I have even asked a drunk such an awful question as “Do you really want to stop drinking forever?” Or “Have you had any AA contact before?”—as if prior membership were a requirement, or perhaps grounds for disqualification. Or “What kind of pills do you take?” I have been impatient with a slipper, too, forgetting that this binge could be his last, as one of my own finally was (so far).
In fact, just today I found myself deciding that I do not care for so-and-so’s brusque and hypocritical brand of AA; nor do I like what that fanatic such-and-such says so rudely about spiritual matters; and I can’t stand the phony-sounding piety of still another fellow AA.
I fear that in my heart I am ruling out of my AA anybody who does not meet my own high and mighty requirements for membership. It is as if each time I disdain an alcoholic for whatever reason, I add another brick to a wall supposedly safeguarding my recovery, or at least keeping it cozy and comfortable for me. And if I keep on adding rejection bricks or exclusion bricks to my wall of safety, you know where I’ll wind up: isolated behind the wall I have built, right back where I was before AA, alone.
One of my own first AA contacts did suggest that, later on, I could earn my AA membership if I wanted to. And I wanted to desperately, because I was already feeling smothered by the enormous debt of gratitude that I felt I owed to AA. I do not think I could have survived the burden of owing so much if AA had let me go on thinking it was all being done only for unworthy me. But I was assured that AA people kept themselves sober by trying to help me. It was also a great relief to be told that I could, in a sense, pay off my debt simply by talking to someone else some day, as I had been talked to. It was not suggested that I help only the clean, the proper, and the unpilled, the nonbrusque and unhypocritical, the nonfanatics, the pious, or the impious.
Apparently, for me, the price of our AA fellowship (First Tradition) and of our fearless trust of each other (Second Tradition), if I want them, is learning unstinting acceptance of others—a love which can be claimed by anyone who wants it. He may not say he wants it, or act as if he does, but if the desire is in his heart, even unknown to himself, that is enough.
B.L., New York, N.Y.
Caught In Hateland
December 1966
During my drinking years I was a general all-around expert on all subjects. Now I feel that my experience qualifies me as an expert on only two, resentments and rationalizations.
Although there is a relationship between them, since resentments are developed against the people and situations which we think are the cause of our trouble, it will be simpler to discuss them one at a time. This is about resentments.
After working on a personal inventory for about eight months, it became clear that one of the worst of my character defects was a tendency to harbor resentments. Tendency did I say? My mind was one big total resentment against the world and every thing in it. It didn’t know how to think any other way. My thoughts were automatically resentful—and that is a clue as to why I believed I had no resentments at all.
I really believed that all the things I thought, were true. I thought my boss was a dope, that my wife was constantly putting upon me, people on the sidewalks and in the subways got in my way. I was critical of my friends, business associates, the government and the world in general. I constantly had hurt feelings because people didn’t treat me with the kindness and thoughtfulness I deserved. Just the opposite.
But there was little I could do to change all these things and people. I couldn’t help it if my boss was a dope or that people behaved so miserably. True, I suffered for it, but it was not my fault, and there was almost nothing I could do about it except fight back and make the best of it.
On looking back, I can see that during my whole life before AA, I believed that I judged other people objectively. What I believed, was to my mind, fact. It never occurred to me that the “facts” might be wrong.
So after joining AA, when my new friends and club members talked to me about resentments, I said, “Who me? I don’t have any”—and I was completely honest about it.
After a few months in AA I began making attempts at the Fourth Step—efforts which repeatedly turned out to be neither searching nor fearless. Many years of rationalizing kept forcing me to turn the painful spotlight away from me onto others. But persistence paid off. After about eight months of effort on the Fourth and Tenth Steps, the only sudden thing that ever happened to me in AA happened!
In one flash of insight I saw that if I were to wait for all the other people to shape up, I was going to get drunk and stay drunk a long, long time. In that instant I saw that all the things I had considered facts, were not facts at all, but my own thoughts. And that this was very fortunate, because I could do something about changing my thoughts but nothing about changing the people around me.
So the fault was mine after all. I felt humiliated; but there was a sense of relief, too. While I felt totally inadequate to deal with the faults of the world and its people, I did not feel quite so inadequate to deal with my own mind. So I think that the most important factor in eliminating resentments is to know you have them. You can’t fix something if you don’t know what’s wrong.
So then, what to do? Well, I decided that every time a resentment came into my mind, I’d toss it out. Is that so? After a few days I found it wasn’t that easy. Resentments were so automatic that I didn’t recognize them unless I consciously thought about them. Here the Tenth Step was invaluable because, although it doesn’t say so in so many words, I interpreted it to mean that I should do it every day. Each night before going to sleep, I reviewed the day, and every day I found that I had been building up resentful thoughts. And I also found that if I recognized them before they grew into big ten-megaton size, it was not difficult to toss them out. Merely recognizing them seemed to do the trick. But if I didn’t recognize them, and they got to be real big massive resentments, I found that I could not just cast them out. In spite of my efforts to get rid of them, they rankled around in my mind for days, until time finally wore them out, and my mind went on to other things. Oddly enough, the hardest ones to deal with were the ones in which I happened to be right about the underlying facts.
As time passed, I recognized resentments more readily, and I began to learn little devices that helped me in getting rid of them.
For instance, I learned to reason about them this way: A resentment is made up of two parts: (1) the facts, and (2) the emotional content. As to the facts, I may be right or I may be wrong, but that’s not important right now. As soon as I can, I will review them and try to find out the actual truth of the matter. Right now my stomach is turning over, and that’s wrong. It’s my stomach, and I’m the one who’s suffering, and it’s totally unnecessary. Worse, it incapacitates me to a degree that is relative to the strength of the anger. If it is very strong I can’t think straight. In fact, it blocks me completely from thinking about anything else. For a while, my mind is consumed with it.
What I am really doing is giving up my own liberty and freedom. I am putting myself at the mercy of anyone who comes along, who either consciously or unconsciously chooses to make me unhappy and to interfere with my effectiveness.
As a practical matter, if I react angrily I lose every chance of convincing anyone that my view is correct. In business, I am able to convince others of my point of view (assuming I happen to be correct) only if I respect the opposing opinion, and present mine in an agreeable and friendly manner. Only that way can I be convinced, never by someone angrily trying to cram something down my throat.
Such reasoning helps, but it is not all-powerful against emotions. For reason alone can’t do it all. So I learned another tactic at meetings—to do something nice for someone, anyone. Give someone a deserved compliment. Say “How are you today?” to the phone operator. Just show a little human interest in anyone around you. Invite someone to lunch. Order some tickets to take your wife to a show. It is amazing how little of this sort of thing it takes to