“An Obsession of the Mind”

We talk about the disease of alcoholism/addiction as being three-fold: a disease of the mind, body and spirit. It’s a spiritual malady, an allergy of the body, and an obsession of the mind. I was reading a good website the other day that broke these down into layers. They talked about the allergy of the body as the top layer, the obsession of the mind beneath that, and the spiritual disease beneath that.

I’m not sure how closely I agree with this way of looking at it, but it does make a lot of sense. Those of us with this disease can’t drink and use like normal people. We can’t have just one drink, take just one hit, and then put it back down. We continue to get loaded again and again, even when we don’t want to.

The site talked about the spiritual malady a lot. It listed out many quotes from the AA big book to describe it: feeling restless, irritable, and discontented, the trouble with personal relationships, not being able to control our emotional natures, and on and on. The list was pretty long, actually. It went on to include depression, being full of fear, and one of my personal ‘favorites’--self-will run riot.

I can recognize those traits in myself. I can remember their presence in my life from before I ever first picked up, but that’s not what I’m getting at here. Before, I’d thought of them as the ‘obsession of the mind’ part of the disease. Now, I’m thinking that my thinking might need to be changed.

My mind has almost entirely stopped its obsession over substances, but it still obsesses from time to time. The most common obsession is wondering or worrying about others’ opinion about me. Why hasn’t my friend called? What does that woman I’m attracted to think of me? These are, obviously, prime evidence of my disease. Sometimes, I’m able to be extremely spiritually fit and look at these thoughts from a distance. I can even laugh at myself and find some gratitude in knowing that I am still not cured. Other times, I get angry. I even have a special prayer for when I’m really pissed off at my chattering brain: ‘Dear God, help me to chill the fuck out!’

I don’t like it when my brain obsesses. It distracts me from what’s real. It pulls me out of the serenity I have worked so hard to achieve. It prevents me from being who I really am, prevents me from being honest with myself and with others. Thank God I’ve got tools, now, to deal with it. I can pray. I can go to meetings. I can work steps. I can work with others. Whatever it takes to get me out of myself, that’s what I try to do. It passes.

Recovery is a process, not an event. It’s possible that I will never totally get rid of my obsessive mind, but what I do get, instead, is a way to handle it. I can look back and see how much better things are than they used to be. I don’t obsess nearly as much as I once did. There has been a lot of improvement. If I keep working the program, there will be more.

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