Alcohol addiction is a condition that disrupts every area of a person’s life. The drunk suffers in more ways than one due to their drinking habits….they also are suffering from a mental, social, and spiritual handicap at this point. Their entire life is adversely affected by the disease. Jobs are lost. Relationships are out of whack. People drop out of school, lose touch with their good friends, and so on. In short, alcoholism affects everything.
In many of these instances, alcoholism is taking things away from the individual. Any sense of spirituality is stripped away and replaced by the booze. Whatever used to provide entertainment and genuine value for the alcoholic was eventually replaced with drinking. In short, alcoholism becomes the answer for every event in the alcoholic’s life, and it is the cure for any ailment. It becomes the spiritual savior and the emotional balance mechanism.
So when someone tries to stop drinking, the task at hand is so much more than just quitting drinking. The task at hand is to completely recreate the entire life that was once ruled by drinking. Not only this, but also in seeking out a new way to live that can give us purpose that the booze used to provide for us, such as by how we dealt with our emotions.
The key to doing this is in creation.
In traditional recovery, such as with a 12 step program, there is a focus on creative efforts. The alcoholic is encouraged to progress through 12 steps in order to create a spiritual connection with a higher power and thus overcome their drinking. This is an act of creation, though I would argue that is too narrow of a focus. The reason for this is because the disease is more than just spiritual….It is also spiritual, physical, mental, and so on. So the answer should be comprehensive and needs to consider the whole alcoholic and every area of their lives, not just the spiritual.
So the answer for achieving sobriety is in making a purposeful life for yourself in these different areas. That is the holistic approach to recovery and when you follow it and attempt to grow in several areas then you will be involved in the act of creation. This then is the ultimate secret of overcoming alcohol addiction.
