Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP THREE

is in question, how differently we behave. How persistently
we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we
shall think and just how we shall act. Oh yes, we'll weigh
the pros and cons of every problem. We'll listen politely to
those who would advise us, but all the decisions are to be
ours alone. Nobody is going to meddle with our personal
independence in such matters. Besides, we think, there is
no one we can surely trust. We are certain that our intel-
ligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner
lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. This
brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, sounds
good in the speaking, but it still has to meet the acid test:
how well does it actually work? One good look in the mir-
ror ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.

Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to con-
template (and it usually is), he might first take a look at
the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency.
Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, so-
ciety breaking up into warring fragments. Each fragment
says to the others, "We are right and you are wrong." Every
such pressure group, if it is strong enough, self-righteously
imposes its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same
thing is being done on an individual basis. The sum of all
this mighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than
before. The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off.
Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose fi-
nal achievement is ruin.

Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider ourselves
fortunate indeed. Each of us has had his own near-fatal en-
counter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has suffered