‎Alcoholics Anonymous How To Recover From A Spiritual Malady by Bob D on Apple Music

It is treated through dual diagnosis, which looks to address both the physical addiction and mental health issues affecting the individual. Many of us felt that there was something wrong with us or something missing—in short, we felt different from other people. We couldn’t understand why the people surrounding us could feel happiness or contentment, so we turned to drugs and alcohol as a means of self-medicating our perceived shortcomings. From our time spent feeding our addictions, we feel that the opposite begins to happen. Rather than providing a feeling of relief, we find ourselves in a perpetual “dark night of the soul,” cut off from any sense of spiritual comfort.

So long as we make an active effort to address our spiritual malady every day, we will find relief from it, one day at a time. 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. Sometimes others expel the same negative emotions on to us. I have found this a fairly common trait among male alcoholics in recovery settings and meetings. But when it comes to alcohol and drugs, there is no will power. The reason is that our reaction to alcohol and drugs is physical, it’s not mental. So if you find yourself getting caught up on the spiritual nature of recovery, don’t. It really isn’t that difficult, and the beautiful thing about it is that it’s intensely personal and can be understood in any way you see fit. Just be open to the fact that besides being physically sick with addiction, you are also spiritually sick and as such, you need a spiritual solution to your problem.

What is a spiritual malady?

Conveniently, I overlooked the words ‘God as you understand Him (or Her’) ingeniously included in the steps. I was born Jewish and had studied both the Old and New Testament. I had been practicing meditation for almost 20 years and had read countless books on Eastern religion and thought. I had studied Emmett Fox, The Course in Miracles and was a card-carrying member of the Self-Realization Fellowship . I proceeded to give John a discourse about the human ego, transcendence, and the Oneness of all things. Know him therefore who is above reason; and let his peace give thee peace.

When we have the first sip of a drink, or whiff of a drug, it is then controlling our bodies. Once we indulge in the first drink, our judgment and normal concerns are skewed. The sin disease idea became the “spiritual malady” of AA. Due to the nature of frequent episodes of powerlessness over our behavior, attached to addiction and alcoholism, we often acted in a way we would never act in sobriety. We had limited control over behaviour at times due to intoxication and acted on occasion in a way that shames us today. Secondly, listing all the negative emotions I had when I held a resentment against someone was very revealing in that when I held a resentment, any resentment, and against a wide variety of people, the negative emotions listed where generally the same! In fact they were all interlinking in a pattern of emotional reacting, one activating the other. It was like a emotion web that ensnared one in increasingly frustrating states of emotional distress and inappropriate responding. So we have two main ailments, distressed based wanting which results in the same negative emotions as being in a shame- based fear of rejection.

What is a Spiritual Experience?

Anger responses are modeled and learned in some families. The anger response is more comfortable than feeling the shame for some individuals. Families where coercive and humiliating methods of discipline are used develop children who are shame prone. Behavior become driven by defenses that function to keep from feeling bad. Reality becomes distorted to further protect the self from poor self esteem. The transfer of blame to someone else is an indicator of internal shame. I had an argument with a guy once who suddenly proclaimed he was upset by what I had said.

Professional therapists teach people to live in the present. AA encourages members to share their experience, strength and hope with other members. It is emotionally healthy to accept our past experiences, however painful, as past events and move on to a richer, more fulfilling future. This is why we need a satisfactory definition of what alcoholism and addition is? Rather than describing these conditions in terms of the manifest symptoms, i.e chronic substance abuse or, at times, vague “spiritual maladies”.

Understanding What a Spiritual Malady Is

My emotions became wedded in time to being undifferentiated arousal states that prompted me to seek an external way to deal with these troubling emotional/arousal states. 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. When I have a fear of not getting stuff and this is linked to insecurity, as mentioned in the Big Book, it is usually in relation to my pocket book, financial insecurity, personal relationships, self esteem etc. As a result we are guarded against those that we perceive will reject us or be negative to us, harm us in some way and we seek to dominate these folk or we are dependent on those who are kind to us, help us and care for us. A decade of therapy also showed Bill Wilson he has two default settings in his relationship to other human beings – he either tried to dominate them or he became dependent on them for his sense of self and emotional well being. In other words, he became dependent on others, on external means for approval and elevating his self esteem.

I was amazed as this guy was reading his emotions, identifying verbalising/expressing them to me in a way I have never been able to do. I would have had empathy for where the newcomer “was at in his recovery” as I had been there once too. One of my own difficulties is realising I am hungry or tired and I can often end up exhausted by over-doing stuff especially manual work around my house. My stop button broke a long time a ago and probably did not work very well to begin with. We can not rely on our thoughts and feelings or, in other words, our Self Will.

What is a desire chip in AA?

The reason we cannot just quit is that our mind constantly has us believe that we can control and enjoy our drinking. No matter what the consequences were in the past, our mind will be obsessed with the thought of drinking. Basically, the alcoholic, once they start they cannot control the amount they take. Recovered means free from the obsession and constant struggle to stay sober. That will be lifted if you correctly follow the twelve steps in the book. Alcoholics Anonymous, the book that was created in the late 1930s was used to get people sober. Alcoholics would read and follow the steps in the book and get sober. The three must be addressed to find healing, recovery, and to live life sober. Imagine the worst feeling you have ever had, and then add in the fact that in that moment you also felt utterly alone in the universe, and you have the general feeling of a spiritual malady. Many people who enter into recovery do not want to hear anything of spirituality.

• Most of all with the clarity that my program and practices has provided, I have become open to a more intimate relationship with God.
• Being spiritually maladapted can come from a lack of gratitude.
• One recovering alcoholic or a group of recovering alcoholics is a power greater than oneself.
• Alcoholics had become a compulsive disorder to relief distress not to induce pleasure.
• We will try to fill this god-sized hole with anything we can.

When they hear words like God or spirituality, they begin to bristle with antagonism as they remember the religion of their youth or the traumas they have faced. The spiritual aspects of recovery and the ‘God word’ can be an obstacle for many new folks trying to get sober. Hopefully the ideas included in this short writing show that there are many ways to approach these topics. I struggled with this myself in the early days of my recovery.

Both The Big Book and The Twelve and Twelve have remained largely unaltered since they were first written. The reason for this is that the solution to the problem is timeless. By sticking closely to the original message of recovery, we of AEA are not only relieved from addictive eating and food obsession, we have found a life that is happy, joyous and free. There are certain benefits that can be healthy when a person obsessively seeks development and self-improvement. The first of these is that individuals that are seeking to better themselves in one way or another are often eager to learn and thus open to the experience. This allows individuals to be flexible and open-minded in their pursuit of more knowledge that can assist them in their quest for better knowledge.

Other people treat this sickness with food, sex, gambling etc. This is why there are numerous 12 Step recovery programs for different addiction but based around the same model of recovery & rusting God, cleaning house & helping others. As an alcoholic I have found I needed to grow up mentally and emotionally and I agree with the idea of emotional dysfunctionality which I believe is caused, probably, by past trauma or attachment issues. This means that I have hyper-sensitivity and can be over-reactive but I do not believe that I am in any way spiritually deficit. This is a Judea-Christian belief structure of bad versus good and I believe that I did not join AA to become good but well. AA may have started within the Oxford Group but has gradually moved away from their tenets.

AA provides many ways of becoming more emotionally well, which ultimately means more emotionally mature. It is the always wanting one more that makes my affective disorder that of addiction and not another disorder. I also think the issues are complicate because alcoholism have some many similarities aa spiritual malady to GAD, MDD, OCD, and so on. It was 80 years ago, so our knowledge base has moved on greatly from when the Big Book was written. Hence I believe we should appreciate that this definition of our condition has been updated by research into emotions especially in the last 20 years.

This one features a single, simple butterfly on the front and the Serenity Prayer on the back. But I am am reasonably certain that if you make such a list, and work toward eliminating the beliefs and habits you put in your list, then you will have a better outcome than I did during my first attempt at sobriety. He will match your mental inconsistencies with some of his own. This has allowed me to give people a lot more compassion with regards to their behaviour. It doesn’t mean their behaviour is acceptable & I should stand there & take their abuse but I can now look at it from an entirely different angle & those resentments / anger subside once I pray to my higher power. Find Addiction Rehabs is not a medical provider or treatment facility and does not provide medical advice. Find Addiction Rehabs does not endorse any treatment facility or guarantee the quality of care provided, or the results to be achieved, by any treatment facility. The information provided by Find Addiction Rehabs is not a substitute for professional treatment advice. © 2022 | Find Addiction Rehabs Find Addiction Rehabs is not a medical provider or treatment facility and does not provide medical advice.

Alcoholics do not seem want stuff like normal folk, but have a pathological wanting, an all consuming need to get stuff regardless of it’s worth or value. I am assailed externally by fear of what other’s think about me and internally about what I think of me – when these two line up it can have a powerful and damaging effect on my psyche. I have found over the last decade in recovery that when I turn my Will over to the care of the God of my understanding that I am restored to sanity and my thoughts are Sober Home sound, they are on a higher plane as the Big Book tells me. I have seen in myself how fear and shame seem to drive most of my maladaptive behaviour. We have difficulties in our relationships with others, these relationships are often unhealthy and ill. Some of us have this knawing feeling of not being good enough, have a hole in the soul which we are/were kinda always unconsciously trying to protect, shield from the world. Some of us are “people pleasers”, some of us are dismissive towards others.