The Message, April 2025

I couldn’t stop drinking on my own, no matter how hard I tried, over and over. Yet I haven’t had a drink today or for a long time. I was estranged from my kids because of my drinking and hurtful, insane behavior. But now they call me, share their lives with me, love me. How does this happen? Blind luck? Chance?

I can’t deny that something bigger than me took me out of that terrible loneliness and desperation. Now I get a chance every day to get out of myself and be of service.

Yet I still struggle with faith. Despite all the progress and miracles, I fall into the rabbit hole of brooding over all my past failures and the damage I inflicted on others. Then there are the deaths of people dear to me, watching others suffer, encountering real evil in what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings.

There are days when I “feel” the care and nearness of a Higher Power. I can’t rely on “frothy emotions,” however, and frequently I must fall back on the basics: clean house and help others. Regardless of how I feel today.

I find “the way out” in sharing my ups and downs with another alcoholic. I need that morning quiet time as well, where I do encounter the God of my understanding, even if I don’t get a warm, fuzzy, “spiritual” high.

Prayer, service, and fellowship help me “match serenity to calamity.”

In a way, I’m grateful that I experience doubts and dark times. That doesn’t mean there is no God. “Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have - the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.” (BB, 124) I know now that I will always struggle to believe and trust. But, over and over, I’ve found that precisely my pain, doubts, and struggles make me useful to another drunk like me.

-Kevin P., Northside Tuesday Night Group

Turning my will over to the care of God, as I understand Him, is a deeply personal and transformative process. It begins with the recognition that my own efforts to direct and control every aspect of my life often lead to frustration and chaos. By surrendering my will, I’m not giving up responsibility but rather trusting in a higher power that I define through my own experience as God. This act of letting go feels like releasing pressure, allowing me to breathe and find peace in the idea that I don’t have to navigate life’s uncertainties alone.

For me, this surrender is less about blind faith and more about cultivating a relationship with God as I understand Him. It’s an ongoing conversation—sometimes through prayer, sometimes through quiet reflection—where I seek guidance rather than try to control and dictate outcomes. I might not always get clear answers, but the process shifts my perspective. Instead of obsessing over my plans, I start asking, “What’s the next right step?” It’s humbling to admit I don’t have all the solutions, but there’s strength in that humility. It’s like handing over the reins to a trusted companion who sees the bigger picture when my own view is clouded.

Living this way doesn’t mean life becomes effortless or free of struggle but turning my will over to God gives me a framework to face challenges with

resilience. When I’m tempted to force my way through a problem, I pause and remind myself to surrender. It’s a daily practice, imperfect and evolving, but it brings a sense of alignment. I find myself more open to possibilities I couldn’t have planned, trusting that my higher power is weaving something meaningful through the messiness of my life. It’s less about control and more about connection, a quiet assurance that I’m held, even when I stumble or fall short. 

-Andrew M.

What really is this “spiritual malady” and how, if left untreated, can it drive an alcoholic back to drinking? What is the remedy for it? What triggers the mental obsession in the first place? Why is it that people who have remained abstinent from drinking in Alcoholics Anonymous go back to drinking?  What is this “spiritual malady” we alcoholics suffer from and how can “untreated alcoholism” cause an alcoholic to return to drinking?

When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically (How it works pg. 64).

The term “spiritual malady” for me simply means I am spiritually blocked off from the Power of God, which enables us to remain sober, happy, joyous, and free.

If you’ve been in the AA Fellowship for a while, for most people, the mental obsession dissipates. So why is it that after a long period of sobriety many people in our fellowship return to drinking. 

Symptoms include wanting to run the whole show” (pages 60-61), being “driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity” (page 62), self-will run riot (page 62), leading a double life (page 73), living like a tornado running through the lives of others (page 82), and exhibiting selfish and inconsiderate habits. Many more are described throughout the book.

It’s not my body, my allergic reaction to alcohol that’s going to take me back to drinking.  It’s the “spiritual malady”, as manifested by my EGO, selfishness, self-centeredness, that can eventually lead me back to drinking.

Typically, we’ll tell ourselves and others, “Well, at least I’m not drinking.” All of a sudden, I can experience a “strange mental blank-spot” and before it even hits me, I am drinking and asking myself “How’d this happen?”

Bill W. writes, “For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us it is just like that.” 

You see, if I continue to act out with selfish — self-centered – ego-driven behaviors I will continue to experience the symptoms of the “spiritual malady.” If I continue to experience this inward unmanageability, eventually my mind will seek out the “sense of ease and comfort” it thinks it can receive from taking a drink. Or my ego can deceive me into thinking I’m doing perfectly fine. (i.e.: Fred’s story in Chapter 3… Fred drank when there wasn’t “a cloud on the horizon”.)

Through the steps I have the necessary vital spiritual experience to keep me sober. In other words a GOD consciousness. 

At certain times we have no mental defense against the first drink. It has to come from a higher power

It works if you work it. Give it away to keep it. Keep coming back.  Intensive work with another alcoholic.  Is your own house in order? Is my relationship with him right?

-Mark L- the Florida Flounder