The really stabilizing thing for him was having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand.
In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober. It wasn't a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive.
Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love; we may then be able to Twelfth Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety.
Of course I haven't offered you a really new idea—only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own “hexes” at depth. Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.
Bill W.
SECTION ONE
The Great Balancing Act
Though balance is one of the most underrated attributes of all, being non-dramatic and low-key, we observe that the label “unbalanced,” applied to a person, is never a desired one. Balance is one of the gifts of long-term sobriety that seem to be appreciated later or, by the unusually mature, at any time.
From San José, a member describes balance to a “T” in 1976, after noting the faux ecstasies of his drinking days. “Today, by the grace of God, I strive for a basically bland diet. For example, on this day I've worked eight hours, washed my clothes, gone to a meeting, and written a poem about gratitude. Later, I'll meditate. Dull by my past standards, but pleasantly sane by my AA way of thinking.”
Before he discovered Step Eleven and meditation, Ken of Ames, Iowa, writes that he was powerless over unhappiness and his life was unmanageable. “Long before I was a binge drinker,” he adds, “I was a binge thinker. I tended to think incessantly.” His mind had no “off” switch, coming up with grudges, resentments, and so on, creating the state of imbalance, ripe for relapse.
When Jim of Largo, Florida's home group holds a workshop on emotional sobriety, he becomes convinced that time in the program is not enough to ensure it, and that certain emotions will remain deadly because they “block me from dealing in a mature, emotionally sober way, rather than just reacting.”
With his new sense of balance, Bruce H. of Arlington, Virginia, decides he doesn't have to memorize anything in the Big Book after all; neither does he have to arrange the chairs perfectly every time. And G.P. of Elbert, Colorado admits that when the pink cloud hit him, “I went insane. Quite starkly mad. … For one thing, I couldn't say no—a clear indication of insanity. … I accepted five full-time job offers, and was thinking of a sixth.” He also bought everything in sight.
Newly sober; deeply imbalanced.
“Thank the Higher Power,” he writes. “The malady doesn't seem to be permanent.”
By Our Attitudes
January 1950
A little clock in a jeweler's window stopped one morning at 20 minutes past 8. School children, noticing the time, stopped to play. People on their way to the train stopped to chat a little longer and all were late because one little clock had stopped. Never had these people realized how much they had depended on that clock in the jeweler's window until the day it failed them and led them all astray.
We AAs are very much like that clock. Day after day there are those who are looking to us for guidance and direction on the way of life. If our AA life is functioning properly, we are faithful guides to all who observe us. But if something has gone wrong with our AA way of life, we are stopped clocks, and unfortunate indeed is the man who permits himself to be misled by our example. We who have been helped by AA are as letters of God addressed to our friends and fellow men. By our attitudes, our speech, and our behavior are we to show them the transforming power of AA's philosophy of life.
C.T.
St. Paul, Minnesota
The Golden Mean
(from PO Box 1980) November 1976
In my drinking days, excitement was measured by the degree of my emotions. My ecstasy came from the fleeting highs of alcohol and sex and from the appealing but dangerous depths of writings about suicide. The in-between—moderation—was despised as a malady of the “common folk.”
Today, by the grace of God, I strive for a basically bland diet. For example, on this day I've worked eight hours, washed my clothes, gone to a meeting, and written a poem about gratitude. Later, I'll meditate. Dull by my past standards, but pleasantly sane by my AA way of thinking.
Bob P.
San José, California
Binge Thinker
July 2010
Before I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable, I was powerless over unhappiness and my life had become unmanageable. I turned to alcohol in my late 40s as the best self-help option I thought I could find. Often, my unhappiness seemed to melt as I drank. But drinking became an ever more elusive and flawed solution to my unhappiness. It began to create unhappiness of its own. My overall unhappiness was eventually much greater than what I had evaded and yet not solved at the beginning of my alcoholism. Now what?
Maybe the best way to feel was to be happy. How was that possible?
Long before I was a binge drinker, I was a binge thinker. I tended to think incessantly, as if this were an essential part of staying alive. My mind either had no “off” switch, or, if it did, I had no idea where it was. In this constant banter, I could find all sorts of resentments to chew on, grudges to hold, victimization to ponder and catastrophes to protest. Life was unfair, people were the harbingers of much injustice and unkindness, and I was justifiably withholding my seal of approval by not accepting what already was.
I create thoughts. I can do so from default behaviors (what I have come to otherwise recognize as “character defects"), or I can create thoughts within the awareness of having choices. Awareness for me is realizing that I am not my thoughts. Rather, I observe my thoughts and their creation and content. If I need not be run by my conditioned default thinking, then have I discovered the choice of observing and creating constructive thinking?
Once I learned to meditate, as encouraged in Step Eleven, I was able to find the “off” switch to my thinking when that thinking is neither needed nor useful to me. I can use thought, rather than have my thinking use me. “Awareness,” I believe, is the most accessible doorway to what has been referred to as “spirituality” throughout my life and in AA.
Ken T.
Ames, Iowa
It's Not the Shoelace
May 2010
Recently, my home group conducted a workshop exploring emotional sobriety. We broke it up into different aspects such as “What is emotional sobriety?”, “How does it differ from