It’s amazing how one or two people can be carriers of infection. How they can infect a whole lot of people, who in turn can get sick from what is in the other person. Years ago Carl Jung said insanity is contagious. We can catch it if we are not on guard against it. Often times, the insane person looks perfectly sane. They can even look attractive to us and we can let our guard down.
I remember my friend Bill F., telling the story of his friend B., walking into a meeting and seeing a gorgeous woman and starting to make a beeline toward her. Bill stopped him and told him that he had picked out the sickest woman in the room.
Kathleen told me years ago that anger is infectious. She said that I could walk into a room feeling pretty good and then get pulled down into anger and not know why. She told me to look around the room and find out who’s anger it was and then get rid of it in me. I found that true. Who’s anger is it? Is it mine? Do I know the difference? And if not, what’s wrong with me? Maybe I was angry to begin with and didn’t know it and the other person’s anger set me off.
But, usually I have to go back to Jung’s remark. If I have a relationship with a Power Greater that myself, I’m probably going to be all right. If not, I’m going to possibly get sucked down into the other person’s sickness.
The bottom line, I have to remember, is that as an alcoholic I cannot afford anger. Anger can lead to a drink. Sometimes directly and sometimes not so directly. Sometimes it will put me through a dry drunk before I get to the wet one. It can make me sick. Like the BB says, it can cut me off from the sunlight of the spirit. It can bring back the insanity of that first fatal drink.
The solution to all of this is to bring sanity back into the room. My sponosr told me this. He said that if I was attending a negative meeting, it was up to me to bring something positive into it. That means I have to have the courage of my convictions. I may be required to go against the current. By myself, I know that I often don’t have this courage. It must come from some place else. Just like it says after Fred’s story in the BB, I have to have a connection with my Higher Power. With that, I can talk about the solution and not the problem.
When everyone else is focused on the problem, will I be willing to break the spell and talk about what we should be talking about? Am I still willing to do what the 5th tradition asks the group to do? To carry the AA message to the alcoholic who is still suffering. It matters not whether anyone hears it. I matters only that I carry it and hear it myself. Sounds selfish. But I must remember that I am only the hand of hope. Am I willing to talk about what is really important to all of us? The only subject we know anything about is alcohol and the solution to our problem with alcohol.
The subject today was complacency. When we’re complacent, we’re open to infection.
I know from experience the cost of complacency. I also know that when I am willing to take care of my alcoholism that the solution to all my problems follows.