Emotional Sobriety
"Here we begin to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety.” With that simple sentence the 12&12 (Step 12, p. 106) introduces the subject of emotional sobriety, links it to the daily practice of the Steps in all areas of our lives, and makes it the ultimate goal of our recovery—not only for ourselves but for those to whom, by such practice, we would carry the message of our spiritual awakening.
By his own admission, when Bill W. wrote those words (ca. 1952) he was far from being emotionally sober. Neither was anybody else in the program. That’s why he wrote them. In fact, that’s why he wrote the 12&12 (published in 1953). By that time a number of alcoholics had attained double-digit sobriety, and yet they were still struggling with many of the emotions that had beset them when they drank. Their lives had improved, but their emotions had remained unmanageable, undermining what progress they had made. Bill himself had spent many of his 18 years sober in a deep state of depression. He desperately wanted the program to bring him release. But it didn’t. This compelled him to reexamine the Steps in greater depth and explore how they could help the alcoholic move beyond physical to a higher level of sobriety that would encompass the whole person, what in Step 12 he comes to identify as emotional sobriety.
That issue was not on the table when the Big Book was written in the late 1930s. Understandably, the fledging fellowship was singularly focused on helping drunks to stop drinking. This is reflected in the fact that Step 12 in the Big Book is devoted exclusively to carrying the message, as its title indicates (“Working with Others”). That, the reader is told, is “our twelfth suggestion” (p. 89, italics in the original). But of course, that is only one half of the “suggestion.” The other half is to practice the principles in all our affairs. That, however, is not mentioned at all. The overriding goal was to stop drinking and stay stopped. If you did that, you had recovered. You were sober. That’s the only sense in which recovery and sobriety were understood at the time. You were on the wagon, as the expression went. You were dry, an expression that had none of the negative connotations it has today.
Understandably here again, many thought that’s all the program was about: pure and simple abstention. Not surprisingly, that translated itself into people not working the Steps—except for the powerless part of Step 1 and the carrying the message part of Step 12. The 12&12 would come to describe that as two-Stepping (Step 12, p. 113), a bare-minimum approach which is still widely followed today and which is unwittingly fostered by the “Don’t drink and go to meetings” mantra to which the program is often reduced.
Yet, from the very beginning the Big Book had made it clear that approach would not suffice. “We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough,” we read in Chapter 6 (p. 83), not incidentally titled “Into Action.” Earlier, in Chapter 5, it had described it as “an easier, softer way” (p. 58) which was bound to fail. Alcoholics had to work the Steps so that they could clean house, put their lives in order, and avoid relapsing into active alcoholism. Yet none of this work was linked to the goal of achieving emotional sobriety, a phrase which appears nowhere in that book.
While the 12&12 finally establishes that connection, it unfortunately does not go on to flesh it out and develop the concept. “Emotional sobriety” is mentioned once in the sentence we quoted and is then dropped. There’s a subsequent allusion to it with a single reference to “emotional stability” (p. 116), where stability can be inferred to be synonymous with sobriety, but the parallel is not pursued either. . . .
Above is excerpt from “Emotional Sobriety,” posted 03/17/22 at https://practicetheseprinciplestheboo.... For full text, please click on link.
By his own admission, when Bill W. wrote those words (ca. 1952) he was far from being emotionally sober. Neither was anybody else in the program. That’s why he wrote them. In fact, that’s why he wrote the 12&12 (published in 1953). By that time a number of alcoholics had attained double-digit sobriety, and yet they were still struggling with many of the emotions that had beset them when they drank. Their lives had improved, but their emotions had remained unmanageable, undermining what progress they had made. Bill himself had spent many of his 18 years sober in a deep state of depression. He desperately wanted the program to bring him release. But it didn’t. This compelled him to reexamine the Steps in greater depth and explore how they could help the alcoholic move beyond physical to a higher level of sobriety that would encompass the whole person, what in Step 12 he comes to identify as emotional sobriety.
That issue was not on the table when the Big Book was written in the late 1930s. Understandably, the fledging fellowship was singularly focused on helping drunks to stop drinking. This is reflected in the fact that Step 12 in the Big Book is devoted exclusively to carrying the message, as its title indicates (“Working with Others”). That, the reader is told, is “our twelfth suggestion” (p. 89, italics in the original). But of course, that is only one half of the “suggestion.” The other half is to practice the principles in all our affairs. That, however, is not mentioned at all. The overriding goal was to stop drinking and stay stopped. If you did that, you had recovered. You were sober. That’s the only sense in which recovery and sobriety were understood at the time. You were on the wagon, as the expression went. You were dry, an expression that had none of the negative connotations it has today.
Understandably here again, many thought that’s all the program was about: pure and simple abstention. Not surprisingly, that translated itself into people not working the Steps—except for the powerless part of Step 1 and the carrying the message part of Step 12. The 12&12 would come to describe that as two-Stepping (Step 12, p. 113), a bare-minimum approach which is still widely followed today and which is unwittingly fostered by the “Don’t drink and go to meetings” mantra to which the program is often reduced.
Yet, from the very beginning the Big Book had made it clear that approach would not suffice. “We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough,” we read in Chapter 6 (p. 83), not incidentally titled “Into Action.” Earlier, in Chapter 5, it had described it as “an easier, softer way” (p. 58) which was bound to fail. Alcoholics had to work the Steps so that they could clean house, put their lives in order, and avoid relapsing into active alcoholism. Yet none of this work was linked to the goal of achieving emotional sobriety, a phrase which appears nowhere in that book.
While the 12&12 finally establishes that connection, it unfortunately does not go on to flesh it out and develop the concept. “Emotional sobriety” is mentioned once in the sentence we quoted and is then dropped. There’s a subsequent allusion to it with a single reference to “emotional stability” (p. 116), where stability can be inferred to be synonymous with sobriety, but the parallel is not pursued either. . . .
Above is excerpt from “Emotional Sobriety,” posted 03/17/22 at https://practicetheseprinciplestheboo.... For full text, please click on link.
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