We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble? If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink.

Because it has worked to change the lives of most of us who work here. The 12-Step program and its spiritual approach practically built Jaywalker Lodge.

Hope Is Like A Road In The Country

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. What we used once to regulate negative emotions and a sense of self has eventually come to regulate our emotions to such an extent that any distress leads to the compulsive response of drinking. Alcoholics had become a compulsive disorder to relief distress not to induce pleasure. That is not to say that normal people cannot be full of sin – a cursory look around the work and it’s events will soon confirm this is the case. What I am saying is that they do not have the emotion dysregulation or fear based responding that I seem to have which often prompts “sin”.

• It is not uncommon for addicted people to lie, cheat, steal, or beg so we can get high or drunk.
• At Alta Loma, that’s our mission — to provide each individual with optimum care for the wellbeing they deserve.
• It is the solution, but it only works as long as the individual is willing to engage in it.
• AA may have started within the Oxford Group but has gradually moved away from their tenets.
• I grew up in a family that did not express emotions like the ones I had mentioned.

I do not believe I have the same spiritual malady as other normal people such as those people who were in the Oxford Group. 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. I share my feelings of shame with those who know what that feels like. When I am in fear and shame the same pattern of negative reactions entrap my heart in its’ poisonous grip and I react in a way I would not choose to, if more reasonable.

Addiction – It is More Than Physical Dependence

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. As Bill Wilson noted, we seem to get distressed when we don’t get what we want or feel people or trying to take away what we have. You will find that spiritual health will bring you peace, joy, balance, a sense of belonging, and a desire to continue to stay sober. It is not uncommon for addicted people to lie, cheat, steal, or beg so we can get high or drunk. We often lose any sense of connection to a Higher Power and our fellow man.

• It is emotionally healthy to prioritise problems.
• In what is known as The Doctors Opinion, which is found in the “Big Book”, Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Silkworth makes a number of observations in his study of alcoholics.
• The strain of being overwhelmed is too much for the human mind and so it and the body begin to show the stress.
• You can revisit the spirituality of your childhood or you can create a new understanding of what it means in your life.
• I relate to my fellow human beings when I am not in fear or shame.

Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future.

About Soberocity

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. My dismissiveness and my arrogance are parts of defence mechanism against rejection, they guard my inherent sense of shame. I am full of shame, spiritual malady more so than fear, although these two overlap. I have not been taught as a child or since to simply say I am upset. I have resentments because they are a true sign of emotion dysfunction. We are far from being Saints but have a solution Saints would approve and achieve a kind of transient sanctity in this 12 step solution of letting go and letting God.

I related and all my negative emotions retreated to source like a evening tide on a beach. I respond to feelings of humiliation by humiliating you, I react to my chronic shame https://ecosoberhouse.com/ by attempting to created shame in you. When I was doing my step four inventory as part of my 12 step programme of recovery I did it pretty much as suggested in the Big Book.

Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, First Edition.

To conclude, it’s not my body — my allergic reaction to alcohol — that’s going to take me back to drinking. It’s really not my mind — the mental obsession — that is the underlying root of what will take me back to drinking. It’s the “spiritual malady”, as manifested by my EGO (selfishness-self-centeredness), that can eventually lead me back to drinking or sometimes even suicide. “‌ost alcoholics … have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically non-existent” . In active addiction, when an addict who is trying to control or cease using attempts to choose to abstain, but fails, he chooses against his own will. Often, when an abstinent addict relapses, the relapse is preceded by a cognitive dysfunction that selectively disables his willpower in relation to his substance.

I end, however, with some words from a doctor who seems to be suggesting that AA works because it makes us more emotionally healthy. For me she is saying how AA treats emotional illness. Since AA began, I’ve taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually”. For me this maladjustment to life is not exactly the same as the spiritual disease mentioned in the Oxford Group pamphlet.