Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction (Paperback)

Offers a self-recovery program for substance abuse based on the Addictive Voice Recognition Technique.

Rational Recovery offers new hope to addicted people.
I wrote Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction (Pocket Books, 1996) to help addicted people who have not and cannot be helped by the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Very few who actually recover from substance addictions do it by attending meetings, entering treatment centers, or getting counseling. The vast majority who look into Alcoholics Anonymous reject it out of hand because of its apparent religiosity and inbred social traditions. As they leave, they are warned that they will inevitably fail to remain abstinent and discover that, even if they abstain from alcohol and drugs, their lives will is hollow and barren without the saving grace of the 12-step experience. This book is about self-recovery, and brings hope to any reader who is first aware of a drinking or drug problem, or one who has tried other approaches and failed to remain consistently abstinent. It describes a common means people use to self-recover through planned abstinence, an approach which I have named Addictive Voice Recognition Technique® or AVRT for short. AVRT is the "nuculear weapon" of the addictions field, not that I make any claim to have invented it. AVRT is a description of the awesome potential of addicted people to take personal responsibility for lifetime abstinence and to become normal, healthy, independent people who simply never drink alcohol or use other drugs. AVRT is simply a set of instructions on how to objectify the bodily desire for the pleasure produced by various substances, and how to make a transcending personal commitment to lifetime abstinence. AVRT is extremely successful, since people most often do what they want to do, especially when they know how. In time, it appears likely that AVRT will become the standard way people expect themselves to recover from substance addictions. But this will not likely come soon, because Alcoholics Anonymous has become a national syndicate weilding immense power over mainstream thinking. Rarely are other simpler and more effective approaches suggested by our courts and social agencies, because the addiction treatment industry has found that the endless cycle of relapse and treatment fostered by the recovery group movement is immensely profitable. The disease concept of addiction is not only violation of common sense, but a fiction of convenience for those who benefit from its effects, chief among them the addicts themselves whose purpose is to avoid personal responsibility for their purposeful misbehavior. The unproved disease concept is nothing more than a doctor's excuse for one's past, present, and future drinking. This pernicious concept dovetails with the first of AA's 12-steps, that addicted people are "powerless" to resist one's bodily desire for the pleasure produced by drinking alcohol or using certain drugs. The drug culture of America now convenes in every community nightly in support groups which support the collective victimhood of substance abusers while offering discouragement to anyone who would attempt to leave the group and "go it alone." The families of alcoholics and other substance abusers often find it easier to think of their loved ones as "sick" rather than stupid or worse, but for this salve they are labeled "enablers" or "codependents" who must also submit to the 12-step creed in order to function as a non-dysfunctional family. Rational Recovery is a society of self-recovered men and women who are now, at last, providing leadership based on common sense and traditional values. We know that anyone at all can quit an addiction, not one-day-at-a-time, but once for all time, and without becoming a convert to a spirituality, a psychology, a religion, or a recovery cult. We teach addicted people how they, too, can break the chains of addiciton by learning the simple thinking skill behind planned abstinence, AVRT. Our message may seem abrasive to some who find meaning or comfort in the status quo, or who believe that AA is a genuine asset in the struggle against mass addiction, and our words may be deeply offensive to people who are personally involved with AA or similar organizations. The 12-step syndicate is a problem posing as a solution, depending on admiration for feats not accomplished, and silence about its glaring flaws, but now it is time to raise our voices and expose the naked emperor. People do not need support to remain sober, and they need not change themselves in any way to quit drinking or using drugs. To the extent they think this is so, we are hearing the Addictive Voice, which I have written about in great depth in Rational Recovery: The New Cure. One man in an addiction treatment center in Louisiana was found to have Rational Recovery: The New Cure in his possession, and the staff, all member of AA of course, demanded to confiscate it from him. They knew that when people learn about RR, they have little reason to be in treatment or recovery groups. He said this book offered him the first glimpse of hope in his life after multiple admissions to similar facilities, but they persisted. He finally rose up, and said, "I see at last what AA is about. It is about controlling people when they are down and out, and now I am free of it forever." He left the facility in spite of threats that by leaving against medical advice he would have to pay the hospital bill himself. This is the human resiliency and self-determination we call the human spirit, although our program is in no way spiritual. People, not programs, are spiritual, and the sooner America learns to expect more from addicted people, they will remain in the grip of pleasure, and locked in the jaws of despair. As to the comments on this book by Carlos Bonilla, I am glad you can see the reality of the recovery group movement. Mr. Bonilla is a 12-stepper, has not read this very important and inspirational book. He wants no one else to read it, either, because it challenges the universality and credibility of AA. He has not commented on any relevant issue on addiction or recovery, but only attacked my character. This is truly the AA way, at every meeting, everywhere. This is the way newcomers and independent-minded people are routinely treated in recovery groups. AA pathologizes dissent: if you don't agree with me, you're in denial. He has a proprietary interest in every substance abuser in the world, and needs them all to agree with his parochial views so he may feel safe in the decisions he has made for himself. He would burn this book if he could, but for now he only trashes it, unread, online. If your life is affected by addiction in any way, I suggest you read it, and you be the judge. Our award-winning website has programmed instruction on AVRT which has resulted in many recovering from serious, long-standing addictions. Jack Trimpey, Founder Rational Recovery