We are all powerless, not only those physically addicted to a substance. Alcoholics simply have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking.

We all take our own pattern of thinking as normative, logical, and surely true, even when it does not fully compute. We keep doing the same thing over and over again, even if it is not working for us. That is the self-destructive nature of all addiction, and of the mind in particular. We think we are our thinking, and we even take that thinking as utterly “true,” which removes us at least two steps from reality itself.