(Taken from the 12 &12)

Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all
self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands.
 

Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so
subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it.

 

There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this
compulsion by the unaided will.

 

you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession.
 

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him"
 

There is only one key, and it is called willingness.
 

for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always
blocked the entry of God
 

Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always
respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.

 

The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more
independent we actually are.

 

We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower,
can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us
success in the world we live in.

Each of us has had his own near-fatal encounter with the
juggernaut of self-will,

And how shall he ever straighten out that awful jam that cost him the
affection of his family and separated him from them? His lone courage
and unaided will cannot do it.
 

All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform
to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will.

We saw that we were powerless over alcohol





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