As some of you are aware, alcoholism is a three-fold disease,
- Our body and the physical allergy
- Our mind is abnormal
- The Spiritual malady
This week at the freedom room, we have spoken about mental obsession. Even years after putting down the drink, we still have the mental obsession if we do not remain spiritually fit. I talked with a very close friend of mine who asked me, “when the last time you obsessed about something so much that you felt sick of yourself?” I thought about it for a moment and realised that it was not that long ago, only January 2021. And when I get obsessed with something, I can’t stop. It’s like another addiction.
My experience was this, my husband and I used to have a camper trailer. We would go away for long weekends and at least four weeks a year. Australia is so suitable for camping, I never thought I would say that with all the unpleasant wildlife, but we rarely saw anything scary. We sold it at the beginning of 2020 because we thought we would have to leave Oz and move back to the UK. We were delighted at the time that we had sold it relatively quickly. We then went camping at Christmas, in a tent! And to say I was not too fond of it in the tent is somewhat an understatement, and I used to love going in the camper.
My husband and I talked about it and suggested that a caravan would be perfect now that we are still in Australia. He hinted, and I mean he hinted, almost said just in passing, that we might look at some caravans. I was obsessed for months looking and trying to convince him that each one was the right one. But I would spend hours and hours looking some days in the office. I would get no actual work done as I was scrolling the internet over and over again. I would sit on the end of my bed scrolling through the sites on my mobile phone when I was supposed to be getting ready to take my son to school, leaving us to rush right at the last moment not to be late. We never went to look at any caravans, and to be honest, we could not afford it, but I got pretty mean with my husband; I couldn’t understand why he said we could if we couldn’t? Build my hopes up and then let me down, but the reality of it was that he didn’t do that at all. I had worked the how scenario up in my head. Our thinking was so far apart, he said possibly we could look, and in my mind, we had brought 1.
I was behaving just like I used to with alcohol. My compulsion to drink was like that, which is precisely why I have to work on my recovery every day. I have a daily reprieve dependent on my spiritual condition, and it doesn’t involve have many years of sobriety I have. I was back to step 1 as in those days, and my life was still unmanageable.