So long as we make an active effort to address our spiritual malady every day, we will find relief from it, one day at a time. He said, “spiritual simply refers to that which is not material. This means those things that are not solid- such as our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions- are what is spiritual. When we say that alcoholism or drug addiction is ‘a spiritual malady’, it means that our disease in centered in these things .

Once turning to substances many of these people struggle to maintain the same focus on the other priorities they had. Why is the spiritual malady such a big spiritual malady part of the disease? People who are not alcoholics or addicts can be restless, irritable, and discontent when they are living with resentments and fear.

Addiction Categories

Many of us felt that there was something wrong with us or something missing—in short, we felt different from other people. We couldn’t understand why the people surrounding us could feel happiness or contentment, so we turned to drugs and alcohol as a means of self-medicating our perceived shortcomings. From our time spent feeding our addictions, we feel that the opposite begins to happen.

However in order to treat it we have to first contend with the symptomatic manifestation of this disorder, chronic alcohol use, as it is the most life threatening aspect of this disorder when we present our selves at AA. For me this section is saying our emotion dysregulation leads to feelings of being “restless, irritable and discontented” which prompt a return to drinking. Selfishness and self -centeredness is the root of my trouble. My troubles are of my own making and arise out my living a life run on self-will.

thoughts on “The Spiritual Malady”

I did not feel myself enough as myself – smart enough, talented enough, good-looking enough, and so on. I was trapped with all I could ask for, while feeling ashamed and all alone in the world. And when an addict feels trapped, the bottle or drug or casino is one sure thing with which to escape. Step 1 in the AA programme is “ We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable”.

In Grace we can still experience negative emotions but God allows us to see them for what they are and not react. His Grace takes the distress out of thee negative emotions. This is how a mental health disorder manifests itself as distorted fear based thinking which appear, if acted upon, to make one’s situation a whole lot worse. This is similar to relying on external means, i.e. alcohol, drugs, addictive behaviours to regulate our emotions and bolster our low self esteem. Often people like us have some of the strongest will power that exists.

The Alcoholics Guide to Alcoholism

It’s a void that we used to fill with drugs and alcohol. We will try to fill this god-sized hole with anything we can. The practice of Christian Meditation offers a remedy to the spiritual malady. When we enter the silence with discipline and perseverance, we make space for the living presence of God to heal us from the inside out.