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The catalog of human mental suffering encompasses a great deal more than resentment.

Yes. But we are talking about resentment in regard to recovery from alcoholism. Are you disagreeing with the BB when it says resentment is a dangerous emotion to a newly sober (or even long term sober) alcoholic ?

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So, Claire, you are saying that the ideas expressed in the BB and 12/12 are nonesense ?

You think a life which includes deep resentment is healthy and we do not squander time that would otherwise have been worth while if we indulge in this resentment ?

I see. No wonder you don't like AA. You must enjoy being angry all the time. I wish I was angry less, myself. All in all it doesn't accomplish too much. It may motivate me for a few minutes but there are other ways to become motivated that aren't as dangerous.

BTW, if someone raped your daughter (God forbid) how would your anger at the rapist help your daughter ? She would need your love and care. The anger may be helpful if you were there and it motivated you to protect her, but after the fact it would be pretty useless, don't you think ? The police would have the job of carrying out justice. Your anger would have very little effect on anyone but yourself.

AS far as people being sent by the court or the medical community, I tend to agree with you that it goes against the traditions, but Ebby T was court ordered in the pre-AA days. So, there is some history of it.

But, if a person is 100% responsible for their actions as I've read on this thread (and also happen to believe) then if they drink themselves into a position where it's AA meetings or loss of job then they are the one responsible for getting themselves into that position. You can't have it both ways. People aren't all powerful until they enter AA and get a dose of kryptonite or something and all of a sudden become victims.

Your position isn't consistent.

Both.

If you prefer, I'll put the entire BB quote about resentment and anger. If anything, the full quote makes the nonsensical character of the ideas promoted even more clear:

"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 worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. 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." BB page 66.

Is that enough context for you? How about I reproduce the 12&12's entire "spiritual axiom" quote too:

"It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us of A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it."

Yep...pretty clear. Anger is forbidden. Even anger that is justified. Under this logic, if someone, for example, raped my 16 year old daughter, and I was angry about that, something would be wrong with me. How does this make sense?

In addition, I totally disagree with the notion that different emotional rules apply to alcoholics than to other people. In fact, I think that the idea that alcoholics are fundamentally different from other people is one of the most dangerous ideas promoted by AA. This concept is what lies underneath the truly sad tendency of alcoholics to hide themselves in AA meetings for years under the misconception that Only An Alcoholic Can Understand an Alcoholic.

However, and this is important...I have no problem if YOU want to believe this stuff. The problem I have, and it is a big one, is that people are SENT to AA by the medical community and by courts, given no choice in the matter, and then told that their lives (or their jobs, or their freedom) depend upon their acceptance of these notions. Not only is this wrong, it actually flies in the face of AA's own 11th tradition ("Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion...").

Claire

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Not too bad John. Not too bad. :cool:

Whatever about the movies, and Wikipedia, the original text does not really support this suggestion. Other than pure malevolence, the motive most clearly suggested for the monster is rage and envy at the thought that the warriors in Hrothgar's mead-hall were having such a good time at their tipsy feasts, while he was stuck out in the fens, bogs, marshes, Steps and so on. Whatever - having Grendel in one's mead-hall is not a pleasant notion.

Beowulf - you know, I actually read the bloody thing in the original - four times - when I was an undergraduate. I must have been mad. Indeed, I probaly needed to be Restored to Sanity. Hmm - maybe literary medievalists need a Twelve Step fellowship - ASA (Anglo-Saxon Anonymous) perhaps ?

The Twelve Steps of ASA -

1. We admitted we were powerless over Migration Period literature - that our lives had become unreadable.

2. Came to believe that a Ring Giver greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the Giver of Victories as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our grammar and syntax.

5. Admitted to Wotan, to ourselves, and to another human being (or troll, or elf, or sea monster, or professor, or whatever else was handy) the exact nature of our errors.

6. Were entirely ready to have the One-Eyed Wanderer, or whoever, remove all these defects of linguistics.

7. Humbly asked the All-Wielder to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had supplied with mistranslations, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when they were going for the same lecturer position, in which case - in true Anglo-Saxon style - we prosecuted a blood feud against them to the death.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were inaccurate promptly corrected it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Professor of Old and Middle English as we understood him (which did not happen often) praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and then applied for that lecturing job.

12. Having had an academic awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to poor benighted fellow students, and to practice translating the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Dream of the Rood, the Wanderer, the Seafarer, the Elder Edda and the Icelandic sagas in all our affairs.

Um ... no. Don't think this would work ...

Yours from the Mead Hall, the only thegn drinking Perrier,

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Claire, what you said is the principle that resentment is dangerous and futile is nonsense.

So, you must be saying that resentment is okay. I don't know how you can say a principle is nonsense without disagreeing on the premise on which that principle is based.

I don't think I'm refusing to understand you. I think I am trying to understand you. Why would you disagree with something you don't actually disagree with ? You aren't consistent. Which, is consistent with the anti-AA movement.

"So, Claire, you are saying that the ideas expressed in the BB and 12/12 are nonesense ?"

Yes. You understand me perfectly, although you have chosen to mischaracterize my dislike of AA principles as being suggestive that one should be angry all the time. Of course, that is not what I said at all. However, what you've done is a perfect example of the other thing I don't like about AA, which is the tendency of some in the program to simply refuse to understand that there are other ways of looking at the world besides what Bill W wrote in those books.

Claire

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JR, I'm with you and Xenophon on this one. I'm not playing this game.

Claire

Too bad, I was hoping you could share something useful.

I thought maybe you would compare the AA method of dealing with anger to your SMART method. But you aren't here to spread recovery, you're here to attack AA and that seems an awful lot like a resentment to me.

Oh well. Best to pick up your marbles and go home.

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Jr, thanks for catching my post... it came out completely wrong. This is what what it was intended to say:

Hi Ray,

I have always enjoyed and admired your intellect, writing and reasoning

abilities. In your initial post and subsequent posts by other members (including

many of the disagreements), the discussion was eye-opening, informed,

intelligent and thought provoking.

Ray, please continue... there are many of us who have derived a lot from this

thread.

David

Edited by David O
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  • 3 weeks later...

spiritual principles are service to others thus serving ourselves and honoring the natural balance of life in general. no i dont speak for AA but do have a bit of an understanding of the principles and methods. it states that a higher power is what we need to find. weather a group, tree, door knob or God. it has 2 requirements. 1 to be greater than we are as individuals. 2 that it be loving and caring. I am a spiritual person and not religious. i follow no particular faith or denomination. i have faith in many things and faith in something is the key they mention. so in this way i can relate to the process. it is designed to get a person out of themselves and do selfless acts and not just to alcoholics but anyone that may need help and not expect anything from that person or people in return. AA is not religious or connected to any religion. the books state very clearly that members are free to make a decision on religion for themselves but to keep religion separate. some members try to bridge that gap and that is against the principles. it states also that be you religious or atheist or undesired the principles are designed to work for that individual because they are intended to work for anyone willing to follow them.

it also states that AA does not hold the monopoly on recovery because we are not all the same and is delighted for anyone that finds recovery in any form.

it does and has worked for millions atheist included. it only takes a higher power, others with a common problem, open mindedness, willingness, and a brutal honesty of oneself.

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I'm not sure this is the appropriate thread for this, but after reading alot of the posts on AA's merit or demerit, i felt compelled to share my limited experience with it.

I am not a religeous person. I consider myself spiritual in the sense i believe there has to be some higher power running this whole show. Could be the wizard of oz or a little green man sitting at a vast control panel on another planet for all i know, but i figure there is something bigger and better than us mere humans.

i may as well start by saying i am a drinker. I enjoy my beer and may the higher power help anyone who tries to take it away from me..lol Am i an alchoholic? Probably. You are entitled to call it like you see it, but please make note of the fact that i don't consider it a great problem. I don't drink and drive, i've never found myself in any trouble with regard to drinking. I indulge at home and always with consideration of what responsibiliities i have that a beer or 2 may interfere with. None the less i have been tagged as an alchoholic by several individuals in the AA crowd. Ok, fine. As i said they are entititled to their opinion but i have always found myself a tad irked to be viewed as a sicky by the reformed.

Moving along...my father was an alchoholic. The falling down drunk kind that lost jobs and wreaked havok on normal family life. With my sister's urging i attended ACOA meetings occassionally in my late teens and early twenties. I learned alot and give them credit for setting me on a path of self awareness. I married and later divorced my son's father who is bipolar and was a substance abuser.

It is that recent experience with him and the AA crowd that is probably most pertinent to this thread.

I'll assume alot of you have read my posts regarding my son. At any rate, when my son was 15, my son's father was on a mission to get him involved in AA. I allowed him to attend meetings with his dad whenever we could get him to go with the hope that any means of addressing his drug problems was better than nothing. Several people in the group took an interest in my son and befriended him. One was couple who remain involved with him and another was a woman my age.

At the time i didn't understand this woman's involvement but having the turmoil in daily life that we did, i chose to take it at face value. She claimed to feel like a mother to him and was simply taking him under wing so to speak. At the time i knew he had a bit of a crush on her and chalked that up to adolescence. I let the relationship go on because she seemed to be keeping him out of trouble somewhat. There seemed to be a focus on the meetings (AA)...abstinence from drugs...and when he was with her i knew he wasn't at the park up the street with the wannabe thugs getting in trouble. At that time, no one told me anything otherwise. Not my ex, nor the other couple that were friends with all of them.

4 years later i've learned otherwise. The woman had relocated and i hadn't given that episode much more thought until a couple months ago. During a fight with my son, his current gf saw fit to inform me that she was concerned this woman was back in town and wanted to make me aware that the relationship my son had with her was not at all what i thought. It was in fact, sexual. I confronted my son eventually and though he refused to discuss it, he didn't deny it. Where this tidbit fits into his current troubles, i don't know. But after reading a post by claire suggesting unchecked sexual predators in AA groups, i was compelled to relay the story.

I have more to say with regard to my ex, his attitude, and AA, but it seems my post is getting to it's character limit.

So there's my 1 and a half cents on AA. I'll add the other half cent eventually.

hermia

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