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The reason we drink is because we can’t stand living sober. When I’m filled with self, there’s nothing but suffering. Open meetings are available to anyone interested in Alcoholics Anonymous’ program of recovery from alcoholism. Nonalcoholics may attend open meetings as observers. The “unmanagability” that the founders are referring to is what is commonly called the “spiritual malady.” This is the third piece of our illness of alcoholism, and gets overlooked quite frequently. The concept of giving without strings was hard to understand when I first came into the program. I was suspicious when others wanted to help me.
They are a simple, mechanical process that creates a spiritual experience. Just like the wardrobe, the spiritual experience is impossible to avoid when you follow the ‘precise, specific, clear-cut directions’. This is why it is not necessary to hold any beliefs in God. What you believe (or don’t) is not relevant to the outcome. In this context ‘God’s will’ is that you self-reflect through inventory and make amends where we have caused harm – .
Big Book ASL – Foreword to Third Edition
Many of us were trying to stay sober just by going to meetings. Others had already been through the steps.
The reality of untreated alcoholism doesn’t lie. Like me, quite a large number of them we on medication. We were just not drinking and going to meetings. After coming into the fellowship in 1984, I relapsed regularly for over a decade. By the time I attended the BB study, I managed to not drink for twelve years. I never really took the program seriously. Whenever things got tough, I drank again.
The Mind is also Abnormal
For me this is saying that out of my emotion dysregulation “stem all forms of spiritual disease”. I contend that alcoholism is an emotional disorder which results in chemical dependency on the substance of alcohol. However in order to treat it we have to first contend with the symptomatic manifestation of this disorder, chronic alcohol use, as it is the most life threatening aspect spiritual malady of this disorder when we present our selves at AA. One can see how this concept of sin disease or in other words spiritual malady could be and was applied to early AA and incorporated into the Big Book of AA. I sin so naturally, effortlessly and usually without even trying. I believe my so-called defects of character are linked to my underlying emotional disorder of alcoholism.
It is a miserable, exhausting, anxiety-ridden way to live and is one of the primary blocks to accessing our true power. As someone who has found recovery through the program almost twenty years ago because there were simply no other options available, I am both a beneficiary and a proponent to be sure.
Kip C. giving an emotional and moving talk at an AA Meeting
Do you understand that those sentences (referring to selfishness and self-centeredness and needing God’s help to rid that from me) are tied to a glass of whisky? Is there anything you’ve ever been able to do to get rid of your selfishness? And that is what I’m going to die from – drunk or sober. Because that isn’t how the Universe works, that’s why.
- Does this mean we are going to get drunk.
- Dismissing others like us for having what we have and acting as we do is like a form of self loathing.
- No one is perfect at first when attempting to live a spiritual life, especially when we are coming back from a long spiritual hiatus.
- We discover alcohol or something else…and the stuff quiets the voices, provides the relief we’ve never been able to find in any other way.
- I believe my so-called defects of character are linked to my underlying emotional disorder of alcoholism.
- I wish more folks knew that, and appreciated it.
Alcoholics Anonymous, also known as the “Big Book,” presents the A.A. First published in 1939, its purpose was to show other alcoholics how the first 100 people of A.A. Now translated into over 70 languages, it is still considered A.A.’s basic text. Step 1 in the AA programme is “ We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable”. It is emotionally healthy to surrender and accept things over which we have no control. AA proposes living “ One Day at a Time”. It is emotionally healthy to live in the day … in the here and now.