Daily Reprieve

From the 12 x 12, page 90:

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, too.

But are there no exceptions to this rule?  What about “justifiable” anger?  If somebody cheats us, aren’t we entitled to be mad?  And shouldn’t we be properly angry with self-righteous folks?

For us of A.A. these adventures in anger are sometimes very dangerous.  We have found that even justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.

There are two things that I pull out of this axiom:

1.  The answer is in us (notice I did not say ME).  This must be true, because if we have to rely on controlling others to find sanity and recovery, we are fucked.  The disease desires that the solution be kept locked away, and my fortress called “never trust or risk hurt again” becomes a prison of living death. 

2.  The disease seems to amplify emotions meant to serve us into passions that overload good judgment.  I have experienced normal anxiety amplified into unbearable levels of fear.  Anger becomes rage.  A period of introspective blues becomes suicidal depression.  And the only cure my mind can produce is some form of self-medication. 

79

This entry was posted on November 30, 2008 at 2:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.