Angry

Angry:  Feeling, showing, or resulting from anger; as, an angry reply; wild and stormy, as if angry; inflamed or sore, as a cut, wound, etc.


"If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.  The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us.  They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison."


I like the subtle implications that I occasionally uncover when I read from The Book, and actually pay attention to what I'm reading.  For instance, how about the sweet turn of a phrase "if we were to live."  Boy, if that doesn't get your attention.  Go ahead and do what you've been doing as far as anger is concerned but if you don't want to die maybe you can try something else. 


I also like how the authors snuck in the word "normal."  They were trying to be nice but the implication is that I'm not normal.  It's like the Step which concludes with "restore us to sanity."  I was sober for a few years when I said: "Hey!'  I finally got it.  I'm nuts.  They're calling me nuts.  I was offended for a while.  Now I see that I'm definitely nuts when it comes to drinking and drugs but nuts is a very apt summation of my behavior and of my thinking even today.


I believe that I can over-simplify things, too.  Generally, no; I complicate the hell out of everything so I err on the side of simple, but sometimes I need to look for a little nuance.  I don't interpret the caution about anger to mean that we can control our emotions so that we never get angry.  Anger is a normal human emotion and it serves an important instinctual purpose.  I'll never forget the stunned look on the face of a therapist when I tried to explain why I wasn't angry about something that had happened that I clearly needed to be angry about.  Pretending I wasn't angry didn't make it so, and it made how I felt a lot, lot worse.  I think the warning in the passage I quoted is that when I get angry it can lead to a Resentment, which is the "number one" offender when it comes to relapses for an alcoholic.  That's a good phrase, too: Number One Offender.  That gets my attention as well.


Anyway, when I get angry -- and when I say "angry" I mean "afraid" but I mask it with anger because it's a lot more manly sounding than fear, even though anything even remotely "manly" is a total joke in my case  -- I try to take some time to look at what's going on in my head and in my gut to make me feel this fear, which I often turn outward into anger and sometimes inward to depression.  It's an uncomfortable, unsettling practice but it's also very rewarding.  I get down to the root causes of why I'm afraid and I leave the other person, place, thing, or institution out of the equation altogether.  


I can also see that when I'm pissed off that it poisons a lot of other things in my life.  Little slights and irritations that I would easily slough off when I'm spiritually fit take on a life of their own.  I've been trying out a new men's meeting and it seems a little cliquey to me.  I'm not assimilating very quickly, which annoys me, and all of a sudden I'm ready to blow up the world.


It's all about me.  Everything else is just fine.