nspired Topic Today:
Obsession
ob·ses·sion
noun
the state of being obsessed with someone or something.
"she cared for him with a devotion bordering on obsession"
an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind.
plural noun: obsessions
"he was in the grip of an obsession he was powerless to resist"
synonyms: fixation,
ruling/consuming passion,
passion,
mania,
idée fixe,
compulsion,
preoccupation,
infatuation,
addiction,
fetish,
craze,
hobbyhorse;
phobia,
complex,
neurosis;
informala bee in one's bonnet,
hang-up, thing
"that new car has become his obsession"
I had no CLUE this stupid obsession crap would be following me into sobriety!! I truly thought that once I quit drinking that my life would just be normal. I thought that the alcohol was entirely responsible for the way I was. The same mind that told me that it was ok to drink, even though it brought me such humiliation and despair, was the same mind I would be using in sobriety-just minus the alcohol.
The more I think back to my childhood I can see where some of these obsessions began. BOYS, was a big one. It's not even cute how obsessed I was with boys. The feeling I got when I had a "crush" was totally addicting. Movies-I would get a rush in the theater when the movie was about to play...amped up with the opening credits, effects and music. Elvis-Seriously. He died when I was 1 year old but I had a huge obsession with him and his music. All of this seems quit normal-but it's not. Especially for us addicts. When we or obsessed and addicted to the feeling that comes with the obsession we are no totally enslaved by it.
Also, I noticed that all my early addictions were not based in reality. The boys, movies, elvis...the version of life in my head was out there, big time. My perception of reality and what I thought my life would turn out to be like was delusional. If people knew what was going in my head I am 100% sure I would have been committed, diagnosed as bi-polar and drugged. Thankfully they weren't giving out drugs and diagnosis like candy when I was a kid.
My views on men and politics were completly influenced by upbringing. The idea that I was somehow a victim of men, even though I was the one obsessed with them! That I was somehow "owed" something because I was am women?? Not by the content of my character, or what I did for the world, but because I am a women-that makes no sense to me now. It is NOT real. All my decisions were based on concepts I learned growing up that started with as an obsession in someones else's mind. Forming my own concepts based on their distortion of reality.
None of what was taught has anything to do with the solid grounding and becoming a well adjusted human being. It was either mom's drama and fear, or tv. No way was I able to develop properly without God, a solid foundation, structure found in the bible. I don't believe any of us do. My distorted perceptions and conceptions had to be wiped out! Being a alcoholic, and seeking help through AA. opened the door to God and structure-practical, sensible, selflessness....And it speaks to us who obsess over our obsession, worry about our worries, have feelings about our feelings....There was no way I was gonna get helped by going to church or reading the bible then because the deep ingrained conceptions and perceptions were very much rooted into the core of my being.
The doctor said: "You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you." Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.
He said to the doctor, "Is there no exception?"
"Yes," replied the doctor, "there is. Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many individuals the methods which I employed are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description." Pg 27
Ideas, emotions, and attitudes that I lived my life on had to be cast out. Dismantling of self is a painful process. In Step 4 I had to really look at my past,and how the conceptions of my childhood shaped me.
No big transformation can come unless I got honest with myself about how I was raised.
Extreme emotion, extreme passion, extreme backlash when what I am obsession blows up in my face. If I am having a Step 1 issue again, if I am hanging out over in unmanageability town, then I have to again become willing to let go of even the newest and coolest concepts I have. God gives us clarity and discernment when He gives us Him, The Holy Spirit-this allows me to identify when something is not right sooner. Before I would sit in a conception for YEARS, destroy lives based on it, lose jobs, friends, whatever because I was unwilling to believe that "Hey, maybe I'm wrong about this?" Stubbornness is another glorious defect we possess that causes us to die sooner.
List of obsessions developed in sobriety:
- God; I like the effect produced by God and like any good addict I took that to extreme
- Bug out car/bag, survivalist, survival gear-this came from not feeling "safe"-security was a threat in my home life with my boyfriend because we were "stuck" in patterns that kept us idol
- Pine cones-Ok, this isn't that big of a deal, I like making shit from them and I began to hoard them...lol
- DOG-Ok, this is huge because my obsessing with my dog Benny's "happiness" resulted in me losing him because my mind convinced me that letting him off leash so he could run in the woods with Daisy our pitbull, he was a boston terrier, even though history has shown he would run off-he always did....but the quick insane thought that somehow this time would be different cause his death and GREAT pain for Brian, Ian and I could barely get out of bed, I was in so much pain because of this! I was obsessed with my dogs happiness because it was a way to deflect from looking at myself
- Brian-His health, his mental health, his dry drunk, his relationship with God, his work, his tv habits, his everything...pour guy...it's actually good for me to see all this in a list format..DAMN! So, if I am looking at all the things Brian needs to work on, I am not looking at myself and what I need to work on-plus I become annoying to be around
- Ian-His son, same things....
- My sister-Same. I like to help people to become better people...it's not ok when they don't ask for help!! LOL! When they don't give us spiritual consent, like a sponsee does with sponsor, then you are crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed and exposing things that they aren't ready or willing to see yet. I wanted to sponsor everyone when I awoke!!! But, they didn't ask me so a resentment is the result of that
- Fixing AA-Sounds like a bit much, but that's me-much. This was way early on...good thing I found a sponsor who had same thoughts in her early sobriety and have since heard others talk about the same feelings. Ego, all the way. We can shine the light on things that should be talked about more by talking about it in our shares-teaching sponsees out of the book, going back to basics, etc...but I think we are saved by the traditions that I won't be running AA anytime soon ;)
I'm sure there is more, ask my sister...but the point is that I still "tweek" on stuff. I must shift back to reality when it becomes all consuming-but, this isn't easy because of my stubborn all knowing crap I can convince myself is real. We are NOT easy-Bless those who love us and put up with our array of shit.
Today's Action
- Do something selfless for those people who love us no matter how "out there" we can get!
Podcast of the Day
The Bill W. Story, The Day Dr. Bob Diedhttp://podbay.fm/show/
Listen to more AA Podcast:
Lets Ask Bill Willson
Question: What is meant by mental obsession and the obsessional character of alcoholism?
Answer:
Well, as I understand it, we are all born with the freedom of choice. The degree of this varies from person to person, and from area to area in our lives. In the case of neurotic people, our instincts take on certain patterns and directions, sometimes so compulsive they cannot be broken by any ordinary effort of the will. The alcoholic's compulsion to drink is like that.
As a smoker, for example, I have a deeply ingrained habit - I'm almost an addict. But I do not think that this habit is an actual obsession. Doubtless it could be broken by an act of my own will. If badly enough hurt, I could in all probability give up tobacco. Should smoking repeatedly land me in Bellevue Hospital, I doubt that I would make the trip many times before quitting. But with my alcoholism, well, that was something else again. No amount of desire to stop, no amount of punishment, could enable me to quit. What was once a habit of drinking became an obsession of drinking - genuine lunacy.
Perhaps a little more should be said about the obsessional character of alcoholism. When our fellowship was about three years old some of us called on Dr. Lawrence Kolb, then Assistant Surgeon General of the United States. He said that our report of progress had given him his first hope for alcoholics in general. Not long before, the U.S. Public Health Department had thought of trying to do something about the alcoholic situation. After a careful survey of the obsessional character of our malady, this had been given up. Indeed, Dr. Koib felt that dope addicts had a far better chance. Accordingly, the government had built a hospital for their treatment at Lexington, Kentucky. But for alcoholics - well, there simply wasn't any use at all, so he thought.
Nevertheless, many people still go on insisting that the alcoholic is not a sick man - that he is simply weak or willful, and sinful. Even today we often hear the remark "That drunk could get well if he wanted to."
There is no doubt, too, that the deeply obsessional character of the alcoholic's drinking is obscured by the fact that drinking is a socially acceptable custom. By contrast, stealing, or let us say shop-lifting, is not. Practically everybody has heard of that form of lunacy known as kleptomania. Oftentimes kleptomaniacs are splendid people in all other respects. Yet they are under an absolute compulsion to steal - just for the kick. A kleptomaniac enters a store and pockets a piece of merchandise. He is arrested and lands in the police station. The judge gives him a jail term. He is stigmatized and humiliated. Just like the alcoholic, he swears that never, never will he do this again.
On his release from the jail, he wanders down the street past a department store. Unaccountably he is drawn inside. He sees, for example, a red tin fire truck, a child's toy. He instantly forgets all about his misery in the jail. He begins to rationalize. He says, "Well, this little fire engine is of no real value. The store won't miss it." So he pockets the toy, the store detective collars him, he is right back in the clink. Everybody recognizes this type of stealing as sheer lunacy.
Now, let's compare this behavior with that of an alcoholic. He, too, has landed in jail. He has already lost family and friends. He suffers heavy stigma and guilt. He has been physically tortured by his hangover. Like the kleptomaniac he swears that he will never get into this fix again. Perhaps he actually knows that he is an alcoholic. He may understand just what that means and may be fully aware of what the fearful risk of that first drink is.
Upon his release from jail, the alcoholic behaves just like the kleptomaniac. He passes a bar and at the first temptation may say, "No, I must not go inside there; liquor is not for me." But when he arrives at the next drinking place, he is gripped by a rationalization. Perhaps he says, "Well, one beer won't hurt me. After all, beer isn't liquor." Completely unmindful of his recent miseries, he steps inside. He takes that fatal first drink. The following day, the police have him again. His fellow citizens continue to say that he is weak or willful. Actually he is just as crazy as the kleptomaniac ever was. At this stage, his free will in regard to alcoholism has evaporated. He cannot very well be held accountable for his behavior. (The N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book', Vol. 12, 1960)
The Allergy of the Body and the Obsession of the Mind
Allergy of the Body
Medical Science has found that there is sound reasoning in the "Doctor's Opinion" (Alcoholics Anonymous pg xxv-xxxvii). They have been able to determine that the "physical powerlessness or allergy" is the result of a dysfunctional liver and pancreas. These vital organs do not produce the enzymes, in sufficient quantity or quality, that are necessary to complete the chemical decomposition of ethanol (ETOH) through the body of an alcoholic.1
ETHANOL: enzymes convert the ethanol into
ACETALDEHYDE: enzymes convert acetaldehyde into
DIACETIC ACID: enzymes convert diacetic acid into
AN ACETATE: more enzymes convert the acetate into
WATER & CARBON DIOXIDE & SUGAR: The water is expelled from the body through the urinary tract, the carbon dioxide through the respiratory system and the sugar is "burned up" through physical exercise.
"We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve."
A.A. pg. xxviii
If a person is not an alcoholic, they can normally successfully drink approximately one ounce of alcohol per hour and maintain the "glow" that they get from drinking. Not so with the alcoholic. The chemical decomposition of the ETOH through the alcoholic's body follows the same process until it reaches the "acetate" compound and then the liver and pancreas fail to produce sufficient enzymes to complete the decomposition process. The "acetate" produces the "craving" that deprives the alcoholic of the ability to control the amount they drink. The "craving" exceeds the alcoholic's will power to stop once they have commenced to drink.
Obsession of the Mind
"We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this.These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic's drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can't feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk."
A.A. pg 23
There is a Solution
"The doctor said: "You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you." Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang. He said to the doctor, Is there no exception? Yes, replied the doctor, "there is. Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them."
A.A. pg 27
The Privileged Addict
Fourth Step
*
STEP 4
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Why keep such a miraculous elixir in the dark, hidden from the rest of the world? Written moral inventory is a mind-opening and potentially life-changing tool that should not be exclusive to alcoholics and drugs addicts. The 4th Step has the power and wisdom to entirely shift our perception of self and others. As we reach new depths of honesty and clarity, the 4th Step combined with the 5th, 6th and 7th may even restore or dramatically alter our brain chemistry. How could it be? Because we are about to rid ourselves of a lifetime of resentment, fear, self-deception and the emotional turmoil that has fueled and maintained our patterns of thinking and behaving. Imagine exorcising years of baggage you’ve been lugging around and the effect that would have. Sure we can become ‘hard wired’ by our habits and our ways, but our brain chemistry is by no means static and can change at any time, especially when such an enormous amount of internal filth falls from you instantly. The potentially euphoric emptying out and shower of relief is something you do not want to miss.
In our 4th Step, we sit down and write resentment inventory, fear inventory and sex inventory to expel the emotional and psychological garbage that has piled up inside of us. We are human. Nobody is immune or exempt from anger, resentment, bitterness, frustration, judgment, projection, false assumptions, anxiety, fear, dishonesty, self-seeking and selfishness. Emotional or spiritual poison left unchecked can turn into a volcano just waiting to erupt… yet once dissolved, there is room to allow for something much greater and more powerful to come in and fill the void. The idea for addicts and alcoholics is to replace our addiction with something at least as powerful as the addiction itself, and the same goes for any other demon. Soft, fluffy, hollow remedies won’t work when we are powerless over something. We are going to need an engine with some real horsepower.
The problem with harboring resentment, fear and sexual misconduct is that they slowly rot us from within, eating away at our physical, mental and spiritual health. Resentment is like a psychic acid, slowly burning the soul and eventually destroying us with jade, cynicism and self-delusion until we wind up depressed and full of self-pity. It will convince us that we are somehow victims and that something outside of us is to blame for our woes, but despite the problems we may have, whether real or imagined, to blame anything but ourselves is false. The French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, once asserted that our “existence precedes our essence”. While we are certainly born with certain proclivities, traits and personalities, the idea is that we ultimately make ourselves into who we become, regardless of external circumstances. If I become a hero, I have made myself a hero. Conversely, if I become a failure, I have made myself a failure. Inventory teaches us this truth, but only if we are willing to find it and then accept it once we do.
The Big Book notes that resentment is the “#1 offender for alcoholics”, but one of the purposes of this book is to point out that resentment will crush anybody, addict or not. The secret is to realize that resentments are born within and therefore can be vaporized without anything outside of us needing to change. People tend to think the only way to dissolve resentment is for external circumstances to change, but that is not correct. Once a resentment grows within, its energy is there to stay until we ourselves change.
We cause ourselves to resent because it is often easier to blame others than to swallow our pride and feel the discomfort of personal responsibility. By nature, we tend to be selfish, ashamed, emotionally immature and ignorant, and it is up to us to rise above our more banal, lower selves. If we loathe or dislike some part of who we are, we often project that quality onto others, seeing it in them instead of ourselves. In doing so, we develop a false perception of events, thus clearing the path to resentment. We see events as acting upon us as opposed to creating or attracting the events to ourselves.
Even if we are wronged terribly by someone, the resentment that burns inside is still birthed and fueled by our reaction and response to the event as opposed to the event itself. No person or thing outside of us actually turns a switch and makes us feel, say or do anything, as we alone are responsible for our thoughts, feelings and actions. Not to realize this is one of the great human illusions, next to fear. It is therefore our responsibility to rid ourselves of the resentment, and the truth is that only we can do this, with the help of God. The beauty of this process is that when we see the light and gain the ability to let go of our resentments, we can forgive. Once we can forgive ourselves, we can forgive anybody, and that, my friends, is a recipe for freedom...
-Anybody Can Take Steps, pp.55-57
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. -John 14:6
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Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. -John 14:6