The Number One Offender

Before I started getting sober, more than one person observed that I was an angry woman. These observations startled me.  I didn't think I was particularly angry.  Sure, things and people occasionally annoyed me, and, rarely, I thought, stirred me to resentment or out-and-out anger.  But I didn't spend my day being pissed off at the world like some people I'd met.

When I joined AA, there came a time to take a personal inventory. I listed all the flaws that I knew I had, and all the purported reasons for continuing to indulge in those flaws.  Early on, I did it just because it was expected of me.  It was painful. No one likes to admit they aren't perfect, even if it is abundantly clear to themselves and those around them that such is the case.  Once admitted, I then asked a Higher Power I didn't necessarily believe in to relieve me of those flaws and fill me with what that Power wanted me to have.  All of this was done because I knew there were sober people walking around who said to do it, because it worked.

My rational mind didn't really think it would.  It seemed like hocus-pocus of the highest order.  But I had the gift of desperation at that point, and it certainly couldn't harm me to try it, could it?

At about the same time, I was also reading the Big Book, as I still do.  It was there that I stumbled on the passage about anger and resentment, the dubious luxuries that inspired the title of this blog.  It said:

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We have found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunshine of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. (Alcoholics Anonymous, pg.66)


When I first read it, I didn't think it had particular relevance to me or my life, seeing as I didn't have any resentments to speak of.  Still, it stayed with me, and I found myself drawn to the passage again and again as I grew in the program.  They'd also told me that I'd shut myself off from my feelings, that the alcoholic eventually doesn't really feel, so, was it possible that I was angry and resentful and didn't even know it?

It was. Slowly, my feelings were coming back, and I was noticing them. Resentments big and small were becoming recognizable.  By golly,  I was an angry woman!  What else had I lied to myself about all these years?  First, the extent of my disorder, next that I had feelings, now, that those feelings included ones I'd been trained from earliest childhood to deny.

Now I do try to see my resentments as they crop up. Usually, they are justified.  I tend to get angry and resentful about people and situations that appear to harm others, physically or emotionally.  I try to see them so I can first, really feel them, and, second, turn them over, since they usually fall under the category of "things I can't change".  So it is contingent on me to accept them and move on.  I'm no longer the boss of the world, and it is rarely my responsibility, or even my business, to be offended on behalf of others.

As I grow more practiced at this, I find it easier to do, particularly with the small daily annoyances that I previously didn't even see.  However, it seems much harder to do when the offense seems particularly grievous.  Right now, I'm dealing with a resentment that has been niggling at me for some months.  It is about a person I frequently see in the rooms who appears to be hell-bent on stirring the drama pot wherever he goes.  I've tried muttering "principles before personalities" so many times I probably say it in my sleep.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it has seemed to fall under the category of "small resentments".  Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I found myself in a meeting with this person.  When the meeting opened, a member who ordinarily doesn't bare his soul, let alone ask for help, told us that he was having trouble with his Higher Power because his mother was sick, and a loving God wouldn't do to her what was being done to her.  Before a millisecond had elapsed, the person I have trouble with launched into one of the most unkind, unfeeling and truly cruel responses I have ever heard in a meeting.  I wanted to jump out of my seat and put my foot firmly up his butt, since that seemed to be the source of his words.  I didn't, of course, because it was not my place, and there were plenty of people lined up to do it for me.  He was shot down in short order and left the meeting abruptly.

Since then, I've been trying to turn my resentment over.  Harboring a resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.  This person doesn't know I resent him, and if he did, it's doubtful that he would care.  He's self-centered enough to think that he is right above all others, so our opinions matter little to him.  So the person being harmed in this is, guess who?  Me.

One of the beauties of the AA program is that I am given all the tools to deal with life, if I will only use them.  One of the tools is a trick for overcoming resentments.  I've been told to pray for the person I resent every day for 14 days.  I'm not a big one for formal prayer, but I've certainly been known to shoot a thought or request out to the universe on occasion.  So, I'm doing that now.  This is day two, and already I'm starting to feel some clarity on this issue.  I know this man is not well, and I must learn to view him as a sick person and hope that he can heal.  It seemed impossible yesterday.  Yesterday he was just an asshole.  Today, he's coughing a little.  Maybe twelve days from now, I'll see him for what he really is.  But it's doing me a world of good in the process.

Dubious Luxuries: The Beginning

A little over nine months ago, I drank what I hope was my last beer. After a series of unfortunate events, I finally decided to get real with myself and join the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It turned out to be the best decision of my life.

One of the first things I did was get a sponsor.  One of the first things my sponsor told me to do was start keeping a journal.  She had me writing three pages every morning, immediately upon awakening. Then I was to call her and read the pages to her.  I hated it.  I did it for three months, but I hated every minute of it.

It might seem odd that someone who is a self-described writer would have trouble with the simple task of journaling three pages a day, but these weren't just any old pages. This was a literal transcription of my thoughts, good, bad, indifferent, and unedited. Therein lay the rub.  I was to turn off my internal editor and be rigorously honest, with myself, and with my sponsor.  It was excruciating.

It was also key to breaking down my denial about myself, my drinking, and my life. My sponsor was a harsh task mistress, but she showed me how much of myself I was ignoring, how self-centered and unrealistic I was, and, I must admit, the good parts about me, too.  For unrelated reasons, she's not my sponsor anymore.  I quit journaling shortly after we parted ways.  Now I realize that was a mistake.

Already I've started taking my sobriety for granted.  I do try to practice the principles in all my affairs. I attend regular meetings. I read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.  But if, as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living, then I'm sliding down a slippery slope. Writing is how I have always examined my life, and on that front, I've been tremendously slack of late.

So, I'm taking a do-over and starting this blog. I named it "Dubious Luxuries" after the passage in the Big Book which says that anger and resentment are the dubious luxury of normal men (i.e. non-alcoholics) (1). I'm an alcoholic and I can't afford to let anything stand in the way of my sobriety, including staying silent about it when my entire identity revolves around writing.  I've been known to entertain anger and resentment, as well as other dubious luxuries.  It's my hope that this will be the place where I can shine light on those things and, as a consequence, move beyond them.

That's not to say that this blog will be all doom and gloom. That's not my nature. I love to laugh and to elicit laughter. So, I'll probably clown it up some, when the topic warrants it.  But the primary purpose of this journal is to share my experience, strength and hope, first with myself, and then with those of you who read it.  It's one more way for me to do my 12th step (2), many would argue, is the most important step after the first (3).

Welcome to my journal, and to my journey.  Together, we can make the Promises (4) come true!

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(1) Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 66

(2) Step 12- Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 60)

(3) Step 1- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-- that our lives had become unmanageable.  (Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 59)

(4) Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 83