Emotional Sobriety II: The Next Frontier

By AA Grapevine

The second collection of essays from Grapevine magazine that speak to emotional sobriety—a powerful concept first described by AA co-founder Bill W.

The editors of Grapevine, the international journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, have collected more than 40 stories of sober women and men that describe the personal transformations that sobriety can bring when practicing the principles of AA in all aspects of their lives.

In a 1958 article for Grapevine, the international journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W. wrote about the ongoing challenges of recovery that he faced long after he stopped drinking, including his struggle with depression. For him, “emotional sobriety” became the next frontier.

In these personal essays from members of the AA Fellowship, you’ll discover what emotional sobriety is all about. To quote from Bill Wilson, “the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility)” in all of one’s relations. Many discover that happiness is a by-product of giving without any demand for return; others learn to embrace the present with gratitude so they may claim moments of real peace.

The stories in this collection demonstrate how emotional sobriety is a vital element of recovery from alcoholism or other addictions. These creative, heartfelt insights from a diverse spectrum of sober seekers offer insights that can light the way to your own “quiet place in bright sunshine.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: AA Grapevine
• Release date: Jul 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781938413032

Book preview

Emotional

Sobriety II

The Next Frontier

Other books published by

AA Grapevine, Inc.

The Language of the Heart (& eBook)

The Best of Bill (& eBook)

Spiritual Awakenings (& eBook)

I Am Responsible: The Hand of AA

The Home Group: Heartbeat of AA

Emotional Sobriety: The Next Frontier (& eBook)

Spiritual Awakenings II (& eBook)

In Our Own Words: Stories of Young AAs in Recovery

Beginners' Book

Voices of Long-Term Sobriety

A Rabbit Walks into a Bar

Step by Step: Real AAs, Real Recovery (& eBook)

Emotional Sobriety II: The Next Frontier (& eBook)

Young & Sober (& eBook)

In Spanish

El Lenguaje del Corazón

Lo Mejor de Bill (& eBook)

Lo Mejor de La Viña

El Grupo Base: Corazón de AA

In French

Les meilleurs articles de Bill

Le Langage du cœur

Le Groupe d'attache : Le battement du cœur des AA

Emotional

Sobriety II

The Next Frontier

AAGRAPEVINE, Inc.

New York, New York

www.aagrapevine.org

Copyright © 2011 by AA Grapevine, Inc.

475 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10115

All rights reserved

May not be reprinted in full or in part, except in short passages for purposes of review

or comment, without written permission from the publisher.

AA and Alcoholics Anonymous are registered trademarks of AA World Services, Inc.

Twelve Steps copyright © AA World Services, Inc.; reprinted with permission.

ISBN: 978-1-938413-02-5, Mobi: 978-1-938413-03-2, ePub:978-1-938413-02-5

AA Preamble

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women

who share their experience, strength and hope

with each other that they may solve their common problem

and help others to recover from alcoholism.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

There are no dues or fees for AA membership;

we are self-supporting through our own contributions.

AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization

or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy,

neither endorses nor opposes any causes.

Our primary purpose is to stay sober

and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.

©AA Grapevine, Inc.

Contents

AA Preamble

Introduction

Section One

The Great Balancing Act

By Our Attitudes January 1950

The Golden Mean November 1976

Binge Thinker July 2010

It's Not the Shoelace May 2010

Carrying the Message February 1971

Chair Master October 1997

Honeymoon January 1975

Section Two

The Miracle of Manageability

Hot Piano Man May 1953

Let's Take Happiness Out of the Closet January 1986

The Impossible Dream November 1971

A Simple Miracle (Excerpt)May 2009

Life in the Express Lane May 2009

Drama Queen November 2010

Paying the Price for Improvement January 1997

Section Three

What Used to Baffle Us

Reality Can Be Uncomfortable July 1971

The Great Art of Living June 1975

Got a Pain in Your Feelings?March 1950

Step Ten: Up Close and Personal October 2007

Four Years December 2010

Scream! April 1975

The Fire Has Gone Out September 1997

Gimme Shelter March 2010

Section Four

More Will Be Revealed

Change to Spare February 2007

Recovery is a Wonderland July 2010

Stuck in a Funk December 2010

Carrying the Message — Life! June 1966

Mail Call for AAs at Home and Abroad March 1949

God Didn't Follow Orders July 1984

Powerful Simplicity March 1984

Section Five

Rooms of Our Own

Consider the Old-Timers June 1949

Continuance October 1998

Not On Fire March 2010

AA for Two December 1960

Meetings in the Bank June 2009

Section Six

Steps to Serenity

Gratitude Turns the Key April 2010

A Bend in Recovery Road January 1986

What of the Last Half? October 1949

Confessions of a Reluctant Newcomer (Excerpt) March 2003

Step Three: From Sight to Insight March 2007

Self-Acceptance June 1975

Section Seven

Finding Our Inner Adult

A Measure of Growth December 1975

How It Feels to Join AA Long Before You Have To November 1944

Grow Up! June 1999

When I Was 15 September 2010

THE TWELVE STEPS

THE TWELVE TRADITIONS

About AA and AA Grapevine

The Next Frontier—

Emotional Sobriety

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.

How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living—well, that's not only the neurotic's problem, it's the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.

Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious—from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream—be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden Mr. Hyde becomes our main task.

I've recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones—folks like you and me—commencing to get results. Last autumn [several years back—ed.], depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I've had with depressions, it wasn't a bright prospect.

I kept asking myself, Why can't the Twelve Steps work to release depression? By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer … It's better to comfort than to be comforted. Here was the formula, all right. But why didn't it work?

Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence—almost absolute dependence—on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.

There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.

Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.

Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing, a love appropriate to each relation of life.

Plainly, I could not avail myself of God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.

For my dependency meant demand—a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.

While those words absolute dependency may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me.

This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.

Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any AA of six months working with a new Twelfth Step case. If the case says To the devil with you the Twelfth Stepper only smiles and turns to another case. He doesn't feel frustrated or rejected. If his next case responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn't feel rejected; instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy. And if his next following case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the sponsor is most joyful. But he well knows that his happiness is a by-product—the extra dividend of giving without any demand for a return.

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