Pride is the downfall of every alcoholic. If you are one then you have formed an unearned and undeserved image of yourself that you have cherished and protected.

Pride is the downfall of every alcoholic. If you are one then you have formed an unearned and undeserved image of yourself that you have cherished and protected. The world calls it “Self’-esteem”. Being convinced that this unmerited and elevated ‘self’—esteem is a good and necessary part of your personality -  has encouraged you to foolishly cultivate it.

To develop lifestyle that supports and maintains your own creation of a you for the world to see is easy to do. In a world where nearly everyone is a "mini-Creator" similarly engaged in their own narcissist existence, you will be applauded for your "self-esteem". It will be seen as a positive attribute, being mistaken for confidence.  But confidence only comes through God-consciousness - not self-consciousness.

As you mistook one for the other, you were able to fit right in with the rest of the world; which similarly pursues activities, people and situations that help build false and exaggerated personal icons of self.

We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected.

When we deny the self of the judgment-food it needs to over-inflate its self-worth the ego cannot help but shrink to its proper size. This is one of the precepts of spiritual living – the kind laid out in the blueprint for daily life proposed by the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

They suggest that the alcoholic needs to experience a “deflation of ego” – a deep leveling of pride in order to awaken and to be placed in a  position of neutrality that has become known as being a “recovered alcoholic”.

This is a safe place from where the alcoholic should not sit in admiration of accomplishment but rather it is a starting platform from where he first begins his spiritual growth toward perfection

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