Around my seventh year of sobriety, I began to notice the danger of spiritual complacency in sobriety. My attitude changed at AA meetings. Stories I once needed to hear started to irritate me, and I found myself becoming impatient, critical, and less willing to listen. Over time, I stopped looking forward to meetings—and that frightened me.
Relapse Warning Signs
So I called my sponsor and told him what was happening. He reminded me that relapse often begins in the mind long before a person takes a drink. Then he asked, “David, look around the rooms of AA. You do not see many people celebrating seven or eight years of sobriety, and the numbers drop even more after that. Why do you think that is?” I had no answer. He said, “Often, it happens because we get too busy and forget what it was like.” His words hit home, and I realized complacency had caused me to forget the seriousness of my disease.
Spiritual Program of Action
Alcoholics Anonymous gives the same warning: “It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism” (pg. 85). In time, I began to understand that warning personally.
After completing some difficult step work with my sponsor, I felt tempted to take a break. Yet that decision quietly opened the door for my alcoholism to return. Before long, the disease began whispering the dangerous lie, “I don’t have a disease.”
Daily Reprieve and Spiritual Condition
The answer appears later, in the reading above: “What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day that we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.” For me, that meant returning to God through daily prayer, step-work and remembering who I am: an alcoholic with an incurable disease.
Walking Backward Through the Steps
My sponsor also pointed out that relapse can feel like walking backward through the Twelve Steps. We stop serving, stop praying, stop taking daily inventory, and allow resentments and self-will to return. Eventually, the old lie resurfaces: “I can manage my own life. I don’t need AA.” Thankfully, I reached out before it was too late.
Booze Killz
That experience brought me back to my first week in recovery. I remember the group passing around a phone list for newcomers who raised their hands. Most men wrote down their names and numbers, but one man with many years in the program always added two words beside his name: “Booze Killz.” The phrase stayed with me. It was blunt and honest, and it came from people who understood sobriety far better than I did. Each time I saw those words, I remembered that my disease wanted me dead. Therefore, the key to survival is staying spiritually awake:
“Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”- 1 Peter 5:8
Reflection: Am I progressing forward or backward in my step-work in recovery?
For more articles like this, search for Spiritual Tools in Recovery.
Please subscribe to receive alerts for new posts. Your comments are always welcome.