Anger in all its aspects is a universal human problem. But it poses a special threat to alcoholics: Our own anger can kill us. Recovered alcoholics almost unanimously agree that hostility, grudges, or resentments often make us want to drink, so we need to be vigilant against such feelings. We have found much more satisfying ways than drinking for dealing with them.
But we’ll get to those later. First, here is a look at some of the shapes and colors anger seems at times to arrive in: intolerance,snobbishness, tension, distrust, contempt,rigidity, sarcasm,anxiety,envy ,cynicism,self pity, suspicion, hatred, discontent,malice and jealousy .
Various A.A. members have, when sober, been able to trace all those feelings to some underlying anger. During our drinking days, many of us spent little time thinking such things out. We were more likely to brood about them, or to overreact, especially after we heightened such feelings by taking another drink.
Perhaps fear should be on that list, too, because many of us believe anger is frequently an outgrowth of fear. We’re not always sure what we’re afraid of; sometimes, it is just a vague, generalized, nameless fear. And it can give rise to an equally generalized anger, which may suddenly focus on something or someone.
Feelings of frustration might give birth to anger. As a class, problem drinkers are not famous for a high tolerance level when faced with frustration, real or imaginary. A drink used to be our favorite solvent for such an indigestible emotion.”
Interestingly, several of the methods already discussed for avoiding a drink have also worked splendidly for getting over the inner discomfort we suffer when angry.
For instance, when we begin to simmer inside, it sometimes helps a great deal to take a few bites of something good to eat, or a glass of a nonalcoholic beverage. It’s also remarkably effective, when we begin to get teed off at something, to pick up the phone and talk about it to our sponsor or to other recovered alcoholics. And it pays to pause and consider whether or not we may be overtired.
We’ve also found repeatedly, simply pondering “Live and Let Live” cools our temper.
Or we may shift quickly to an activity that has nothing to do with the source of our anger—work it off with some lively exercise—lose it in listening to our favorite music.
For many of us, contemplating the ideas of the Serenity Prayer blows away our hostility.
Often, whatever we are mad about turns out to be something we cannot possibly control or change (traffic jams, the weather, long supermarket lines, for example), so the sensible, mature thing to do is just accept it, rather than boil inside fruitlessly or turn to alcohol.