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.
This says to me that no matter the amount of sober time I have in the program, that if I willingly drink alcohol because "I think", or have any lurking notion that I can drink again or react normally to it, I will be off to the races- and just like that and the nightmare I was entangled with for all those years would be on again.
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.
Alcoholics and addicts have an oddly amazing way of employing cognitive dissidence when it comes to thier drinking or behavior. What we can blatantly see in others we can't see in us which allowed me to justify and rationalize all sorts of behaviors and actions that I would have never tolerated from someone else. I can't change what I can't or won't see. My drinking was just relief from the symptoms of much deeper issues that I didn't want to look at.
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.
I love us, don't get me wrong- but WOW are we stubborn-and I'm not saying that in a funny or cute way. Laughing off repeated dangerous and destructive behavior, getting irritated, shutting down or refusing to address it, is mental illness and a real exsample of insanity. My mind has the power to convince me of all sorts of things that aren't necessarily true and that will keep me in, or lead me to bondage-as well as my loved ones, with the action I take based upon these thoughts-and the lenghts I am willing to go to to keep the lie going.
Our program, Alcoholics Anonymous, was designed to reverse engineer us back to a state of being in alignment in divine right order and in good standing with our Creator whereby our hearts get purified to allow the soul back in to take its rightful place and have dominion over our mind as intended. In other words, the mind was never intended to lead us. the Spirit was.
The mind is a receiver and processor, just like a computer- and when working in conjunction with the soul, who works for God, the ego doesn't have to take over to overcompensate for not having any direction from the Oversoul.
I couldn't hear my spirit, all I heard was the ego that only knew fight or flight based upon the body's record of events. The ego isn't inherently bad, it just wasn't designed to lead. It's a GPS navigational tool that identifies and processes things in 3-D-so when I use it for things like love, sex, relationships, careers, parenting, and then make decisions based upon traumatic unhealed experiences interpreted by the mind that says DANGER DANGER because that's how the body recorded it, and doing it all without God; I, and everyone else are in for a bad run.
The 12 Steps are the way home. The daily application and intention to live life on God's terms by following the recipe and continued spiritual growth, keeps my mind in check. I don't have to allow the mind to get me into trouble anymore. I don't have to block the thoughts that are received by the mind. I process it and say, "thanks, but no thanks" or, "I'll consider that information" with God as my anchor and my soul as my teacher.
Thoughts come in and out all day long, I now can choose what to consider vs. whats easily discarded based upon my prior dealings with similar thoughts because I have been restored to sanity.
Restored to sanity doesn't mean disturbing or destructive thoughts won't come in, it means I can identify and discern what is bad information and retain the knowledge from the past experiences as a way to gauge whether or not to act upon that thought. Before, I couldn't-that is why this thing centers in the mind and not the body as I once believed.
I thought once I had stopped drinking, all would be well. Not drinking just takes care of one part (the body) of my 3 fold illness. Once the spirit is back online, and I am doing the next right thing, consciously aware of my motives and the effects of my daily actions, and continued work, the mental illness gets treated naturally because again, it doesn't have to overcompensate for the soul being disconnected anymore.
Mind, Body and Spirit are not separate entities as our current 3rd dimensional society and culture has taught-they work beautifully when in the jurisdiction of its designer and creator. Kinda like a sports car was designed for a race track, not off-roading in the mountains. Sure, I suppose it can, but it's gonna suck and there is gonna be a lot of damage to the car and the driver. We were not designed to do life without God seperated into 3 parts. When this program is worked, we get made whole. Humpty dumpty can get put back together again!!