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We experience an obsession when we are trying to stay abstinent and are overpowered by thoughts of using. People who love addicts experience obsession in their relationships when they feel the desire to control other people’s moods or behavior. Obsession can take a variety of forms.
An intrusive obsession is a thought of using that seems to enter our minds from out of nowhere. When we are hit by an intrusive obsession, we find ourselves suddenly dropping our plans and responsibilities, and pursuing the substance, behavior or person that we crave.
A reoccurring obsession is a thought of using that enters our minds over and over again throughout the day. Fighting with this thought consumes all of our energy. We try to remind ourselves of the importance of not using, of all the things we will lose if we use again, and of what always happens to us when we are on a spree, but the thought keeps coming back and seems to grow stronger over time. If we are able to hold out against the reoccurring obsession, we become exhausted and depressed. We are easily irritated and find that normal daily tasks require an enormous amount of effort. Even if we don’t use, the reoccurring obsession wins by beating us down.
A third kind of obsession is called circumstantial obsession. We experience a circumstantial obsession when we are presented with the opportunity to use and cannot think of any good reason not to, even though we have everything to lose. We may give ourselves some silly excuse for using, or we may not think at all. Before we know it, we are deep into active addiction again, wondering what happened to our common sense.
A fourth and final kind of obsession is called the fundamental obsession. The fundamental obsession may not be experienced as a thought of using at all. Instead, we experience this obsession as a basic preoccupation with ourselves and how we feel. It is usually hard for us to identify the fundamental obsession at first, because it is so much a part of how we experience the world. It is like water to fish—we are so familiar with it that it is hard to see. Those of us who have been abstinent for long periods of time without a spiritual solution know the pains of fundamental obsession all too well. Life is unsatisfying. We are constantly agitated and restless, even though we may be quite depressed. We are unable to form meaningful or lasting relationships. We have a deep sense that life is treating us unfairly. People seem cruel and selfish to us; they ignore us and our needs. No matter what we try, we do not seem to be able to get any peace of mind. We are constantly trying to adjust the circumstances of our lives in an attempt to find some comfort. We may have a vague sense that something is wrong with us, but we do not know what it is.
Reoccurring and circumstantial obsession may actually get easier to cope with over time, but the fundamental obsession only gets worse. The pain of daily living builds up inside us and we have to vent it somehow. Some of us become violent; others tax the patience of our friends with complaints. Many of us find some substance or behavior that provides us with temporary relief. In other words, we switch addictions in order to cope with the pain of fundamental obsession.
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An excerpt from the latest issue of the 24 Newsletter.
Many people who start out with a full dose of the strong-program approach for their primary addiction quickly find that they are unwilling to give up other things that are incompatible with their new life on the Program. This failure at the level of rigorous honesty has clear consequences resulting in a life that drifts off the Program, whether you ever drink again or not.
And it is at this point in a recovery that the Four Absolutes become indispensable as “yardsticks” (Dr. Bob’s term) in conducting our daily affairs. And if you want to just back up to the utter baseline, it’s the First and Second Absolutes: honesty — beginning with self-honesty — and then purity.
It’s gagging on the Second Absolute that drives many people out of the Program. Maybe not violently by running out to get drunk, but more subtly, where you just want to relax and enjoy yourself — find the famous “easier, softer way.” Whether it’s a forty-five year old alcoholic in a mid-life crisis or an eighteen year old with a desire to sow some wild oats, or a guy or gal who’s been around in recovery anywhere from three to thirty years and is finding the Program increasingly boring, the problem is a difficulty with the first two Absolutes, especially the Second.
From early on, my Dad had a message for those of us in this bind that was as big as anything I have ever run across in AA. He saw from the beginning that the Twelve Steps are too good to be just for alcoholics only, or to apply to the single symptom of addictive drinking only. He was powerfully moved in passing on the good news of the Program to “carry the message” to anyone he knew who was suffering from spiritual starvation, regardless of whether they qualified for full citizenship in AA as a for-drunks-only club. And he spent his whole life trying to practice the Steps across the board in all areas of his life. The very first thing that he did after he recovered from alcoholism and drug addiction was to take the Twelve Steps and start practicing them for his food addiction and for his nicotine addiction.
He joked in his AA lead about his food addiction. It is a stage in recovery for many alcoholics. You get your appetite back and you get your mind back, and you get what they called the chuck wagon horrors — an appetite that is literally insatiable. He went from 128 to 178 lbs. and mother was referring to him as “moon.” He also had a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, and he started to drop the chain of addictions successively — first the alcohol and drugs, then the nicotine, then the addictive eating. Surprisingly, this approach of dropping the whole chain of addictions does not turn out to be the joyless trip of self-denial that you might think. Quite the contrary. This, in many cases is in fact the easiest, softest way.
Believe me, as a person who tried very hard for his first seven years in the Program to do it the other way, this proved for me to be the only way. And over the years I have seen many, many similar histories. Whatever your remaining problem areas are, you can’t fail if you just don’t quit and run away from the challenge that the phrase in Step Twelve “in all our affairs” presents. Rate of progress isn’t even that important in itself. Just don’t give up, don’t cop out, and don’t run away from the Steps. That’s all it takes. All the difficulty and arguing and self justifying is over when we give our selves entirely to this simple Program. Find out what you need for an honest practice and get it. Get that or you’ll never maintain a long-term recovery. You will never recover from the low-level depression, or anxiety, or the resentment that’s driving you while “abstinent” to a life of quiet desperation. It’s not about being a saint and not about being a star performer it is about becoming, “entirely ready” and “willing”— just as it says in Step Six.
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It all came to me one election day. It was on a warm California afternoon, and I had ridden down into the Valley of the Moon from the ranch to the little village to vote Yes and No to a host of proposed amendments to the Constitution of the State of California. Because of the warmth of the day I had had several drinks before casting my ballot, and divers drinks after casting it. Then I had ridden up through the vine-clad hills and rolling pastures of the ranch, and arrived at the farm-house in time for another drink and supper.
“How did you vote on the suffrage amendment?” Charmian asked.
“I voted for it.”
She uttered an exclamation of surprise. For, be it known, in my younger days, despite my ardent democracy, I had been opposed to woman suffrage. In my later and more tolerant years I had been unenthusiastic in my acceptance of it as an inevitable social phenomenon.
“Now just why did you vote for it?” Charmian asked.
I answered. I answered at length. I answered indignantly. The more I answered, the more indignant I became. (No; I was not drunk. The horse I had ridden was well named “The Outlaw.” I’d like to see any drunken man ride her.)
And yet–how shall I say?–I was lighted up, I was feeling “good,” I was pleasantly jingled.
“When the women get the ballot, they will vote for prohibition,” I said. “It is the wives, and sisters, and mothers, and they only, who will drive the nails into the coffin of John Barleycorn—-”
“But I thought you were a friend to John Barleycorn,” Charmian interpolated.
“I am. I was. I am not. I never am. I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most his friend. He is the king of liars. He is the frankest truthsayer. He is the august companion with whom one walks with the gods. He is also in league with the Noseless One. His way leads to truth naked, and to death. He gives clear vision, and muddy dreams. He is the enemy of life, and the teacher of wisdom beyond life’s wisdom. He is a red-handed killer, and he slays youth.”
So begins Jack London’s autobiographical novel John Barleycorn. The book relates much of London’s life, especially his struggles with alcohol. Barleycorn is well worth reading, even though it has a closer relationship to Temperance than to AA. London was one of the most popular writers of his time, and his “tell all” account of his drinking was a best seller, providing material for sermons across America.
John Barleycorn is available all over the internet. It appears on wikisource (link) and Project Gutenberg (link) as well as several other sites, but for the nicest online layout, I like the version that’s up at the Jack London Online Collection. (link)
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Philip Leon finished writing The Philosophy of Courage in December 1938, with a publication date in 1939.1 So it was not a direct influence on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was completed (basically anyway) slightly before that point, a bit earlier in 1938. But Leon puts down in print some of the most important of the Oxford Group ideas which had so greatly influenced the early A.A. people, and he also gives an illuminating philosophical discussion of a number of the basic ideas and principles which A.A. learned from the Oxford Group. As a consequence, people in the twelve step movement will find a good deal of interesting and very useful material in Leon’s book.
Leon was associated with one of the new British universities—University College, Leicester—which had been founded right after the First World War. The city of Leicester is located right in the center of England, only sixty miles or so from Oxford. Three years earlier, he had written a very successful philosophical work called The Ethics of Power or The Problem of Evil (London : George Allen & Unwin, 1935).2
NOTES ON THE INTRODUCTION
Courage
The title of the work we are looking at here—The Philosophy of Courage—is significant in itself. It places Philip Leon, in his own way, in the context of the famous existentialist philosophers and theologians of that period. Most of those figures were, like Leon, reacting to the ideas of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and his nineteenth century followers. Kantianism proclaimed that our human minds were imprisoned in a box of space and time, where we had no access to the eternal, absolute, unlimited, and unconditional divine realm which lay outside the box.
The atheistic existentialists said that all that lay outside that box of space and time was an infinite abyss of Nothingness, and that even within the world which our human minds could grasp, human existence was absurd, and the only certainty we could state was that our lives were inexorably lived towards death. The closest human beings could come to living with dignity was to face the absurdity and death with resolution and courage. Philosophers and writers like Nietzsche (1844-1900), Sartre (1905-1980), and Camus (1913-1960), along with existentialist psychiatrists like Fritz Perls (1893-1970), all saw our basic human problem as one of fear: the fear of emptiness and death, but also the fear of change and novelty, and above all the fear of being creative and being ourselves instead of trying to be what other people wanted us to be. In Fritz Perls’ metaphor, we needed to develop the courage either to spit out what we detested about our lives, or to chew it up and swallow it and digest it and make it our own.
Among the Christian existentialists of that same period, one of the most important figures was Paul Tillich, who taught with Reinhold Niebuhr (the author of the Serenity Prayer) at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1933 to 1955, that is, during the formative period when A.A. was born. One of Tillich’s most important books had the simple title the Courage to Be (1952). Existential anxiety (what Philip Leon called “the great Terror”) was what destroyed our souls, and courage was the remedy which would heal our disease.
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What follows is a sermon by an Oxford Group member named Ebenezer Macmillan. Macmillan served as Minister of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Pretoria, South Africa, and was Head of Department of the Philosophy of religion at the university there. This sermon, from his book Seeking and Finding, outlines the hidden dangers of powerful spiritual experiences. Not that these are experiences are bad, but we have, says Ebenezer, a habit of trying to hang on to moments of high spirituality, and our hanging on can cause us problems.“It is good for us to be here; let us make . . . tents.”—St. Luke ix. 33.
Of course, it was good for them to be there. It was a great experience, an experience which none of them would have missed for the World; although at the moment they did not realise how great and wonderful it was. We never do enter into the full meaning of an experience as we pass through it. It is only afterwards, in reflection, that we realise all that has happened to us, and can see it in all its bearings; not as something isolated, but as something that has relation to our former experience of life and of God. “When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion we were like them that dream.” It was only as they reflected on the experience that the full meaning of it broke upon them. “Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing.” It was then they realised the great things the Lord had done for them.
So here, when the disciples were passing through this great experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, they were like them that dream. We read that they were heavy with sleep. They were dull and insensitive to spiritual reality. They were not seeing things clearly. And it was only when they were fully awake that they saw the glory that was Jesus. It was a supernatural experience, an extraordinary manifestation of the presence and power of God, an experience of the highest spiritual exaltation. Even Jesus had never had such an experience. The disciples were only on the fringe of it, and saw at most only reflections of the glory that shone round about them, yet even they knew that something tremendously great and real was happening, something thrillingly and unforgettably wonderful. The heavens were opened; they had a glimpse into the unseen glory of the spirit world.
There was no doubt at all about the greatness of the experience. It was more than human flesh could stand for long. The intense nature of it may be gathered from the fact that they could not speak about it afterwards to anyone. It was so absorbing in its reality that while they were passing through it nothing else seemed real but it. The outside world, with its troubles and tragedies, was so remote that for the time being it was forgotten. This is the first element of danger that attaches to a great mystical experience. We are apt to lose touch with the world of actual fact, the world of human relationships, domestic and social responsibilities. “It is good for us to be here: let us make tents.” It was as if he said, “Let us camp out on this experience and settle down here. There is a fine prospect; it is a Delectable Mountain, peaceful and quiet, far from the madding crowd. We can do some quiet thinking here, undisturbed by this lunatic or that leper or those blind and maimed folk bursting in upon us.” “Let us make tents.” Of course, Peter did not know what he was saying. “He wist not what he said.” But it is often in those unguarded moments, when we do not know what we are saying, that we say the very things that are most characteristic of us. Peter thought he wanted to settle down on the mountaintop, though I suppose he would have been the first to complain of the dull isolation of the place if his wish had been realised.
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The following is my story as it was published in the collection Point of Return, edited by Andrew Martin of Serene Center. The book is a collection of recovery stories that each answer the same question: What was the one thing most important to your recovery? (link)
At the time of my spiritual awakening I was six months dry in a little room above a drugstore in the hills of Western Maine. I spent those days wandering the streets in solitude, talking to myself. I worked in a little shack behind a gas station where I counted the empty cans that people brought in for redemption. The customers that approached my shack would hear a lively conversation going on within. Then they’d find me in there, wild-eyed and alone.
Six months dry wasn’t much fun. It was like having an itch in my head I couldn’t scratch, and that itch gave me weird ideas. (more…)
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The fourth step suggests that we take a “moral inventory” of ourselves, which is generally understood to mean that stepworkers must look carefully at their lives and report back honestly about what they see. There is, however, no clear agreement in the 12 step fellowships about exactly how one should look at oneself or exactly what stepworkers should look for while they are at it.
As with most things in the recovery culture, where there is no clear agreement, there is instead a wide variety of opinions, and the newcomer, looking into the steps for the first time, is confronted with what can feel like an overwhelming number of options. One potential sponsor says the newcomer must write out their life story; another potential sponsor says she must search her heart for selfishness; still another says the only genuine forth step is one that includes strengths as well as weaknesses.
This choice is not one to be taken lightly, either, for each different style of inventory makes different assumptions about the nature of the stepworkers’ troubles and can influence what they will learn about themselves in the process. Our choice of fourth step will determine how we view our selves, our problems, and what we need to help us recover.
Because this choice is important and not always easy, it might be helpful to look at a few of the styles of inventory. In this article we’ll look at four types: the Four Absolutes, Big Book inventory, the inventory presented in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and the inventory presented in a fourth-step guide published by Hazelden. Although these are not the only styles of inventory available, these four will give us some insight into various trends at work in the recovery culture. Hopefully, our survey of these four will at least give the newcomer some idea of the direction they might like to take in step four.
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From the personal files of Tom Powers Sr., the transcript of a talk given by AA co-founder Bill W., in 1947, in which he paid tribute to Dr. Tom, a man who recovered from both alcohol and drug addiction in Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Tom brought AA to North Carolina in 1939 and Bill called his story “one of the greatest ever to come out of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Here’s how Tom Powers Sr. recalled the background —
Dr. Tom M. joined AA in 1939. He was a physician. He was an alcoholic. And he was a narcotics addict — hooked on morphine for twelve years. He read the AA Big Book while he was a patient at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky.
Impressed by the Twelve Steps, and hopeful for the possibility of a new life, Dr. Tom contacted the AA central service office in New York by mail. After his release from the hospital in Lexington, Dr. Tom returned to his home in Shelby, North Carolina, and started an AA group.
In the beginning, his contact with other AAs consisted of letters back and forth from the AA central office. But he stayed sober and clean; he never drank or took drugs again.
Bill Wilson called Dr. Tom’s story “one of the greatest ever to come out of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Bill told part of Dr. Tom’s story at a large AA meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, in September of 1947. Here’s what Bill said:
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Finally I put the question to him. I said, “Ebby, you say you don’t want to drink, you are not drinking today. What does this mean?”
He said, “Well, I have got religion.”
I said, “Well, what brand is it?”
Here’s an old gem that’s worth a read. In 1969, the US Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare’s Special Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Narcotics interviewed Bill Wilson during one of its hearings. The transcripts of that hearing have been floating around the net for some time now.
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Consider the following an early prototype for todays 4th step moral inventory. In this article, the Reverend Charles Finney (wiki) explains that in order to create the circumstances necessary for a renewal of religious feeling and spiritual experiences, believers must first look at their own spiritual lives and take stock. The questions Finney poses bear a striking resemblance to those found in many modern guides to the fourth step.
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