(Alcoholics Anonymous, page 44)
The connection between recovery from alcoholism and reliance on a Higher Power is real, and the question is pressing, because ruin could arise today or years hence and is unpredictable. For me, to live life on a spiritual basis means I am not the pivot point of the universe, I am not the wisest creature alive, my perception is not the definitive representation of the world, my so-called needs and wants are not the centre and main objective of my life. Living life with those beliefs opened the door to the mental obsession with alcohol, and created endless emotional problems: anxiety, depression, and rage.
And if I am not those things, what I am, and what is the purpose of my life? One option is existential nihilism ('God is nothing' (page 53), which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. This will generate apathy, withdrawal, and probably also depression and rage, if my experience is anything to go by. Essentially, the same emotional result as living life based on self as the meaning, just with a slightly different flavour.
I have tried nihilism, but something in me refuses to accept it wholeheartedly, and as soon as any light breaks into it, and the darkness is not absolute, the proposition that there is only darkness no longer holds.
Ultimately, I have had no real choice: the only viable option is to live life on a spiritual basis, with the Higher Power as the centre and main objective my life, with my only concern my channel to the Higher Power and my positive contribution to the world.
The or else is chilling. It can come in the form of resumed alcoholic drinking, the onset or resurgence of other addictions, or out-and-out madness, sober, preceded sometimes by months or years of anxiety, depression, and neuroticism. I've progressed along all of these paths in my time, fortunately never to their conclusion, and I'm now clear which side of my bread is buttered. Today's answer: give up all self-made notions, trust, and serve.