What is Recovery today?

Along the sober path and at various stages of my sober life, this question has had varied meanings. Asked of me just last night I was able to answer very concisely. In our basic text it states that we have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I believe that this hopeless state of mind and body is the mental obsession (the mind) and the physical compulsion (the body). It has been not only my experience but also my belief that we can recover from alcoholism, however we will always suffer from that much deeper issue the book refers to as the internal condition.


We are brought into the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous with a soul sickness, a deep and profound longing for God. However, we are unable to reach out to the spiritual nature of AA without first removing those things which stand in the way of our connection to our "power greater than ourselves", the first and most obvious of these things is Alcohol.

We remove this block by first building a life changing foundation which helps us to not take a drink a day at a time, through the process of the 12-steps we have a guaranteed spiritual experience that carries with it sufficient force to remove the obsession to drink. Coupled with that is a profound personality change that launches us into recovery.  Before long the drink problem has been removed and it is on now to those other things which stand in the way of our relationship with God, we through the 12-steps will identify these items in 4 and 5 and ask for them to be removed in the coming housecleaning steps.

It is this ongoing maintenance of our spiritual program along with the willingness to continue to grow along a spiritual path that keeps the internal condition at bay. Let's not forget that the sudden return of the internal condition as a result of a failure to grow often leads to a drink as we cannot live in that place without help.

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Posted in alcoholics anonymous, aloholics, God, life, mental obsession, soul, spiritual, spiritual malady

Part 1:The Spiritual Malady...

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves."
 page 45 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholism is a Soul Sickness and it is only fitting that the crux of the problem is where we begin our discussion. Suffering from a spiritual malady, the active alcoholic is cut off from the very thing they need in order to sustain life, the energy and grace that comes from our creator. Pride, selfishness, and self-centeredness are the very things that block us from this sunlight of the spirit.

It can be well established that we drink because we are alcoholics, we suffer from an internal condition that makes it nearly impossible to live with-in our bodies without some form of distraction, such as alcohol. However, our founders stumbled upon something that until that point had been widely ignored or overlooked by both the religious and medical fields. They found that a spiritual solution which removed those things which blocked us from God would in point of  fact treat the internal condition and in doing so allow us to live comfortably with ourselves.

Where we had once been powerless, power flowed in, we had become channels of God's power, testaments to his mercy and grace and doers of his will. All of these things remain possible as long as we are able to remain in the sunlight of the spirit and not dwell beneath the shade of doubt, pride and self.

"Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not."
page 34 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous

I was not prepared for a spiritual solution when I was brought to the fellowship, nor was I willing to immediately accept that the only hope there was for me was to admit defeat, surrender my life to God and start doing his work. However, I was told early on and have since come to understand that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that we know is designed to do primarily one thing...take a suffering alcoholic who is walking away from God and pick him up, turn he/she 180 degrees so that they now walk towards him.

Lastly I wish to say this, while it is not my place to diagnose anyone with alcoholism, I know today unequivocally that if you do not need the spiritual solution we have to offer, in other words you can stop on your own...you are not an alcoholic. If you can change your lifestyle, get a new set of friends, buy a fancy car or get slapped with enough probation and one of these things makes you stop...you are NOT one of us...

"There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it - this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish."
page 34 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous


There is it...If you have passed into the realm in which there was no return through human aid...you need God...

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Posted in acoholism, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, aloholics, fellowship, powerless, pride, self-centeredness, selfishness, soul, spiritual, spiritual malady