[nandm]

Beginnings: Like us, Bill's family admonitions and the warnings he recieved were ignored. Like us, Bill believed that good intentions and high potential were enough to ensure a happy useful life.

Progression: It works for different people for different lengths of time. In alcohollics it always becomes the focus of our lives and at some point we cross the line into chronic alcoholism.

Attempts at Control: We try everything at our disposal to control our drinking and to manage our lives, all for naught. Slowly or quickly things get worse. We try harder and harder until we fall so low that we are beyond human aid.

Alcoholic Destruction: We are seemingly hopeless. Faced with deteriorating health and mind we are living only to drink and at this rate we won't last long. Astonishingly we still cling to the insane belief that we can control our drinking.

The Solution: When we admit, to our innermost selves, that human resources have failed to solve our problem, we become willing to try this solution that has worked for millions of people.