In efforts to abstain from the use of drugs or alcohol, Rational Recovery techniques may provide a framework for progress. This form of treatment focuses on identifying and isolating a primal urge or instinct that places unreasonable demands upon us. The practice suggests that this urge is likened to a survival instinct that desires indulgences such as intoxication or sexual desires and those urges associated with gambling and other forms or socially unacceptable behavior.

This approach is reason-based thinking and seems to treat that urge as a lower form of self that is persistent in its desires. This thing or ‘it’, has been trademarked, ‘The Beast’. After some thorough reading of the crash course for AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Therapy), the reader may not only feel relieved of their addiction, but may then feel as a borderline schizophrenic with an alter-ego within themselves. Some may even feel like they have Sesame Street’s character, Oscar the Grouch, living in a garbage can somewhere within their bodies demanding some sort of satisfaction with no regard to the health or well-being of the host individual or addict.

The Program, AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Therapy) will engage the addict in a constant tug-and-pull battle between one’s rational self and one’s irrational, destructive self termed, The Beast. The site will compare itself to other forms of treatment and offers itself as an alternative to AA/NA or any other 12-step recovery program. As a matter of fact, RR’s site will expend a decent amount of site space refuting 12-step recovery programs. The site is specifically naming Alcoholic Anonymous as the chief culprit of the failure of addicts to recover. The site also launches accusations against this type of group therapy as being a form of cult, a religious movement and in alliance with Christianity and other churches, despite RR’s mentioning that AVRT form of treatment will not work well for Atheists and Agnostics and further despite
a God-less approach to recovery.

Those who seek a God-less approach to recovery may forego a program that requires no due or fees for recovery that will request a commitment of a subscription to on-line materials. RR’s offers a solution to addiction by way self-sufficiency. Dependence upon others or groups or Powers greater than themselves or others may be avoided by residing by oneself in a comfortable chair and reading subscriptions to self-help manuals and being accountable to no one but him or her addictive self. The concept of Addictive Voice Recognition Therapy offered through RR was conceived in 1985 and boasts of guiding thousands nationwide to recovery. Alcoholics Anonymous began in 1934 in Dayton, Ohio and has nearly 2 million or more members worldwide. The materials which consist of a book of 134 pages can be purchased on installment or loan or honour system and in some cases, is free. Sponsors give freely of their time. It is in the act of working with newcomers that sponsors stay recovered themselves.