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If you are seeking drug and alcohol related addiction rehab for yourself or a loved one, the YourFirstStep.org hotline is a confidential and convenient solution. It’s also important to remember that your understanding of a Higher Power can change and evolve over time. As you grow in your sobriety and learn more about yourself, you may find that your concept of a Higher Power changes as well. The most important thing is that you keep an open mind and heart as you continue on your sobriety journey.
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 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 sound, they are on a higher plane as the Big Book tells me. We can not rely on our thoughts and feelings or, in other words, our Self Will. Our self will has become impaired and is no longer in the service of our successful survival.
The message of recovery is usually from someone who has recovered from alcoholism, this is a power greater than yourself as he/she has used certain tools to recover and this is now being passed on to you, as they were passed onto him or her. The solution to your alcoholism is the same as the solution to their alcoholism. The original power greater than himself, as for millions of alcoholics over the last 80 years (and for some it stays this way) is another alcoholic. One recovering alcoholic or a group of recovering alcoholics is a power greater than oneself.
malady. noun. mal·a·dy ˈmal-əd-ē plural maladies. : a disease or disorder of the body or mind : ailment.
Although alcoholism isn’t my fault, how I respond to the disease and take charge of my recovery is my responsibility. The spiritual malady is the sickness of our soul, developed over time and can only be truly overcome by looking at ourselves first. It is very difficult for me to come to terms with my spiritual illness because of my great pride, disguised by my material successes and my intellectual power. Intelligence is not incompatible with humility, provided I place humility first. To seek prestige and wealth is the ultimate goal for many in the modern world.
In other words, I had not processed these episodes emotionally and embedded these events in my long term memory like healthy more emotionally mature people do. I can get out of the distress of wanting/needing stuff by asking God to remove those negative emotions which block me off from Him. I do not necessarily have to react to my feelings of negativity about myself, someone else does not need to experience the consequence of my resentments. This allows me to do a quick inventory of my negative emotions and a prayer to God to have them removed. My experience is that they are always removed and that we are immediately restored to sanity.
The great psychiatrist Carl Jung called this a ‘low level thirst for wholeness – for union with God’. In our addictions, we tried to quench our soul-thirst with fleeting pleasures. The pursuit of them dominated our lives, destroyed relationships, and caused greater desperation than we ever thought possible. We became selfish and self-seeking, ever thirsting for more, and this lust warped us on every level.
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. Alcoholics and children of alcoholics have a tendency to avoid emotions (use avoidant coping strategies) in fact and to use emotional reasoning when arguing a point.
While I could go on forever on the differences between these two ideas, I’ll keep it as simple as possible. If you’re struggling to find a Higher Power in AA, know that you’re not alone. There are many people who have been in your shoes and have found creative ways to work around this issue. Remember to keep an open mind and heart, and eventually, you will find something (or someone) who can serve as your own personal higher power.
Restlessness, irritability, and discontentment are symptomatic of the spiritual illness. The spiritual illness that we faced acted as a catalyst for our addiction, and every attempt to self-medicate our spiritual malady pushed us deeper and deeper into the spiritual malady disease. Many men and women in AA describe certain feelings they had before picking up a drink or drug. Many of our previous attempts to achieve sobriety failed because we did not address anything other than the physical and mental aspects of addiction.
But we were never satisfied, because but the living presence of God can quench our parched souls. Once we are aware of these feelings, we can begin the real work on ourselves. It is not easy to do so but recognizing this aspect of alcoholism forces us to take an honest look in the mirror at our behaviors and attitudes toward life and other people. We https://ecosoberhouse.com/ become so fixated on it that almost everything we do leads us to think about getting intoxicated. The mind and alcoholism are so cunning, baffling, and powerful that we often cannot fathom how we ended up intoxicated when relying on our strong willpower to stay sober. Unlike normal people (whatever that means) alcoholics are unsettled to the core.