom or believe.I did

find SOS. I was told that Jack T had a split with the board. He wanted Rational Recovery to be For Profit and the board wanted to keep it non-porfit. Hence Smart. Sad state of affairs, isn't it. Arguing over how to help people kick alcohol. For Profit or not for Profit. Go figure?

[Tallison]

9. Jack T seems quite the meglomaniac

kind of like a certain Bill W... I like a lot of what I've read re: SMART and whoever the social psychologist is who leads it now.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. This looks good

I know there are many good points to AA and 12-step systems, but there's also a huge load of mind-fucking that goes along with them as well. I've basically lost three friends not to alcohol so much as the 12-step style recovery groups.

Reading over the RR stuff, I was pleasantly surprised. Only the ultimatum stuff was troubling (ultimatums are more destructive than most people realize).

Good luck to all who follow the RR system for recovery!

--p!

[NMDemDist2]

6. damn! if I had been rational while drinking, I wouldn't have needed

recovery!!

:rofl:

[KitchenWitch]

7. Me too

:rofl:

And in recovery, there are still days when one could say I am not rational.

:silly:

[NMDemDist2]

8. details, details

:pals:

and that makes two of us :dilemma: