endlesspatience

I wonder what you interpret as emotional sobriety? I ask because someone in AA has invited me to a conference in London on the topic. It's a three day event. The title is: The Big Book Lives On. Theme: "Twelve Steps To Freedom" with an Emphasis on Emotional Sobriety.

At the moment, I attend AA regularly and I also have a weekly session with an addiction counsellor - both are enormously helpful. I am open minded about the conference but it's quite a big time commitment and I would be interested to hear the thoughts of others as to how they see emotional sobriety and also as to whether conferences of this type are of value.

Many thanks.

Carlotta

This is a letter from Bill W that we read at the beginning of a meeting I attend once a week called "Emotional Sobriety".
Bill Wilson's Letter on Emotional Sobriety

visch1

Hi. I'm no expert and there are those who will disagree and may be correct. I consider those not using for however long to be dry if acting and reacting the way we did while using. Sober is acting AND living in a honest mature manner with anger resentment and the other reasons we used recognized and under control. BE WELL

bbthumper

"Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and pray to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble. "

This is a description of humility which was on a plaque on Dr Bob's desk. Not sure of the author. Anyways, although it describes humility, I think it is also synonymous with emotional sobriety.

Charmie

im stealing that bbthumper!!!

bbthumper

Its a good one. I had it above my desk at my old work site. This is a reminder that I should put one up at my new work site.

Joe Nerv

As per someone's recommendation here, I bought the book 12 Smart Things. It just arrived (thanks amazon) 2 days ago, and I read the introduction. The subject of the book is emotional sobriety, and allz I can say right now is, wow.

I never before saw Bill's letter regarding emotional sobriety. And the introduction to this book reminded me of when I read the first chapter of the Big Book. All I thought was, that's me, that's me... dang, they got me pegged here. I'm looking forward to the reading of this book, and the opening of new doors. I'd have loved the opportunity to attend that 3 day even, but it's a bit of a hike from NY.

I hate repeating this but it's pertinent to many things I say... I've been sober for almost 29 years, and while most of that has been awesome, and I've grown through things I never imagined possible, like Bill, I have bouts of depression. And it's becoming more and more clear as the years go by that these bouts stem from the events around me. Without getting too into it, I'm a musician (and I teach a different subject in HS as a day job). My state of well being is incredibly connected to how I percieve my musical life to be going. For many years it was on a steady path upwards, got to the point where I had pretty much arrived at my dream spot, and then the rug got pulled completely from under me. In a matter of a day. Went from the miles high spot I fantasized about my entire life, to playing in crappy bars making a few bucks a night. If I were lucky. The climb has been uphill since then, and it's been clear for years now how my esteem is wrapped around all that stuff. Had 2 pretty upscale gigs in the last 2 weeks, and I was in the best space I've been in a while. This Friday's show was a huge success... nothing really happening on my music calendar now till the end of August, and I woke up yesterday morning feeling empty all over again. Anyhow, lots more to this, but I don't want to go on ranting. I"ve learned to weather these storms, but I'd be lying if I didn't say there's still a piece to my puzzle that could fit a little better than one I'm currently forcing in.

Excited by the book. Looking forward to diving into a new phase of my recovery.

Boleo

The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety

by Bill Wilson

(Aslo see: A Letter From Bill W. on Depression, from the memoirs of Tom Pike, an early California AA member, which is strikingly similar to this AA Grapevine Article, "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 the 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 demand" 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 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.

Copyright © The A.A. Grapevine, Inc., January 1958

2granddaughters

My sponsor told me in the beginning that if I pay attention to my program and keep working it that I would come to a point where I can control my emotions instead of them controlling me.

I believe he may be right .....

All the best.

Bob R

tomsteve

good thread. lotsa food for thought. that could be another part of emotional sobriety: openmindedness.

Threshold

I indulged (and too often still do) in emotions the way I did booze and drugs. Choosing one and laying it on thick and deep, and wallowing, and getting totally lost in it...to the point of shutting out reality.

Could be self pity, self righteousness, being "in love", over the top elation and all the stupid decisions that can go with that, anger etc.

To me, sober means no longer "checking out" of reality and losing myself in a stupor or a fantasy or a feeling. I mean, genuine feelings happen on their own, and it's great to feel them. But grabbing onto a feeling and wallowing in it the way I did booze and drugs...isn't sober.

To me living sober is living honest, and that goes for my feelings as well.

Joe Nerv

One of the things the book talks about that I find interesting is that the stuff they're talking about here usually doesn't kick in for at least 10 years. Often till a lot longer. That was the case with me, anyhow. I never had a pink cloud getting sober, and did a lot of work in my sobriety. Things went pretty swell my first 10 years. I did a lot of growing and learning how to live in the world. Got over my crippling fears and phobias and gained a freedom I'd never known before. Learned a lot about relating with others, and really created an awesome life. 2nd 10 years of sobriety I started reaping the gifts of all I learned in the first 10. That's when my music started taking off, I got into excellent physical shape, I met my wife and started creating a life with her, bought an apartment, gained some financial security... I was literally on top of the world. And it would be really tough to knock me off that position. Not much rattled me. But it happened, as much as I never believed it could or would. Got kinda kicked into a place I never knew existed, and started seeing things (and the world) from a different perspective. And it wasn't because I wasn't working the steps. It was because for 20 years of sobriety things were going pretty much the way I expected they would, so long as I did the things I was supposed to. It was easy for me to navigate the hills and valleys, when the big picture was so in focus.

In hindsight now, I believe it was aboslutely my spiritual connection that brought me to my knees a second time. And it's been a challenge since, but one I've embraced. I've been slowly recovering from the emotional upheaval I got by surprise 7 or so years ago. Been feeling pretty good in my skin lately in fact, but this book opens new doors. It's seeming to hone right in on what still needs some healing. And it's talking to some blind spots I've had that, well, I really had a tough time seeing. It's humbling for me to think I have blind spots, as I am the most aware person I ever met. Feelin good about this book and the journey ahead...

2granddaughters

I have many friends with 25-30-35-40 yrs in AA and none of them are "cured" but all growing.

All the best.

Bob R

Boleo

When the Buddha said "Each is his own master" he was not implying that we are each masters of the external universe. What he meant was, we can be the master of our own internal universe. When we practice the eight-fold path the "right" way, we end up being in total control of our emotions.

I have personally found this to be the case when I am spiritually fit (not that I am spiritually fit all of the time). That is to say, when I am spiritually fit, nothing disturbs me enough that I feel like I need I need to escape from reality. Even when everything seems to be going wrong in my life. In fact, nothing disturbs me enough that I feel I am suffering. Even if it looks like I am. Thus, the other old Buddhist saying:

"In this life - pain is inevitable - suffering is optional."

Johno1967

Thanks Joe,
Looked it up. Will give it a read. Hope your day is brighter. BTW. One of the first things I did on choosing sobriety was pick up a guitar. Bought a Traveler Guitar which I take up to the mine and can play in my room after work without disturbing anyone. Would of never dreamed of doing that had I never quit drinking.
Here is the link to the first 33 pages.

http://www.hazelden.org/web/public/d...ngs.pdf‎