The Secret to Beating Alcoholism is with Creation
Alcohol addiction is a condition that disrupts every area of a person’s life. Drinking heavily affects the alcoholic more than just physically….they also are suffering from a mental, social, and spiritual handicap at this point. Their whole world is screwed up due to their addiction. Jobs are lost and people get fired. Relationships are screwed up. People drop out of college, lose contact with old friends, and so on. In short, alcoholism affects everything.
In most of these cases, the disease is stripping things away, right out of a person’s life. Any sense of spiritual growth or progress is removed and replaced with the drinking. Whatever used to be “fun” for the alcoholic is replaced by the booze. In short, drinking becomes the solution for everything, the remedy for any event in the alcoholic’s life. It becomes the path of the enlightenment and a way to keep emotional balance in check.
So when someone tries to stop drinking, the task at hand is so much more than just quitting drinking. The task is to replace an entire life that was dominated by alcohol. Not only that, but to find a way of living that works to replace all of those things that alcohol used to do for us, such as providing us with “fun” or with a way to deal with things emotionally.
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 physical, emotional, social, 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. This is the holistic path to sobriety and if you try to follow it to the best of your ability then you will start actively creating a new life for yourself. This then is the ultimate secret of overcoming alcohol addiction.
