WHO cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one,  of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea  of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that,  glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Provi dence can remove it from us. 

No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol,  now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once this stark  fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns  is complete. 

But upon entering A.A. we soon take quite another view  of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through  utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal powerless ness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy  and purposeful lives may be built. 

We know that little good can come to any alcoholic  who joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastat ing weakness and all its consequences. Until he so humbles  himself, his sobriety—if any—will be precarious. Of real  happiness he will find none at all. Proved beyond doubt by  an immense experience, this is one of the facts of A.A. life. 

The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until  we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from  which our whole Society has sprung and flowered. 

When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us re volted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught  self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as al cohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever;  in fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that  we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly pow erful that no amount of human willpower could break it.  There was, they said, no such thing as the personal con quest of this compulsion by the unaided will. Relentlessly  deepening our dilemma, our sponsors pointed out our in creasing sensitivity to alcohol—an allergy, they called it.  The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us:  first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned  us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body  that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the  process. Few indeed were those who, so assailed, had ever  won through in singlehanded combat. It was a statistical  fact that alcoholics almost never recovered on their own  resources. And this had been true, apparently, ever since  man had first crushed grapes. 

In A.A.’s pioneering time, none but the most desperate  cases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth. Even  these “last-gaspers” often had difficulty in realizing how  hopeless they actually were. But a few did, and when these  laid hold of A.A. principles with all the fervor with which  the drowning seize life preservers, they almost invariably  got well. That is why the first edition of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous,” published when our membership was  small, dealt with low-bottom cases only. Many less desper ate alcoholics tried A.A., but did not succeed because they  

could not make the admission of hopelessness. It is a tremendous satisfaction to record that in the fol lowing years this changed. Alcoholics who still had their  health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the  garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this trend  grew, they were joined by young people who were scarcely  more than potential alcoholics. They were spared that last  ten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gone  through. Since Step One requires an admission that our  lives have become unmanageable, how could people such  as these take this Step? 

It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest  of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By go ing back in our own drinking histories, we could show that  years before we realized it we were out of control, that our  drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed  the beginning of a fatal progression. To the doubters we  could say, “Perhaps you’re not an alcoholic after all. Why  don’t you try some more controlled drinking, bearing in  mind meanwhile what we have told you about alcoholism?”  This attitude brought immediate and practical results. It  was then discovered that when one alcoholic had planted  in the mind of another the true nature of his malady, that  person could never be the same again. Following every  spree, he would say to himself, “Maybe those A.A.’s were  right….” After a few such experiences, often years before  the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us convinced. He had hit bottom as truly as any of us. John Barleycorn himself had become our best advocate. Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom  first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to  practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom.  For practicing A.A.’s remaining eleven Steps means the  adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic  who is still drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to  be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess  his faults to another and make restitution for harm done?  Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy  in trying to carry A.A.’s message to the next sufferer? No,  the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t  care for this prospect—unless he has to do these things in  order to stay alive himself. 

Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A.,  and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation.  Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to  conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We  stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us.