Learn What Spiritual Malady Is And The Role It Plays In Your Recovery

The ideas and opinions expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent those of Alcoholics Anonymous. This can seem a little confusing to newcomers, who believe that they only have a problem with food. They do not understand why it is being suggested they read a book they believe to be for alcoholics. It is our experience that the problem is not the substance; the problem is the disease of addiction. We have also found that the disease of addiction is not limited to any one substance and that to be sober we need to be free from all mind-altering substances.

• More respect, more love and more stuff…much more stuff.
• I have sought refuge from my negative emotions in alcohol, drugs and other addictive behaviours.
• For me he was seeing the root of this spiritual malady, this emotional disease.
• In sobriety, if we are self-reliant we usually end up using anything that will make us feel good externally excessively.

Perhaps they seem in conflict with providing competent medical care. I look at the past fleetingly sometimes to help others but I never stare at it too long. Otherwise we have not really completely treated our alcoholism. We have a sea change in how we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us.

What is the 3 Fold Disease of Alcoholism & Addiction

We often take them to grave sooner rather than later unless we decide to be open and share our secrets with another person. Most of us were determined to take these secrets, these “sins” to the grave. Who has been where you have been, felt how you have felt. Sponsorship embodies the fellowship’s altruistic orientation, reflecting a “helping and helper therapy principle” . Sponsorship plays an important role in the recovery process. Today this would be termed “despite negative consequences”. AA was co-founded 80 years ago when Bill Wilson passed on a message of hope to Dr Bob, or Dr Robert Smith to give his full name.

• Part of the problem may lie in not being specific enough about what alcoholism is.
• We begin to obsess and buy the lie because we want to feel the ease and comfort of the first drink.
• That’s why it’s so important to tell and help others by our experience.
• I didn’t get spiritually sick as a result of alcoholism, my spiritual sickness predated my alcoholism and contributed to me becoming an alcoholic because I believed alcohol to be the solution.
• However, there seems to be a problem specifically with a patterned mesh of negative emotions which are activated when someone upsets me.

Even if this person had no such intention of hurting my feelings I would blame him nonetheless via my defensive reactions. For me he was seeing the root of this spiritual malady, this emotional disease. I would add to this that I also get distress via fears of rejection from others, I suffer from fear based shame to a chronic extent. Desire obviously runs contrary to the idea of being in God’s will, in fact it is being in Self Will that seems to create distress in many people with addictive behaviours.

Lakehouse Recovery Center

Sorry for being so direct in this blog, it is a message of hope, there is a way to completely turn your life around. High sponsor involvement over time has been found to predict longer recovery . AA saved my life and I can never put into words the gratitude I have for AA. I cannot express how happy it has allowed my wife, family and friends to become. The basic tenet of this, is that it takes one alcoholic to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. This has been borne out in millions of cases around the world.

The transfer of blame to someone else is an indicator of internal shame. In fact the Big Book gives me a good idea of the “sins” or “defects of character” I have when I have a resentment but does not explain why I have resentments in the first place. For example there is an undercurrent in fear of things being taken away, of it being because we are not good enough, deserving enough, have failed in some way, which are shame based reactions. We seem to compulsively seek to relieve an inherent distress of not having what we set out to get. Our decision making seems fueled at times by this need to relieve distress rather than the intrinsic value of what we are seeking. Desiring stuff seems at the root of my fear based stuff – the exquisite torture of desire which soon loses it’s so-called relish and just becomes torturous.

Heads or Tails: Why Does the Obsessive Nature of Some Seek the Dark?

My spiritual awakening has transformed the powerlessness that I once endured into a source of power through my faithful adherence to practices and a healing renewal of faith in a power greater than myself. When I was in my own personal cycle of addiction, I was struggling with coping with the challenges of my career, marriage, and my own personal development. I did not know how to integrate my career identity with my personal identity in a healthy way; I did not know how to work through questions and problems in my marriage; and I did not know how to feel at home with myself. I knew I wanted to grow into becoming a better and more whole person, but did not know how to talk about it. I knew I wanted to feel spiritually rooted and connected, but I did not know where to turn nor did I believe anyone could help me get there. We can also see this as years of not being able to regulate our negative emotions properly, if you wish to see them as sins.

Alcoholics had become a compulsive disorder to relief distress not to induce pleasure. For me this section is saying our emotion dysregulation leads to feelings of being “restless, irritable and discontented” which prompt a return to drinking. I want to make clear to members that these thoughts are not definitive treatise on the subjects.

Spirituality in Recovery Means Freedom

People in the rooms refer to this as a ‘god-sized hole’. It’s a void that we used to fill with drugs and alcohol. We will try to fill this god-sized hole with anything we can. The mental aspect of this disease is absolutely baffling- that is an understatement.

What we learn in recovery is that the problem centers in the mind. There is an obsessive quality and an emotional sensitivity, often spiritual malady experienced in childhood, that later has the possibility of turning to an obsession to seek solace from the way they feel.

However, my understanding is that the root of an alcoholics illness is the spiritual sickness which manifests as self centeredness, self seeking behavior which arises from resentments, anger & fear. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ Nobody wants to be out of control, to be teetering on the verge of the next disaster, the next moving of home, the next calling of the police, the next swirling carousel of unmanageabiilty.