AA Makes People Futile and Unhappy

"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.

"We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.

This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.(AA, pg 66)

Alcoholics Anonymous lies to people, claiming that other people, and our reactions to other people causes to be upset.

Then the program claims that our reactions of anger and frustration must be our fault as well.

These premises are false, based on the notion that our feelings are a response to other people.

No.

Our feelings are a response to what we are thinking. If we are thinking about ourselves all the time, convinced that everyone and everything around us should be geared toward our happiness, then we will find ourselves feeling resentful  much of the time.

If a sense of injustice remains lodged in our spirit, if we sense that the world is unfair, or that we have to do everything ourselves because the “Higher Power” whom we believe in will not help us, then a sense of frustration and bitterness will define our lives.

Resentment, bitterness, guilt, shame, -- all result from our perception that we are the center of the universe, or result from a deep-rooted attempt to correct ourselves and remedy our own situations.

Feelings just are, and they are a response to our thinking. When we believe the truth, then lo and behold, we are set free.

Our feelings cannot distract us from this life, if we acknowledge that our thoughts and feelings are not the final arbiters of our existence in this life.

The passage which suggests that “alcoholics” are not allowed to be grouchy, or to get upset, in itself has created must of the frustration which makes men and women upset!

There can be no greater source of wrath in our lives than the wicked notion that we must not get angry, or that we must do something about the easily offset emotions in our lives.

Paul writes to the Ephesians:

“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” (Ephesians 4: 26)

Of course, our understanding of Paul’s exhortation in this verse depends on our growing knowledge of Christ and Him Crucified as the fullness of all things, as well as a growing awareness of our stance in Christ, that through Him we are blessed with all spiritual blessings.

Alcoholics Anonymous forces on its members a negative identity, one broken forever, one based on a daily upkeep which no one can keep up for any length of time.

Such a life of identifying with a failing, looking at one’s feelings, chronically fearing that one may relapse into drinking, and attending meetings where men and women bemoan their lost lives or celebrate the fact that they did not drink for that day: only that kind of life leads to futility and unhappiness.