"Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness...

"But upon entering AA we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through this utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal powerlessness 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 AA unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences...

"When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached AA expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability...

"In AA's pioneering time, none but the most desparate cases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth. Even the "last-gaspers" often had difficulty in realizing how hopeless they actually were... 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 desperate alcoholics tried AA, but did not succeed because they could not make the admission of powerlessness...

"It is a tremendous satisfaction to record that in the following 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...

"It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going 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... 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 AA's were right...' After a few such experiences, he would return to us convinced. He had hit bottom as truly as any of us...

"Why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will try to practice the AA program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing AA's remaining 11 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 AA'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 AA, 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."