As recovering alcoholics in a 12-Step process, it is natural and desirable for us to begin living with the spiritual principles we discover in our programs. Why? Because we are making choices in our life, based upon truth, and we see the benefits. Isn’t that the process we find in life that motivates us to make changes that improve our life? The 12-Step process yields new beliefs spurring better choices which alleviate the harsh consequences that alcoholism and drug addiction bring. But, even in recovery we are susceptible to making bad choices due to our self-centered nature. That nature has the primary motive within us to feel good. Self-centeredness leads to upside-down thinking. That’s a solid truth. This becomes evident for us as we apply the 12-Step process as part of our recovery. The following excerpt, from the book Eternal Sobriety, pages 12-13, provides a definition of upside-down thinking. And we all have it to one degree or another.
Upside-Down Thinking
Upside down thinking can be characterized as beliefs that appear to be true but are in the other direction from both reality and truth. A good example is how one responds to anger. A large part of the population believes that the cause of anger is always external to them. The expression “You make me angry” is common thinking, but it is wrong. “I make myself angry” is more accurate to the truth, but it is still incomplete.
The real source that makes people angry is the subtle lies they have been conditioned to believe. Those lies have deceptive undertones and are easy to believe because they take the heat off us to be accountable for our own behavior. The result is to perpetuate the lie from generation to generation and cause us to believe that anger is normal and right. We excuse ourselves because our belief about anger is that it is an entitlement. Our parents are guilty of this lie and their parents and their parents before them and so on and so forth.
The Bible tells us that God created us. The mind of man is God’s creation. Many of us are not aware of the awesome abilities that God created within us. The mind is the wellspring of those wonderful abilities. Most of humanity is in darkness because of the error that exists in our individual belief system. This error, when introduced in to our thinking process, produces bad thinking and emotions, which, when not self-contained, will produce bad behavior. To put it simply, information programmed in to our mind, which has settled in to our individual belief system as truth, could easily be wrong and influence us to make wrong decisions.
Our choice mechanism, the will, operates upon the information that we have within us. The information may be reliable, unreliable, or non-existent (ignorance). Lack of knowledge or ignorance can lead us to make choices based primarily upon our natural tendency to do things that feel good. That’s not good. Unreliable information produces confusion and unmanageability. Information based upon truthful and more complete knowledge will usually yield better decisions and consequences for us. This fact lends credence to the common expression, the truth sets you free.
Few of us can examine whether the thoughts behind our feelings contain error. Trying to grasp a thought and put it under the microscope to see if it is a lie or a truth, is difficult at best. Yet, the lies in our belief system are our biggest problem. It is a lie that tells us that one drink will not hurt us, and that we can control it this time. We know from experience that following through with that thought will bring destruction. This is quite a dilemma we have, and our need is for a solution that addresses the real culprit – the thoughts. Since the thoughts are driven by our underlying beliefs, we need a fail-safe solution that removes the error in our beliefs. That solution is to have truth within us.
Of course, it is God’s truth that gives us the best benefits. This website highlights that fact in the book Eternal Sobriety and the many articles, audio, and video items you find here. Life is abundant with choices. God wants us to thrive in our thinking so that good choices are the norm. Truth sets us free, and recovery is so much better if you are practicing the original principles as practiced by the founders of the A.A. program. These are biblical principles, and when we practice them, obstacles to our faith in God dissolve, and we begin to thrive. It is our thinking that is the mechanism for gaining truth within our beliefs. We are designed by God to grow in to right-side-up thinking. Often, we hear in A.A. that we should stop thinking since it is often bad. But that’s not the problem and is bad advice, as God tells us to renew our mind and that means using our thinker. An excerpt from the book Eternal Sobriety, page 15 states:
Truthful Beliefs Aid Recovery
Our recovery problem is therefore two-fold: a lack of truth in us that influences our behavior, coupled with a flawed nature that influences us to do the opposite of what we know we should do. What we need then is a full solution to our two-fold human problem. The only solution that will completely work requires a change in our nature. This is something we alone cannot accomplish; God must do it for us. God has provided this full solution. He has not left us out of the execution of the plan. We do have a part to play. It has to do with beliefs and accepting that we have spiritual needs that cannot be satisfied by human efforts.
Acceptance that we have bad beliefs and that they need a major overhaul is a must. To accomplish this, we need to become open to truth and become a seeker of it. A serious study of our own human makeup is helpful. We cannot x-ray our belief systems or capture a fleeting thought to examine it, but we can look at some of the key pieces behind the puzzle of human behavior. This will provide us with a level of clarity and enable us to have reasonable manageability over those things that God designed us to manage. Knowledge of truth aids recovery, but it alone is limited in its power. The application of truth, along with prayer and meditation, brings wisdom from God.
Of course, the book Eternal Sobriety provides much more detail and meaning to the understanding that God knows our problem (the sin nature and its harmful results), and gives us, His creation, the full solution. We can only be set free from the sin nature with acceptance of His solution, which is to be born again. This produces in us a new nature designed to renew our minds and improves our thinking ability through application of His truth. It is the renewing of the mind whereby our thinking begins to thrive. This process removes the errors in our beliefs that cause upside-down thinking, and gives us the ability to make better choices. There are numerous scriptures that define how important the thinking process is within us. Here is a good list. Renew the mind scripture
If you are in recovery and are Christian and practicing all of the principles the Bible tells us to practice, the question then becomes IS THERE MORE? Here is an excerpt from the book Eternal Sobriety, pages 27 and 28:
What’s the Rub?
Is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that simple? Well, it is simple, but not easy. Sometimes we do not see people more than once, as relapse is commonplace. Deeply embedded beliefs are difficult to change. Added to this is the deep pulling of our sensual nature toward unhealthy desires that can sway us to act incorrectly. The sin principle is powerful. Denial and old habits, coupled with unhealthy desires, are very powerful forces, and it is sometimes necessary to experience harsher consequences to stimulate our belief systems for change. Many people come in to the program, and do not stick around long enough for the transformation. Even old-timers who have been practicing the program for many years continue to fight changes in their belief system. It is a normal lifetime process – but it does get easier as we grow in maturity. Maturity, in this sense, means living life with truthful beliefs and spiritual principles.
So as we think about our own recovery, we see that we can thrive when we apply His truth and do it His way. At the root of our growth is our unique ability to think, and we always must be seeking His truth. We operate best on His truth and not the world’s. That is how we are designed. And you might think that is enough. But it’s not. There is a tendency with sobriety to evade making other changes that would help us thrive. It is common to hear things like “I quit drinking, isn’t that enough?” For many of us the suggestion to stop smoking brings that objection up. The cancer scare will often be enough to help that problem, but for some it becomes necessary for cancer to happen. Some people in sobriety use common sense and do eliminate their bad habits. Sometimes it just takes time in the program for certain individuals to consider changing. But there is a more severe problem that is now being evidenced and most folks, including some in recovery, are totally in ignorance about it. Yet, it is so obvious it has been hiding in plain sight, and scientific evidence is now accumulating.
We are speaking about the mental health crisis that we have in this country and its connection with the food we eat. In other words, mental disorders are, in fact, metabolic disorders of the brain. It’s the same problem and cause that we see in the skyrocketing rates of obesity, prediabetes (insulin resistance) and diabetes, and the chronic diseases that follow, including Alzheimer’s. That link is now becoming clear. For years mental illness has been seen as a chemical imbalance in the brain. Modern psychiatry has attempted to solve this problem with pharmaceutical medicine. But this approach does not put the disease in to remission. Medicine has its place, but what they are missing is that the brain is being affected in the same ways that people’s weight, and people’s glucose, and insulin systems, and people’s heart health are being affected. And that is largely why we are seeing skyrocketing rates of mental disorders.
The introduction by some psychiatrists of Keto and Carnivore diets as medicine for mental disorders is resulting in lifelong, life-threatening conditions going in to full lasting remission. And many individuals no longer require drugs. We are talking about mental disorders such as bipolar, attention deficit disorder, Schizophrenia, paranoia, and anxiety disorders. And it’s done with a simple change of diet. Could it be that the depressions, the fears and anxieties, and angers we experience in recovery are caused not only by untruthful beliefs that affect us emotionally, but also being caused by poor metabolism. Poor metabolism is caused by the food we eat. The same metabolism issues that cause diabetes is also in the brain. Fix the poor metabolism and you fix it all. If you are insulin resistant or have diabetes, you have mental degradation going on. Sobriety is challenging enough without our contribution of addiction to sugar and the feel-good foods designed to addict us.
This is the point. The path to godly recovery, which Eternal Sobriety subscribes to, not only includes practicing Christian spiritual principles, abstaining from mind altering chemicals, but also practicing health habits which provide the best physical and mental support for our body, a body that was created by God. The idea that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and should be cared for accordingly is articulated in the New Testament. First Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV advises, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.”
We end this article with:
Question yourself as to whether you are one of the people saying,” I quit drinking, isn’t that enough?”
Notes:
We recently published an article on this website titled “Building Character – As God Sees It- Crucify the Fat.” Revisit that here for more about the food problems we find in this country and the numerous links that look at metabolic health, including more on the link with mental disorders. https://www.eternalsobriety.org/building-character-as-god-sees-it-crucify-the-fat/
If you want to investigate the mental disorder connection with the food we eat, I recommend two books, both written by Harvard trained Psychiatrists. The first is “Brain Energy” written by Christopher M. Palmer, M.D. and the second is “Change your Diest, – Change Your Mind” written by Georgia Ead, M.D.
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