We often take them to grave sooner rather than later unless we decide to be open and share our secrets with another person. Shameful secrets can fester in the dark recesses of our minds and inflame our hearts with recrimination and resentment. Who has been where you have been, felt how you have felt. 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. Today this would be termed “despite negative consequences”.

• 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.
• In sobriety, it is so important to maintain consciouscontact with a higher powerand count our blessings.
• That will be lifted if you correctly follow the twelve steps in the book.
• If we practice virtues instead of defects then the brain changes for the better and we recover quicker.

In AA, one of the main goals is to become sober and stay sober. To do this, members must rely on their support system which includes other members, sponsors, and meetings. When people become too self-reliant, they often start to think that they don’t need AA anymore.

The Spiritual Malady: A Hole in the Soul

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. 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.

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. I had a connection with the world I could not generate myself, when sober.

Why is it so dangerous to be self-reliant when suffering from an addiction?

The website does not provide medical or psychological advice and the information contained on the website is not intended to be a substitute for, or to be relied upon, as medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. We are not directing any individuals to specific treatment modalities or treatment providers. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or psychological condition. 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.

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. The most beautiful thing about me most days is the fruits of my recovery. I relate to my fellow human beings when I am not in fear or shame. 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. When things had died down and calm restored I spent the evening not in my fear or shame but in empathy and compassion. For example, this family have just moved into my neighbourhood, they seem wild and out of control.

What Do We Mean by Recovered?

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, spiritual malady 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.

I was working with someone last year and we had a disagreement and this guy said to me “I am upset” and “You have hurt my feelings” I was taken aback. This guy was an Olympic champion at expressing how he feels compared to me. I never say I am upset because it also seems to be an undifferentiated emotion that I have trouble accessing, mentalising and expressing. In fact I think this pattern of interlinked negative emotions occurs simply because of inability to identify, label and share the simple fact that I have been upset by what someone has said or acted towards me. My step 4 and then 5 showed me that I did not have the natural ability to deal with my negative emotions. Hence when I came into recovery I had hundreds and hundreds of resentments swirling around my mind, poisoning my thoughts and sending constant emotional daggers into my heart.