Who Wants to Admit They’re an Asshole?

7.9.25

So much of the Freedom From Bondage story in the Big Book resonated with me when we read it last night at book study. I think a lot of us are conditioned for alcoholism by our past traumas and experiences—some of us from a very young age. This disease is about so much more than drinking; it’s a way of thinking.

Alcohol was just the temporary solution I turned to in order to numb myself, until it stopped working. Then the time came when I needed a better solution. For me, that solution is AA.

I needed to hear my peers share last night. I needed that reminder that I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who has these feelings toward others that I don’t want to admit out loud—and sometimes still struggle with. I mean, who wants to admit they’re an asshole? But in AA, I can. I can admit it and not be ashamed. We can laugh about it and cry about it together.

The part about the clergyman’s letter was exactly the reminder I was craving for my emotional strength:

If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.

That passage gives me hope. It reminds me that my freedom doesn’t depend on other people changing—it depends on my willingness to let go. Even if I start out just going through the motions, eventually the shift happens. And I can be free.