Where is "resentment is the number one offender," and what does it mean?
In short:
- It's on page 64 of Chapter 5, at the start of the Fourth Step inventory: "Resentment is the 'number one' offender." (p. 64) (The quotation marks around "number one" are the book's own.) The next sentence says why: "It destroys more alcoholics than anything else." (p. 64)
- It's the first of the "common manifestations" of self, which the book had just named as what "had defeated us" (p. 64). Fear and sex conduct follow in the same inventory (pp. 67–70).
- Context confirms the line. The book calls resentment fatal for an alcoholic: harbouring it, "we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit" (p. 66), and "The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again." (p. 66)
- It also shows where the inventory goes next: from what others did to us, to "our own mistakes" (p. 67).
Where it sits
Chapter 5 has just explained Step Three and the decision to turn our will and life over to God. That decision, the book says, would have little lasting effect without a hard look at what had been blocking us, and so comes the inventory (p. 64). The paragraph that leads to the line sets its frame: "Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations." (p. 64)
Resentment is the first of them. "Resentment is the 'number one' offender." (p. 64) "It destroys more alcoholics than anything else." (p. 64) The book adds that "From it stem all forms of spiritual disease" (p. 64). See What is the "spiritual malady"?
What the inventory does with it (pp. 64–67)
- Write it down. "We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry." (p. 64) We asked why, and found that most often our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions or our personal relationships, including sex, "were hurt or threatened" (pp. 64–65). The book prints a sample grudge list (p. 65).
- Look at the result. At first the list seems to prove that the world and its people were often quite wrong. "To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got." (p. 66) The more we fought, the worse it got (p. 66).
- See why it's grave. For an alcoholic, "this business of resentment is infinitely grave" (p. 66). "We found that it is fatal." (p. 66) Holding it, we cut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit, and the insanity of alcohol returns (p. 66). "If we were to live, we had to be free of anger." (p. 66)
- Deal with it. "We could not wish them away any more than alcohol." (p. 66) The book's course is to see the people who wronged us as perhaps spiritually sick, and to ask God to help us show them the tolerance, pity and patience we'd give a sick friend (pp. 66–67). See Does the Big Book really say to pray for people you resent ("This is a sick man")?
- Then look at our own part. "Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes." (p. 67) "The inventory was ours, not the other man's." (p. 67)
Other lists in the book
"Number one" is the book's ranking for the inventory, and it puts resentment in company elsewhere: - Right after resentment comes fear, "an evil and corroding thread" (p. 67). The book says "we think fear ought to be classed with stealing" (p. 68) and that "It seems to cause more trouble." (p. 68) - Step Ten, the daily version of the inventory, watches for four things: "selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear" (p. 84). - Chapter 10, "To Employers": "The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear." (p. 145)
Does context change the common reading?
No, it confirms it. The book does name resentment as what destroys more alcoholics than anything else, and it explains why: resentment shuts out the Spirit and leads back to drinking. Context adds two things the bare line leaves out. Resentment is one form of self, which the book treats as the root (p. 62). And the inventory doesn't stop at listing resentments: it moves to our own mistakes, and on to fear and sex conduct.
Read it yourself
- Chapter 5, "How It Works" (pp. 58–71), with the inventory on pp. 63–71, free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf
- Chapter 10, "To Employers" (pp. 136–150): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt10.pdf
- Related: How does the Big Book say to do Step 4? · What do "selfishness—self-centeredness!" and "self-will run riot" mean in the Big Book? · What do Steps 10 and 11 ask, day to day?
- The full book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is sold by A.A. World Services at https://onlineliterature.aa.org.
Sources
| Source | Pages | First published |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 5, "How It Works" | 62–68 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 6, "Into Action" | 84 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 10, "To Employers" | 145 | 1939 |
Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). The Preface says the program text "has been left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi); our sources have no first edition to compare page numbers against.
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.