Step 3 — Turning It Over – Joe C. – 1998 – Session 23

Thirty-some-odd years ago, I hated this lady with a purple passion. If I could have done away with her and not get caught, I believe I would have done it. I used to lay awake at night fantasizing about this thing. Tomorrow morning, when she's on the way to work, and by the way, she always worked, I believed in her being self-supporting through her own contributions. Always thinking of others. Tomorrow morning, when she's on the way to work, she's going to get run over by a big semi-truck. It's not going to be just any trucking company. It's going to be a very affluent trucking company. And they're going to run over her and kill her, and then I'm going to sue them. And I'm going to come out of this deal getting rid of her with two or three million dollars in hand. You Al-Anons are not going to get rid of me. You Al-Anons are not going to get rid of me. We're not the only ones that fantasize. We Alkies did it too. Believe me, we did. Second name on my sheet was the Internal Revenue Service. God, I hated those people with a purple passion. Just mention their name, and I began to froth at the mouth immediately. Joe, what was the first name on your inventory sheet? Rose. Rose. Wife number one, Rose. Now, it's just that simple. That's how you fill out the first column. We go to the second column. Why am I so upset with Barbara? Well, the last year before she went to Al-Anon, she had the audacity to file for divorce three times. She's spending more money on lawyers and divorces than I'm spending on booze and everything that goes with it. And my God, I hated her for that. Why am I so upset? Why am I so upset with the Internal Revenue Service? Well, they're trying to put me in jail. That's why. Joe, how come you're so upset with Rose? She had an affair with another man after all I've done to her. After all I've done to her. Had an affair with another man. Really upset with her. Now we go to the third column. Now, Barbara. She's filing for divorce three times. Is that a threat to my self-esteem? Oh, you betcha. What are other people going to think about me now? Taking this lady back after she's filed for divorce three times. Barbara filing for divorce three times. Is that a threat to my personal relationships? Sure it is. She's going to take the kids and she's going to leave or they're going to kick me out. One of the two. No personal relationships. Her filing for divorce three times. Is that a threat to my security? Oh, yeah. By the time she's through, she'll have it all. Don't worry about that. Is it a threat to my sex life? Oh, yeah. She probably won't let me have any sex if we get a divorce. Internal Revenue Service trying to put me in jail. Is that a threat to my self-esteem? What are people going to think about me after this deal's over with? Is it a threat to my personal relationships? They're not going to let me have any relationship with my wife and children if I'm in jail. Is it a threat to my security? Oh, yeah. They're going to take every penny I've got by the time it's over with. Is it a threat to my sex life? The kind I'd like to have, you betcha it's a threat to it. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. There's some in there I don't want. Old Rose having an affair with another man. Is that a threat to Joe's self-esteem? Is it a threat to his personal relationships? Is it a threat to his security? Yeah, he'll have to go to work now. She's been supporting him for the last ten years. A threat to his sex life? Oh, yeah. All these things are a threat to those things. Okay. When we have finished out these three columns, and we've been able to see column one, how many resentments we have, column two, the cause of the resentment, column three, the part of self that was affected, and we've learned valuable information about ourselves just by thinking about it. Now, that we're filling out those three sheets. Now then, let's see what we do with those three sheets after they're filled out. Joe. See, we went back through our lives, nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. When we finished, we considered it carefully. The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. To conclude that others was wrong was far as most of us ever got. And I always knew that. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us, and we stayed sore sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves but the more we fought and tried to have our own way the worse matters got as in war the victor only seemed to win our moments of triumph was short-lived now it's plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to fertility and happiness to the precise extent that we permit these do we squander the hours which might have been worthwhile and I read that last statement and I stopped and I tried to look back in my life and see how much time I've squandered in resentments now I don't know about you guys but I know about me and when I've got a good resentment churning around up here in my head I'm pretty well paralyzed from doing anything worthwhile and one of my favorite things that I was doing you know you know back when I was drinking, was to get up early in the morning, have a drink of whiskey and a cup of coffee, and turn on my resentment replay machine and replay what she did to me yesterday and replay what that guy did to me a month ago and replay what that person said to me six months ago and replay what that damn boss did to me about a year ago and replay what that damn policeman did to me five years ago and replay what my uncle did to me ten years ago and replay what my mother did to me 15 years ago and replay what my father did to me 20 years ago. And it took me just about an hour to run through that tape and I loved every moment of it. When that tape would run out, I'd have another drink of whiskey and another cup of coffee and I would turn on my get-even machine. Now, by God, the next time she does that, I'll do this and she'll do that and soco, I'll put it on her. They're not going to treat me that way. And it took me just about an hour to run through that tape and I loved every moment of it. When I came into AA, I found out the only difference was I wasn't... I hadn't taken the drink of whiskey. I was having a cup of coffee, turn on the resentment replay machine, run it for an hour, another cup of coffee, turn on the get-even machine, run it for an hour. I have spent literally thousands and thousands and thousands of hours in resentments. And as far as I can tell, they've never done me any good whatsoever. They certainly never made me any money. They never made me feel better. They only made me feel worse. They never straightened up a relationship with another human being. It only made them worse and worse and worse. And as far as I can tell, that was absolute, complete wasted time. Now, as a human being, I really believe today that I'm allotted just so much time to be here on earth. And I'm beginning to approach the end of mine. And for the first time in my life, not only am I sober, but I am peaceful, happy, and free. For the first time in my life, I'm sober and I feel great. I didn't know that you could be sober and feel as good as I feel today. What little time that I have left, I want to enjoy every moment of it. I don't want to waste any more time in resentments or anything. I don't want to waste anything else that blocks me off from God. I want to enjoy every moment of every day that I've got left. I simply do not intend to waste any more time in resentments. They block you off from God. They block you off from your fellow man. They just make you sicker and sicker and sicker. And what time we spend in them is an absolute waste of time. That's one of the worst things about a resentment. Resentment. And wasting what time we have left in resentments. But that's not the worst thing. Here's the worst thing about a resentment. He said, 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 when we drink again. And with us to drink is to die. That's the worst thing about a resentment. When we've got a good resentment churning around in our head, we don't feel good. We're blocked off from God. And after a while, the mind, wanting to feel better, begins to think about the sense of ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a couple of drinks. Next thing you know, we become insane. We convince ourselves it's okay to drink. And we end up taking a drink and we trigger the allergy and we end up drunk all over again. That's the worst part about a resentment. The book says 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 turn back to the list. You see, this is why you've got to have a written inventory. If you had it in your head, you would have lost it already. We turn back to the list. For it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. Always before, I looked at it to see what those suckers had done to me. Today, I would look at it to see what that resentment is doing to me. And if it's blocking me off from God and maybe causing me to get drunk, then I'm looking at it from an entirely different angle. We begin to see that the world and its people are really dominated. In that state, the wrongdoing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. And I stopped. And I said, Charlie, how dumb can you be? All my life, I've been proud of the fact that I stand on my own two feet. Nobody tells me what to do. I don't need your advice, thank you. And I suddenly realized, that other people, through my resentment toward them, have controlled and dominated my thinking as far back as I can remember. And if they've controlled and dominated my thinking, they've controlled and dominated my actions, they have absolutely, completely controlled and dominated my entire life for me. I always thought I was in charge, but I suddenly realized, that other people have been in charge as far back as I can remember, through my resentments toward them. And then I said, man, you really are stupid, aren't you? Because some of these people have been dead and buried in a graveyard for years. And they've been reaching out from the grave, and they've had me by the yang-yang as far back as I can remember. And when I saw that, I said to hell with them. I'm not going to let those people, alive or dead, live in my head, rent-free, any longer. I've made a decision to let God direct my thinking. And if others direct it, alive or dead, justified or unjustified, then God can't. And it's just that simple. And an amazing thing happened to me right here. We alcoholics fancy ourselves as reasonably intelligent people, but we don't. I don't know that we're smarter than anybody else, but I think we're reasonably intelligent people, and we don't like to look stupid. And when I saw the stupidity of letting those people control me and dominate me, it looked so dumb that about 95% of these resentments began to disappear automatically when I saw how stupid that really was. But I found that I had four or five or six, that were so deeply embedded in my mind for so long, that they didn't automatically disappear when I saw the stupidity behind them. And for those, I had to have some additional help. We now come to the first prayer in the big book in step four. We always hear about the step three prayers, the step seven prayers. We never hear about the step four prayers. Let's see how we can use prayer. To remove those deep, deep-seated resentments. He said, how could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. See, you can't heal a sick wine with a sick mind. You can't wish your way out of it. Well, this was our course. We realized that the people who'd wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. And though we did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. It's part of the prayer. We asked God to help us to show them, with the same tolerance, pity, and patience, that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.