To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time.  We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves.  First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating.  Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from our speech and thought.  This required great willingness even to begin. 

Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking.  We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and depression.  We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more passions possible.  We have drunk for vainglory- that we might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power.  This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon.  Instincts on rampage balk at investigation.  The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions. 

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing.  We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it.  As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution.  Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility.  For this is pride in reverse.  This is not moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.

If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self-righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the opposite.  We will be offended at A.A.’s suggested inventory.  Not doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle cut us down.  We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking.  This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety- first, last, and all the time- is the only thing we need to work for.  We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol.  If we were pretty nice people all along, except for out drinking, what need is there for a moral inventory now that we are sober?

We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory.  Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people- people who really need a moral inventory.  We firmly believe that if only they’d treat us better, we’d be all right.  Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable- that our resentments are the “right kind.”  We aren’t the guilty ones.  They are! …

But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride.  We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others.  We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it. 

To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time.  We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves.  First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating.  Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from our speech and thought.  This required great willingness even to begin.  But once over the first two or three high hurdle, the course ahead began to look easier.  For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.