Sometimes the view is presented that, once we have got that pesky business of drinking out of the way, with the trivial objective of sobriety being achieved, we can get on with the far more important business of achieving emotional sobriety, by some sort of upgrade. This is the advanced course for advanced people, and esoteric skills are going to be required for this. We definitely need a box set of tapes on this special subject, falling outside the scope, as it does, of the entry-level, basic programme.
What is emotional sobriety? It’s a bit of an unfortunate term, because physical sobriety means the absence of alcohol from the body, but emotional sobriety means not the absence of emotions but, I would suggest, emotions that are proportionate, appropriate, and timely to the situation.
The restoration of the emotions to their proper function, namely the navigation lights on the console rather than harrying spectres driving me hither and thither, is, however, an automatic consequence of working the ordinary twelve-step programme. The programme, proper, starts on page 63, and by page 67 we have gotten rid of the bulk of resentment; by page 68, fear; by page 70, poor behaviour in the sexual and romantic arena; page 75, shame from secrets; 83, guilt for the past. What else is there? There’s something of a delay, and the tail-end of the storm takes a while to die down after the ninth step is completed for the first time, but the radical change has already taken place, and I can certainly report I was on solid ground, emotionally, when I completed the first nine steps.
That, however, was when I was a number of years sober, and that was not my first hack at the steps. In the first hack, I did a decent job on the actions but the philosophy was never bought; I was using the steps as a set of tools to live my life more effectively; God was my helper; I was not His. Although my emotions were considerably better, at least for a while, the emotional drunkenness returned. This was for three reasons: I did not wholeheartedly adopt the new life of service first, others first, me second; I did not clear adequately as I went along, so I undid the good of the actions of pages 63 to 83; and I had not unseated myself as the Lord High Commissioner of my life.
I looked in a lot of places for relief from what I thought were complicated and thorny psychological problems; there were “fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds” (Big Book, Chapter 9), and these did an excellent job. I did inner child, family of origin, co-dependency, and other work, and I learned a lot. I went to Al-Anon and learned even more. Everything I learned was very useful.
But all of the above did not solve the underlying problem. I was decorating, cleaning, and opening windows, all of which are good, but I needed a plumber, because there was a terrible smell (amongst other horrors) emanating from all of the pipework, and no amount of decorating, cleaning, and opening windows will solve that problem.
I needed to unblock the pipes, and what was needed was a formal unblocking process. I decided to do the twelve steps properly, missing nothing. Once the ground was prepared for the programme in the first and second steps, I read the first line of the programmer proper.
“The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)
I had never understood that line; I had never paid it any attention; I was certainly not convinced of this. In fact, I still wanted things (fair enough) and still believed that, if I got the things I wanted (and kept from my door the things I did not want), I would be happy.
I had believed that the problem of my lack of emotional sobriety lay in failing to unlock the door of some room in the Bluebeard’s Castle of my mine; I thought there must be a hidden body somewhere.
In fact, the problem was that I literally not met the first requirement of the programme.
This was not an advanced problem I had. I had an entry-level problem.
I had never started the programme, because I was starting from the wrong point. For the programme to really work, one must start from the right point. Directions work only from the starting point. If I follow directions from Monument to Tufnell Park, but I’m actually starting from Ladbroke Grove, the directions might get me somewhere, but it won’t be Tufnell Park.
A lack of emotional sobriety, in my case, indicated, that I was not in full possession of the programme whose purpose is to bring about permanent physical sobriety through sound and practical reliance on God.
When the problem appears be emotional sobriety, it is my actual physical sobriety that is gravely at risk.
When I take the actions to solve this problem, the emotional sobriety takes care of itself.