Resentments are the "number one" offender?
 

Sorry, but I disagree. Everytime I went out is because life became good and I didn't know how to handle it.

The idea that I need a resentment to drink is foreign to me. However, this pushes me on the outskirts of AA. I need to be an angry and bitter drunk in order to be apart of AA. I need resentments in order to be apart of AA.

I don't need a resentment to drink. I am an alcoholic. It doesn't make sense that resentments are our number one offender, but perhaps I am an aberration.

I just don't understand. Perhaps this is why many people have told me that I don't belong in AA.

Each time I returned to drinking...there was no precise reason to point to.
However I remain an AA recovered alcoholic...because it gives me purpose and joy ....:)

But the BB says that resentments kill us. I don't find this to be true. Do you?

Did resentments lead you back to the bottle?

Doesn't mean there aren't number 2, number 3 and number 4 offenders.

I mean the book simply says that the most dangerous of all thing to an alcoholic is resentment. And I've found it useful in examining my character defects.

Most of the time I resent something, not all, but most it's because I'm being selfish or something. I just find it a useful tool, to list resentments.

But I think there are a number of things that can get us to stop doing the work necessary to maintain conscious contact. Success is one too. For me it's like ...

"Hey isn't life great, maybe I was just making a mountain out of a molehill back then".

That's what Step 1 is for. Nowhere in Step 1 does it say you have to be an angry bitter drunk. You don't have to go jail. You don't even have to have a tattoo. If you can't stop when you start - and you can't stop from starting. You might be suffering from an illness of the mind - that only a spiritual experience can conquer.

AA's steps, outllined for alcoholics is one way, a great way. I love it.

If someone tells you, you don't belong. Maybe you resent that ? There's a good resentment to write down. Then extend into the third and fourth column. Feel free to do that after you tell whomever told you that - to not worry about where YOU belong but perhaps start worrying about what they're doing. Give them a resentment back.

If they belong in AA, they'll know what to do. :winkysmileything:

Absolutely, and I am forever indebted to AA for this, but I don't believe that resentments are the number one offender among alcoholics, but perhaps I am different.

Do you really need a resentment to drink?

But the idea behind the inventory is to find out that which has been and could be blocking me from - living free - in union with a Higher Power. Before I even take a drink.

So they suggest, look at our resentments, fear, sex relations and harms done others.

Just out of curiosity, what defintion of "Resentment" are you working off ?


Oh and to answer your question. No. What I "need" to drink is stop doing the work of at least - 10, 11, and 12 daily.

But the inventory consist of resentments, but what if you don't pick up because of resentments? What if you pick up because life is going good and you don't know how to handle it?

Again, this places me on the outskirts of AA since I am not an mean, angry, resentful drunk.

Do you have fears ?


And I don't think "mean" "angry" etc.. necessarily have to be in a "resentment". Resentment is to "re-feel" to "feel over".

So let's use that. In a way when you get successful you "re feel" as if you're able to drink safely. That's kind of a resentment. Broad definition, no doubt. I wish I could help.

I know I came in and swore "I don't resent anyone". But man, once I started composing that list, a bunch came out. A lot.

They still flow freely, and I"m not angry, mean, but I'm a bit over sensitive, grandiose, and have some delusions about how people in the world should relate to me.

Sure, but don't normal people.

Your point?

it took me a year and a half to TRULY start identifying some resentments. Even today, very few of them are based in anger - like the BB shows in the examples. Most of my current resentments, and many many of the resentments in my past, are rooted instead in fear, jealousy & hurt feelings on my part.

I don't know that any single one of them would take me back out but the group of them....the whole lot....though about over and over.......well, that's something I know better than to mess with. If nothing else, they weaken my spiritual condition...which separates me from the one power I need to stay sober. So, in that respect, I have to agree with the book....although, as I said, it took me several years in sobriety to reach that conclusion.

There's all kinds of things about human nature that can block us from the "sunlight of the spirit" from our natural instinct to survive.

Yes, much of what I found in my inventory is "normal". What separates me is simply that I addressed that "disconnect" from life - with alcohol. It was my solution.

Wouldn't be a problem and would be a very nice solution if I could control my intake and drink on my terms alone. But that wasn't the case, so I'm alcoholic.

Take the alcohol away and I"m left with "ic".

What's the ic ? That's the part of the inventory, identify the "ic". Whatever it is. Whatever blocks you.

If I'm blocked, for too long, I'll probably drink again. Doesn't have to be a resentment but in my experience being resentful is the most powerful "block" I"ve had.

I'm not angry with you at all, but I'll probably "re-feel" this conversation.

So you'll go in the first column. It will because "He didn't understand what I was trying to say". Then in the third column it will be, it affects my "self-esteem".

In the end ? Was I being helpful ? Or was I trying to impress on a message board with knowledge and experience a fellow on the board ?

My intent was to be helpful. That's it. But ..... underneath all that is a desire to be considered "helpful" in front of others. My Social Instinct too is affected.

So I think the exact nature of this "wrong" of this "resentfulness" is Pride and Vanity.

But I'm not angry. I'm just "feeling". From what I read since I've been here, I dig Antiderivative's words. If Antiderivative is being told by people he doesn't belong, that bothers me. I guess those folks belong in another row.

I digress. I don't have the experience you seek, I was wrong to respond. I was a very angry, mean, and bitter drunk.

I hope you find someone that can shed light on this for you. I hope I didn't muddy the waters, trying to be cool and all "recovered" like.

I fail to understand how you can classify all in AA as bitter, angry, drunks.... Isn't that a generalization and assumption on your part? I have not found many in AA who would consider themselves bitter or angry drunks. Yes, we all have issues that we need to work on but to classify all in AA as bitter, angry drunks is just not right. I would classify those in AA as people who are looking for a solution to the problem of alcoholism. Everyone has character defects and those vary from person to person. People that work the program of AA work on changing those defects into assets. If they happen to be as you say a bitter, angry person then they apply the 12 Steps to help change that in themselves. AA is not a cure it is a life long process of change.

As far as resentments being the number one offender you might do a check on why you consider everyone in AA a bitter, angry drunk as that does sound like a resentment to me. This could be why you feel like you are on the outskirts of AA. But that is just my personal opinion. As others have stated there are many reasons for a person to go back out and drink. The Big Book does not state that resentments are the only reason a person would go out an drink.

Even my sponsor suggested this to me. I am not a resentful person and hence do not belong in AA.

Sorry for making generalization, but this is what I have been told.

AntiDerivative,
Have you ever been: dumped by a girlfriend, rejected, fired from a job, passed over for a promotion, cut off in traffic, given unsolicited advice, back stabbed, made the object of gossip, lied to, ripped off/stolen from, treated unfairly, embarrassed, bullied, blamed for something you didn't do, dissed, disappointed, verbally abused, emotionally abused, physically abused, sexually abused, and the list could go on.

Have any of those things happened to you? These are the type of things that typically result in resentments. (i.e., we re-feel and re-live the experience kind of like a slow motion video replay of a football tackle, pass, kick-off, etc.)

The point of the inventory is not to determine why we drank. The point to the inventory is to find out what is blocking us off from a Higher Power. What blocks us off from a Higher Power is resentment, fear, sex conduct, hurts and harms. If we are full of the negative, there is no room for the positive (or goodness or God or Higher Power).

I would encourage you to suspend judgment and thought for now. When it comes to spiritual principles, it is not necessary: (1) to understand how or why, (2) nor is it necessary for something to make sense intellectually, (3) nor is it necessary for one to believe the action will work, (4) nor is it necessary to agree -- for it to work.

Let go of trying to understand and take the action that the inventory process is asking you to take. Others have told you that this process (the steps) worked for them. You will never know if this stuff works unless you do it. After all what do you have to lose?
Susan

anti...I removed your 2nd post calling us names.
Please go find something that allows you to live in joy and sobreity....you well know AA is not for everyone.

Ok, I want to be like Neil Young.
YouTube - ‪Neil Young - Natural Beauty‬‏

That is my spiritual calling for now.

That is certainly your choice to be done, AntiDerivative. And it is certainly your choice to decide that AA is not the recovery path you want to take.

I am having a hard time understanding your logic however.

You have not taken the steps, yet you know in advance that they won't work for you? You have no experience but you know the outcome of an experience you haven't even had? Wow.

Susan

Anger vs. Resentment? Pretty much the same thing. Is there a God, is there not a God? Doesn't matter. Do I drink because things are going great and I don't know how to handle them, or do I drink because I have a resentment? Doesn't matter - all I know is that I can't handle drinking; no matter what the cause. Am I unique from all the other alcoholics in the world? You betcha! That's what makes me, me.

I spent years intellectualizing concepts while I chugged down drinks. I wore paper slippers in a detox unit. I spent time in rehab. I spent time on the outpatient alcoholic treatment counselor's couch. I joined AA. It was the combination of all of the above that got me sober. It was the ACTION that mattered; not the contemplation of action. I also had to receive the help from all those sources with an open mind; because otherwise, it would have meant squat. I had to be able to hear it and try it before I judged it. I had to do EVERYTHING that I had done in my life up until then differently; whether it was comfortable or not.

I spent my life, up until I got sober, on the fringe of society. I was unique; I was so different from every one else! I sneered at them, and it was because I had a deep rooted fear of being rejected by them. Better to judge them than to take a look at me. Today I don't believe I am a conformist; but do consider myself a SOBER non-conformist. I'm essentially still me, but not the drunken, self-pitying, superior me from the days of yore.

I went to AA. I worked the steps. I knew I had to have a clear mind in order for any counseling to be helpful; otherwise it was time just sitting on a couch while I let the BS roll out of my mouth - the justifications, the poor me's, blah blah blah.... I didn't have any time to waste, because I spent two decades destroying myself with my "uniqueness" and trying to "think" my way out of the problem.

That's my story. If AA is not for you, then it is not for you. Perhaps a therapist's couch where you can investigate why you don't feel deserving of good things in your life that makes you sabotage yourself - I don't know. Whatever makes your clock tick...

I truly hope you find your path to a sober, happy life. No lie.

Well, I hope Anti comes back... Seems he had a pretty good resentment going there, LOL, but he raises an important point. The whole resentment/inventory thing seemed counterintuitive to me, at first, as well. Thankfully I found my way through the fourth step and it was both more and less than I thought it was... As was mentioned by others, the fourth and fifth step removed many barriers between myself and my higher power...

Sounds like his sponsor wasn't a good fit... or didn't have the answer that anti needed to hear or that anti wasn't able to hear it... "I am not a resentful person and hence do not belong in AA" ... someone got it wrong there, don't you think?

Just because they say resentments is the number one offender doesn't mean there aren't many others in the list...

I used to have a pattern, get in ****, stop drinking for a few months, get cash in pocket, new gf, new car, new flat and then drink...repeated it for many years so i am exactly the same as you in that i drank when things were going great!

This does not keep me on the outskirts of AA or prevented me from working the steps though...admittedly i was really ****** this last time so i would have done anything to get sober and stay sober:-)