The Missing Piece: The Spiritual Malady Residential Recovery Program & Addiction Transitional Sober Living Home

Families where coercive and humiliating methods of discipline are used develop children who are shame prone. Behavior become driven by defenses that function to keep from feeling bad. Reality becomes distorted to further protect the self from poor self esteem. The transfer of blame to someone else is an indicator of internal shame. My past constantly assailed me emotionally, randomly attacking my mind. I realised when doing my step 4 that that I had not previously been able to leave various supposed slights and abuses from my past in the past because I did not have the emotional what is a spiritual malady maturity to look at these episodes reasonably and objectively. My emotions became wedded in time to being undifferentiated arousal states that prompted me to seek an external way to deal with these troubling emotional/arousal states. For example there is an undercurrent in fear of things being taken away, of it being because we are not good enough, deserving enough, have failed in some way, which are shame based reactions. One of my own difficulties is realising I am hungry or tired and I can often end up exhausted by over-doing stuff especially manual work around my house.

• How this works, I can’t say for certain but it does work and very often at some point during working the Steps, the addict or alcoholic will notice that they have had a complete shift in the way they view life.
• The basic tenet of this, is that it takes one alcoholic to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety.
• A decade of therapy also showed Bill Wilson he has two default settings in his relationship to other human beings – he either tried to dominate them or he became dependent on them for his sense of self and emotional well being.
• There is much speculation and debate over the etiology of addiction.

Not to tell the bottom of our brains to fight back or run or freeze. 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. 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. For me he was seeing the root of this spiritual malady, this emotional disease. I would add to this that I also get distress via fears of rejection from others, I suffer from fear based shame to a chronic extent. Desire obviously runs contrary to the idea of being in God’s will, in fact it is being in Self Will that seems to create distress in many people with addictive behaviours. The three must be addressed to find healing, recovery, and to live life sober. Since AA began, I’ve taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually”. Here we have an abnormal reaction to alcohol and for some alcoholics a maladjustment to life.

The Mind is also Abnormal

It is emotionally healthy to surrender and accept things over which we have no control. For many recovering alcoholics this may be another unpalatable truth, that they have issues with emotional responding, with being emotionally mature. If further validation is required I suggest a frank conversation with a loved one, wife, husband, child, parent, etc. I contend that alcoholism is an emotional disorder which results in chemical dependency on the substance of alcohol. However in order to treat it we have to first contend with the symptomatic manifestation of this disorder, chronic alcohol use, as it is the most life threatening aspect of this disorder when we present our selves at AA. For me this section is saying our emotion dysregulation leads to feelings of being “restless, irritable and discontented” which prompt a return to drinking. 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. So we have issues with emotions and somatic/body feeling states.

If we start by trying to recover from alcoholism and addiction and find we still have other issues then obviously address these with outside professional and specialist help. Selfishness and self -centeredness is the root of my trouble. My troubles what is a spiritual malady are of my own making and arise out my living a life run on self-will. I must be God centered instead of self centered and God directed rather than self directed . The specific directions in the first 102 pages of the book Alcoholic Anonymous.

What is a spiritual malady?

The basic tenet of this, is that it takes one alcoholic to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. This has been borne out in millions of cases around the world. Today this would be termed “despite negative consequences”. There are no individualistic programs or people simply doing their own thing, it is a collective program of action. Now at least I can see how I react and can take steps to deal with it.

Learn why honesty is a critical characteristic in sobriety and recovery. Ever wonder what a chronic relapser is and how they can affect your family? We should be able to just put the plug in the jug and move on with our lives. They oversimplify our problem and solution and can send the wrong information. Basically, the alcoholic, once they start they cannot control the amount they take. Greater than the mind is reason; and greater than reason is He – the spirit in man and in all.

It affects every aspect of our lives and must be overcome if we wish to fix ourselves mentally and physically. Explains, “If, when you honestly want to, you find that you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably an alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” We embark upon a journey of recovery that allows us to develop a deep spiritual connection. Through our spiritual connection, we finally are given the power to overcome the disease and live happy, joyous, and free lives in sobriety. Once physical abstinence is attained, the Sober House addict will cultivate a lifestyle of recovery through the insights revealed through the 12 Steps. The steps that particularly bring awareness to concrete examples of the spiritual malady of addiction are discovered in Steps 4 and 5. These steps outline the emotional patterns which have a tendency to the block the ‘sunlight of the spirit’. As the steps are taken, it may be seen that resentments function to create separation from the people that the addict loves and the whole of life. It is through emotions and thoughts about them that the addict creates isolation from their relationships. This isolation sets the stage for return to emotional escapism through addiction.

When this occurs, individuals are experiencing what experts refer to as a co-occurring disorder. It is treated through dual diagnosis, which looks to address both the physical addiction and mental health issues affecting the individual. As addicts we can become so focused on the outward form our addiction takes – whether that booze, drugs, sex, overeating, etc. – that we overlook its deep roots at the core of our being. This spiritual malady is the restless spirit, the soul sickness that if left untreated will begin to ooze symptoms of emotional insecurity worry, anger, self-pity, and depression, even if we have been sober for years. One of the key features of addiction is the loss of control. No one wakes up one day and says, “I want to be an addict” – that’s absurd.

Of Alcoholics Anonymous, “we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.” When men and women look inwardly, the spiritual component of the disease becomes apparent. 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 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. Many of us felt that there was something wrong with us or something missing—in short, we felt different from other people. 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.

All of my academic research in the last 6 years has explored the possibility that this “maladjustment to life” is more than a spiritual malady, i.e. it is not simply the consequence of Sin but the result of abnormal responding, emotionally to life. Alcoholics and children of alcoholics have a tendency to avoid emotions in fact and to use emotional reasoning when arguing a point. The magic of the the steps is that they seem to reveal the patterns of behaviour that our actions have prompted over the course of our lives. It helps us see ourselves and our condition of alcoholism and how it effects us and others. In sobriety, it is so important to maintain conscious contact with a higher power and count our blessings. Being spiritually maladapted can come from a lack of gratitude.

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We have found that these problems no longer exist for us when we begin living by spiritual principles and improving our conscious contact with our higher power. There are many men and women who felt the same way and have been able to overcome the malady by maintaining spiritual fitness and practicing the principles of AA in all of their affairs. The 12-Steps focus on addressing and fixing the spiritual problems that led us into our addiction, and by doing so, we find that they allow us to positively change our mental and physical issues. For many struggling with alcohol use disorder or alcohol addiction, the only way to overcome these feelings is to embark upon a spiritual program of action fearlessly. At Oceanfront Recovery, our team of addiction treatment professionals understands how to approach alcohol addiction as the chronic disease it is. We offer extensive detox and therapies to help individuals address the physical aspects of the disease as well as the psychological and spiritual aspects. It is important that when we embark upon this quest to alleviate our spiritual malady that we are not too harsh on ourselves.

This spiritual malady, or spiritual disconnection, is the driving force behind our addiction and self-destructive behaviors. Without addressing this spiritual malady, we have absolutely no hope for intrinsic change or recovery. It is this notion that the fellowship of AA was founded upon, and how millions of recovered alcoholics equate their success in overcoming a seemingly hopeless situation. The only solution to a spiritual malady is a spiritual awakening. Only once we open the spiritual channels and begin to accept a Higher Power into our lives can we hope to find a solution to our alcoholic condition. Jaywalker Lodge drug and alcohol treatment center offering a 12-step rehab immersion program in Colorado, for motivated men. Through education, individual and group therapy, mountain expeditions and daily 12-step meetings, our addiction recovery clients engage in a vital spiritual experience which is indispensable to personal growth and long-term sobriety. For most diseases that exist, there are multiple treatment options. There are very few monopolies on methodology when it comes to getting well, no matter what ails you.

I also think the issues are complicate because alcoholism have some many similarities to GAD, MDD, OCD, and so on. Unhappiness to us and others, discontent, and, frequently, mental and bodily ill health are the direct results of Sin. Part of the problem may lie in not being specific enough about what alcoholism is. Reach out to our compassionate team to begin your recovery journey.

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. Almost disappointingly I found some of my sins were quite tame when compared to other people I have spoken to in recovery. Referred to in several of the twelve steps is therefore unrelated to religion; it refers to the potentially healing power inherent in interpersonal relationships based on reciprocity and equality. 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. I related and all my negative emotions retreated to source like a evening tide on a beach. I am not only fearful I have reacted to their arrival via shame based defence mechanisms and reactions. I am shamed and disgusted that my neighourhood has come to this.

The spiritual principles of AA and the 12 steps in particular were drawn from the 4 absolutes of the Oxford group, via initially the 6 steps and the idea of a spiritual malady is also borrowed from the Oxford group. By sin I mean negative emotions that cause distress to me and others. Especially being alcoholic more often than not, it is our nature to have that “my way or the highway” mentality. Intellectually, believing in something we cannot physically see or a scientifically proven exists is a hard pill to swallow, those intellectual individuals shut the idea out completely. These core beliefs make it harder for us to connect with a god of our understanding. I am aware that there are many paths to recovery- my path has been the 12-Steps. While this may not be for everybody, the principles contained within the steps and the program are applicable and useful to anyone seeking sobriety and recovery. When I accepted that the ‘spiritual malady’ was about my beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, I came to see that many of my own beliefs and thoughts on this subject were contributing to my disease. I had many old ideas and prejudices that had to be examined and released. It is loaded with old ideas and religiosity, tainted by overuse, abuse, and centuries of bad press.

One can see how this concept of sin disease or in other words spiritual malady could be and was applied to early AA and incorporated into the Big Book of AA. My inventory of steps 4/5 showed me that my long lists of resentments were mainly the product of emotional immaturity and responding in an immature manner to not getting my way. William James wrote the book The Variety of Religious Experiences in 1902 and it is a book that is actually talked about in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. In his book, James describes four qualities of a religious or spiritual experiences that are shared by most people who experience one. The spiritual malady of addiction is essentially the fact that at some point in the addict’s life, they managed to cut themselves off from existence and any notion of spirituality. This does not mean that they removed themselves from religion, although the two can be synonymous, but it simply means that within their soul or the core of their being, they suffer from a profound loneliness. The reason for this is because addiction is at its core a spiritual malady.