The Obsessive Nature of Addiction

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. When the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was written and published in 1939, the times and language of those times was incredibly different than modern times.

These are all positive things that can help you on your journey to recovery, regardless of your beliefs. Whenever you find yourself feeling irritable discontent bored with your life or depressed it is likely that you may have skipped meditation or prayer. In these situations, I feel further from God than normal and then I wonder who moved me or God and the answer is always me. It is strange paradox, the more you focus on helping others, the more you discoverhow much you matter. Without a connection to a higher power, it can get quite ugly in sobriety. We will try to fill this god-sized hole with anything we can.

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The motivation that drove most of these positive outcomes, however, was typically relief from their low self-esteem or otherwise painful thinking. Once turning to substances many of these people struggle to maintain the same focus on the other priorities they had. As an alcoholic I have found I needed to grow up mentally and emotionally and I agree with the idea of emotional dysfunctionality which I believe is caused, probably, by past trauma or attachment issues.

• The struggle for anyone with a substance use disorder is that the focus, outside of treatment and 12-Step meetings, is typically on the substance.
• A spiritual malady can manifest itself in many different ways.
• The motivation that drove most of these positive outcomes, however, was typically relief from their low self-esteem or otherwise painful thinking.
• This sin disease had very real psychological, emotional and physical and physiological effect on the mind and body.

These emotion processing deficits also appear to make us more impulsive, and to choose lesser short term gain over greater long term gain in decision making. It can lead to a distress feeling state that can make us fear based, perfectionist, have catastrophic thoughts, intolerance of uncertainty, low frustration and distress tolerance, be reactionary, moody, and immature in our emotional responding. It simply means we are spiritually blocked off from the Power of God, which enables us to remain sober, happy, joyous, and free. I would suggest in relation to the issue of co-morbidities that one try to deal with these alcoholism related issues and then see if there are any other to deal with afterwards. For me, as someone who has been treated for anxiety and depression prior to recovery the 12 steps appear to have treated these as emotional consequences of my underlying condition of emotion dysregulation which I call alcoholism. This mesh of negative emotions can link up fairly instantaneously I find.

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In other words, he became dependent on others, on external means for approval and elevating his self esteem. Greater than the mind is reason; and greater than reason is He – the spirit in man and in all. What Power is it that drives a man to act sinfully, even unwillingly, as if powerlessly.

• Keep in mind that this is separate from the physical craving.
• It is through the daily cleansing of perception through the process of the steps and the sharing with another addict that the addict is able to return to living as an integrated part of the whole of life.
• But when it comes to alcohol and drugs, there is no will power.
• I was working with someone last year and we had a disagreement and this guy said to me “I am upset” and “You have hurt my feelings” I was taken aback.
• Alcoholics and children of alcoholics have a tendency to avoid emotions in fact and to use emotional reasoning when arguing a point.

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. I do not believe I have the same spiritual malady as other normal people such as those people who were in the Oxford Group. Keep in mind that this is separate from the physical craving. Even after someone is completely detoxed and has all alcohol or drugs removed from their body, they will still obsess about drinking or using.

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I dealt with them externally via spiritual malady behaviours, not internally via emotion processing. In order to illustrate how I believe my spiritual malady is the consequence of my emotional disorder, called alcoholism/addiction first let’s go back to where this idea of spiritual malady came from. I want to make clear to members that these thoughts are not definitive treatise on the subjects.

My https://ecosoberhouse.com/ 4 showed me this is the unhealthy fruit of my greed, gluttony, my lust, my sloth. Sometimes the shame persists for some time and I try to relieve it by behavioral addictions, too much shopping, too much eating, too much objectification of the opposite sex. The years of recovery reveal many different things, some of them not so palatable. Anger responses are modeled and learned in some families. The anger response is more comfortable than feeling the shame for some individuals.