Step One

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were
real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily
and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is
not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized
by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink
like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he
will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of
every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is
astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or
death.

    We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost
selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step
in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or
presently may be, has to be smashed.

    We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the
ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic
ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we
were regaining control, but such intervals -- usually brief --
were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in
time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We
are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in
the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable
period we get worse, never better.

We are like men who have lost their legs; they never
grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any
kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of
our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable
remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery,
followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians
who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no
such thing a making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic.
Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't
done so yet.

Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective
mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few
cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide
such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher
Power.