The Missing Piece: The Spiritual Malady

by Mike L., West Orange, NJ
"Carry THIS Message" Group, West Orange, NJ

From "The Doctor's Opinion" to the end of "More About Alcoholism" the Big Book discusses the first part of Step 1, which states, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol". We've discussed, studied, and internalized material from the "Doctor's Opinion" to page 23 to see how we're powerless over alcohol bodily. We've used pages 23 - 43 to help us experience how we've been powerless mentally. Now I'd like to talk about a part of our "disease" which is seldom discussed in meetings nowadays: the "spiritual malady."


We often hear people say something like, "I have a three-fold disease: body, mind, and spirit."

"The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety"

by Bill Wilson I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA -- the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.
Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance -- urges quite appropriate to age seventeen -- prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven or fifty-seven. 

Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round.