MALADY in Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous, 12 Steps and 12 Traditions

It affects every aspect of our lives and must be overcome if we wish to fix ourselves mentally and physically. The way humans think is on a spectrum of self-centeredness and god-centeredness. When dealing with the disease of alcoholism we are selfish and self-centered beings. We use everything and everyone, even when we stop using alcohol and drugs to cope with these feelings of being unsatisfied and uncomfortable in life. The more we focus less on ourselves we allow a god of our understanding to enter our minds and work in our lives. Explains, “If, when you honestly want to, you find that you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably an alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” We embark upon a journey of recovery that allows us to develop a deep spiritual connection.

For a long time I thought my life was unmanageable because of all the crazy insane things I did while drinking — like the car accidents, hurting people when I didn’t mean to, failed relationships, loss of jobs, family dysfunction, jails, asylums, etc. 2) I had to realize that, had THAT SET of resentments not resulted in me feeling trapped, then sulking, then drinking, the next set probably would have. In conclusion, staying spiritually healthy means trying to keep ourselves open to being surprised by life. A prayer common to 12 Step Fellowships beautifully summarizes this sentiment. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous pragmatically talks about spirituality. Above all, the spirituality required for successful recovery involves open-mindedness. However, they probably come from some confusion about what spirituality or “having a spiritual experience” means in the context of the A.A. Almost disappointingly I found some of my sins were quite tame when compared to other people I have spoken to in recovery. Thus my original point is not semantic, AA was not founded by one person, it was co-founded as we alcoholics achieve sobriety with the help of other alcoholics. Dr Bob, it is aid, went on to help over 5,000 alcoholics achieve sobriety and died sober.

December 21, 2020 by Burning Tree Programs in

Sins were a contagion that mixed with the sins of others and the sins of families, groups, societies, cultures and countries. Someone you are going to open up to and discuss intimate stuff with, someone who will ultimately know the shameful secrets that can keep a person spiritually and emotionally sick and will continue to do so until we share this stuff and let it all go. In order to fully recover from alcoholism, addiction and addictive behaviours, we find we have to trust at least one other human being. AA’s 12 steps are a spiritual program of recovery but at the heart of that spirituality is the role of sponsoring. 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. Finding out what is really going on with us emotionally is at the heart of recovery.

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. It is almost miraculous, the sudden transformative effect it can have on us. We have the chance to be free from the sick version of our real self, the self that has been in bondage, in addiction.

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Suppose spirituality is about being willing to be open to something new. In that case, the words “God” and “prayer” have much more to do with an attitude and posture of humility. They become less about the content of the person’s belief system and more about the openness to a new experience. In steps 4 and 5 we listed wrongdoings to others and although initially petrified to share them with another, found that it wasn’t as difficult as we thought it would be, once you wrote down the worst top ten. These secrets are the emotional and psychic scars of our alcoholic past and they need to be exposed in order for us to fully heal. This is why we celebrate this great anniversary, this co-founding of AA, as it is the start of this therapeutic and spiritual connectedenss with other alcoholics needing help and giving help and with the wider world. The spirituality of AA is exemplified in helping others, it creates a feeling of wholeness and connectedness with others. Most active ingredients accounting for AA’s benefit are social in nature, such as attending meetings, and the 12 steps mention “we” 6 times but not “I” once. Millions of lives have been saved not to mention the lasting benefits it has brought to families, and societies once harmed by alcoholism.

• Although social support is key to early engagement in the Twelve-Step membership, over time, spiritual issues emerge as increasingly important and helping others achieve recovery is at the heart of this.
• The spiritual malady, however, can be seen as an inward unmanageability.
• Hence his first day of sobriety is taken as the first day of AA, although the AA organisation as we know it today took longer to come in to being.

We would use drugs and alcohol to deal with these issues. For a while, that seemed to work for us but once we stopped using substances the discontentedness came back to the surface in sobriety. 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. Anyone can be spiritually spiritual malady aa maladapted, but as an alcoholic, we use alcohol to deal with having a spiritual malady. Many people say that alcoholics have a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. I want to make clear to members that these thoughts are not definitive treatise on the subjects. Just an attempt to stimulate thought or discussion and provide information based on my study and experience.

Viewing Jewish practices as a program of healing, renewal, and change inherently assumes that human beings are imperfect, pained, and broken. Moreover, it assumes that we need help in the form of practices, community, and guidance. Again, this may seem like obvious and simple wisdom, however, there is a monumental difference between giving it lip service and truly and deeply believing in it. These illustrate how the 12 step programme can help with an emotion dysregulation disorder. If we start by trying to recover from alcoholism and addiction and find we still have other issues then Sober Home obviously address these with outside professional and specialist help. For example, one variable I believe is slightly different in alcoholism to other affective disorders is distress based impulsivity which leads to maladaptive decision making, it leads to always wanting more of that…that anything. In fact our first “spiritual” wakening was probably the result of drinking as it transformed how we felt about ourselves and the world in which we lived. In fact, I felt “more me” when I drank, it was like I escaped a restrictive sense of self to be a more expansive, people loving self.