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.
