John MacDougall of Hazelden rightly points out that resentment is no longer the number one offender, as stated in the Big Book of AA, but complacency is. Why is this, you ask? And how could the big book of AA possibly be wrong? Because the founders of AA who wrote the big book could only use the information they had at the time. In some ways, they had a limited perspective on things. One example of this is their relatively short term sobriety. Because they had not experienced long term sobriety, nor had they watched others in AA fall victim to complacency after long periods of abstinence, it seemed reasonable to them that resentment really was the number one offender. Today we know differently, now that we have seen many recovering alcoholics achieve long term sobriety. Why resentment ceases to be a threat It is true that many in AA or other recovery programs will struggle with resentments. They can indeed be the poison that leads people back to drinking or drugs. But anyone who is living a progressive life of recovery will inevitably make a shift in how they handle things. Either they will learn to deal with their ...
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