Clean House

Some more thoughts from The Little Red Book, a semi-official AA publication (although it's printed by Hazelden, so there's an unofficial air about it) from 1970. It got a lot of semi-official input from the cognoscenti in A.A.. The parts in italics that follow show direct quotes from The Big Book and are to be heeded. The stuff in parenthesis are my components and can be safely ignored.

Here we go . . .

Resentment is common to all alcoholics.  We are never safe from it and as intangible as it may seem, it does pay off in material ways with destructive force and energy.  Resentment is dynamite to the alcoholic.  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.  From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have not only been mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.  Resentment is pure mental drunkenness.  

(I confess to enjoying the occasional resentment. It's such a smug, self-satisfying feeling, primal and inherent, to nurture and grow a resentment, making sure it gets plenty of water and sunshine. Criticizing other people, places, and institutions can be deeply satisfying. Think I'm wrong? Have a Facebook account? Scroll down through a few pages and see how many of the posts are pure, unadulterated bitching. I know my whole being expands when I'm expressing my superiority over everyone else.)

(The following is from the LRB's discussion on Step Four.)

We list people, institutions and principles with whom we were angry.  We ask ourselves why we were angry.  Has your life been any happier because of this resentment?  “It is plain that a life which includes deep resentments leads only to futility and unhappiness.  To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while.”

Criticism, a form of negative judgment, is absolutely out of our fellowship picture.

(If I'm not able to criticize others how exactly am I going to be able to explain why I'm right? If I'm not criticizing you I may have to pay attention to me.)

Dishonesty.

(No need to expound here.) 

He cannot afford to subject himself to self-pity because of its relationship to resentment and inferiority.

(Self-pity is also a deeply satisfying state of mind. It's a real attention-grabber. Look at me! Look at how bad I have it! Don't you feel sorry for me!?) (This is a rhetorical question. We don't feel sorry for you.)

Few, if any, men or women escape the emotional monstrosity of jealousy.

(I'm enjoying the noun "monstrosity." Nice touch. I'm also wondering whether I'm always jealous or always envious.)

The practice of tolerance (the opposite of intolerance) is a part of recovery.  It aids spiritual progress and helps us to control our emotions.

(So I guess the point is that intolerance retards our spiritual progress and sharpens our uncontrollable emotions.)

The tendency of alcoholics to discount fear as contributing to alcoholism often causes newcomers to underrate its importance to their inventories.  (Are you fucking kidding me? What alcoholic isn't consumed by fear? These guys are way off base here.)  As alcoholics we have used a few of fear’s positive qualities but utilized mostly the negative ones, specializing to a great extent on anxiety, dread, worry, uncertainty, and apprehension of harm or evil that always seemed just around the corner. 

The alcoholic is only human.  He will be subject to all human impulses and often faced by conditions that arouse him, but he need not be ignorant of the treacherous nature of anger or the destructive inroads its impulses can make upon his recovery.