Learn What Spiritual Malady Is And The Role It Plays In Your Recovery

You’re not alone – there are plenty of people in AA who don’t believe in God, or who have trouble with the concept of a higher power. 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. Once the substances are taken away we feel lost. We will try to fill this god-sized hole with anything we can. Spiritually, we have a difficult time connecting to a higher power.

The important thing is that you stay committed to your sobriety and continue working the program – eventually, everything else will fall into place. As we work towards this state of selflessness we find that we are slowly being relieved of the hopeless alcoholic state we once thought we were doomed to be in forever. It is constant maintenance of being spiritually connected with a god of your understanding. If we do not get spiritually connected with meditation or prayer with a power greater than us it will bring us closer and closer to that drink or drug.

The 12 Steps of AA: A Roadmap to Recovery and Renewal

• I wanted to be able to have some integrity but I was not who I wanted to be.
• He will presently try the old game again, for he isn’t happy about his sobriety.
• It is the emptiness we feel on such a deep level that we turn to self-medication in order to alleviate the sadness and despair that go hand in hand with.
• Without addressing this spiritual malady, we have absolutely no hope for intrinsic change or recovery.

You are merely instructed to be open to the idea that you are not the end all be all, that there exists out in the universe something that is greater or more powerful than yourself. Whatever you designate that power to be is up to you. However, you choose to interact with that higher power is also up to you. Whether you seek to engage in formal prayer, informal mental conversations, or merely by doing good and putting positive energy into the universe, there is no right or wrong way to pray to your higher power. Once you open up to this idea and implement that spiritual connection, you will experience your long-awaited spiritual awakening, the answer to that pesky spiritual malady we suffer from as alcoholics. Our recovery from alcoholism through the Steps must be a three-fold process.

Big Book ASL – Appendix II – Spiritual Experience

The 164 and More book is sold on this website at the Publisher List Price of $20.00 plus postage. The book may also be sold by Intergroup/Central Offices or recovery book stores at List Price  or slightly higher. But beware of others that sell the book marked up 400% or more. For the same money, you could buy 4 books and use 3 as sponsee gifts. Alcoholism didn’t need David to drink in order to continue trying to kill him, and in the end…it succeeded. In the end, instead of self abandoned…David abandoned hope…and discovered a bitter end.

A Spiritual Remedy for a Spiritual Condition

For me, the circle and triangle represents the Alcoholics Anonymous solution to alcoholism. It is a perfect overview of our three-part answer (unity, recovery, and service) to our three-part disease (physical, mental and spiritual). I also think that it’s important to note that there is a BIG differencebetween “the fellowship” and “the Program.” Both are important.

For a while, that seemed to spiritual malady aa big book work for us but once we stopped using substances the discontentedness came back to the surface in sobriety. A spiritual malady can manifest itself in many different ways. For some, it may manifest as a feeling of being disconnected from others or as a sense of emptiness. For others, it may manifest as anger, anxiety, or depression. The bottom line, a true alcoholic or addict has no power to stop, avoid, or control their drinking. We begin to obsess and buy the lie because we want to feel the ease and comfort of the first drink.

If he did not work, he would surely  drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die. With us it is just  like that.” Thankfully, the “spiritual malady” is no longer a “missing piece” of Step One for me. It is a  reality of my powerlessness and unmanageability and enables me to see why I so desperately need to  seek a Power Greater than myself. And unless this malady is recognized, and a course of action (the  Twelve Steps) is taken to enable God to remove it, the root of our alcoholic illness can lie dormant and  burn us when we least expect it. Process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had  come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it.

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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. In conclusion, we find that alcoholism/addiction is not a disease but a spiritual malady. A malady that can be remedied with a simple, moral-spiritual approach, as instructed in the text of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you have found yourself or a loved one suffering from alcoholism or addiction, you are not alone!

• In the end, instead of self abandoned…David abandoned hope…and discovered a bitter end.
• We use everything and everyone, even when we stop using alcohol and drugs to cope with thesefeelings of being unsatisfied and uncomfortable in life.
• Research shows that those brain changes that make it so difficult to put down that drink can be reversed thanks to the power of neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire itself.
• When we have the first sip of a drink, or whiff of a drug, it is then controlling our bodies.

Comparison Table Between Illness and Disease

And some of us don’t develop an addiction…in attempting to meet these crying demands of our blocked spirit, we develop other malformations of behavior, and suffer in a hundred different ways. As an alcoholic, parts of my spirit are blocked off. My character, or basic nature, doesn’t work right. At its root, it is a fundamental and seemingly irresolvable insecurity…a hole that can’t ever be filled. It is an instinct run rampant, a desperate need for acceptance and love that cannot be met.

Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things hewants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a pro­ducer of confusion rather than harmony?

If you are an alcoholic, then you know you cannot just put the plug in the jug and quit. If it were as easy as not eating a peanut anymore, then you would have stopped long ago. We did exactly the same thing with our lives. First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations. Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at drug addiction treatment once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.