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“Our Enemies”

"The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, To Employers, pg. 145~

When you think of enemies, you might think about people who have made us mad, or perhaps we have made them mad. But these things are just feelings. Does it matter? Just think for a moment where our problems arise when it comes to other people. Don’t all of our problems arise from resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear? Seems to me they do!

But how can non-material things be our greatest enemy? Well if we put them in our brains they can be very hurtful. So hurtful that it can cause us to drink. We all know that alcohol is our greatest foe, so anything that can lead us to the drink can be our enemy.

Let’s break this down for a moment. Resentment is to re-sense something. We actually feel an emotion with-in us when we think about something. Most of us feel anger about either a real or imagined grievance. Something that we believe in where we have been wronged. Sometimes this sense can last for years and years.

Jealousy is a feeling we get when we are not content with what we have. We are actually discontent with the idea that someone else possesses something that we don’t have. If you really think about it jealousy and envy run hand and hand, but the strange thing about this is we can build resentment towards another person just based on how far we take this feeling. This is where the imagined grievance comes into play. Heck we don’t even have to be physically harmed by someone else to build this type of resentment.

Now we can take a look at frustration! Frustration is to cause feelings of discouragement or bafflement in something we think we should be doing or have done. We constantly are scrutinizing ourselves based on some type of standard. Most of the time we have no idea what standard that is, but we certainly become frustrated when it doesn’t happen our way. Doesn't matter what it is, we become baffled over it.

Then there is fear. This is the feeling that can get so bad that it can even kill. But what causes this dread? What makes us feel that an event or object presents us with a dangerous circumstance, something that we must fear? It’s pretty simple! We don’t know the outcome. We have no faith!

So what do all these things have in common? They are feelings!!!! They do not exist in reality. They are created with-in our minds! Alcoholics are examples of these particular feelings gone completely awry.

Sure, you read this and ask “But these are normal feelings. Right”? Well let’s look at it this way. Emotions are God-given instincts, but when they get out of whack they affect our mental state. So yes, emotions are normal feelings in normal circumstances, but in the alcoholic’s case they become extreme. In our case they become deadly.

In today’s science we have found that certain levels of chemicals in our brains cause these feelings to become overactive. Being that I am not a scientist in any way, I do not wish to go into it any more than mentioning these chemical imbalances as the source of our mental problems. But there is something I can say that may make a lot of people feel uncomfortable, that is these imbalances are a direct result of our overactive imaginations!!!!

O.K. now that I have you feeling a little bit of resentment towards me saying that, I will explain what I mean. There is a little ditty in the Big Book that made this fact glaring to me. (That and the fact that I have done quite a bit of research into why it says things such as this in the Big Book). The quote is the last line of “Spiritual Experience” pg. 570 (In the third edition): “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”— Herbert Spencer

Contempt prior to investigation! That’s it! We are seeing life through our eyes only. We act out in contemptuous behavior without fully understanding the how and why of things. It effects how we do things and how we function in our relationships with others. It is called prejudice. Not just racial prejudice, but pre-judgment of everything we do.

It is like not going swimming in the ocean because there are sharks out there. Or perhaps it is like us walking down the sidewalk at night, scared out of our wits, just knowing there is someone waiting in the shadows to harm us. It could be as simple as getting anxious over our wife or husband being late. Or God forbid a wife or a husband talking to someone of the opposite sex. All of the drama that takes place in our minds without knowing what reality is. We prejudge that reality is the picture that is going on in our mind!

Linking this to our drinking problem may not be as hard as people think. Just as we can rise the levels of the chemicals that cause us to feel certain emotions, it seems to me that the same thing can happen when the thought of a drink comes to mind in the alcoholic. Again it is an overreaction to our thoughts.

So how is it that we are supposed to tackle something as complex as the human mind. Well it is really simple. We surrender! We give up! We stop building up all of these scenarios about people, places, and things in our minds. Instead of worrying what other people are doing we start to focus on what we are doing. We ask God to provide us with the serenity to accept the things we cannot change (those things in which we have no control over; i.e. anything that anyone else has, says, or does), the courage to change the things we can (our behavior in the aspect of investigating the reason behind our actions; i.e. having a purpose other than self-serving), and the wisdom to know the difference (between what is our imagination and what is real). With God’s help we can defeat our enemies.
--Ed C.