Addicts and the Spiritual Experience

FROM THE "BIG BOOK":

Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game. But they are down for the count.

The fact is that most [addicts], for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in [addiction]. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring in our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first [step into acting out].
The almost certain consequences that follow [acting out even once] do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people.



AND FURTHER DOWN IN THE "BIG BOOK":

We saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.

The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows, and toward God's universe.

---Big Book of AA, 24-25.