No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete.
No other kind of bankruptcy
Oh, but many other kinds of bankruptcy: not commercial bankruptcy, but any addiction, any mental obsession.
The rapacious creditor
Anything that takes my attention, my mind, and grips it, is literally taking everything from me, because my mind is the only thing I have. If it is occupied, preoccupied, occupied to capacity, with the obsession (whether or not that leads to action), my life is suspended in its entirety. There is no life: only the endless circling of the maypole, round and round, the ribbons becoming ever more tightly wound.
Self-sufficiency
Firstly, it is right to observe that I am bled of all ability to direct my thinking and therefore action.
However, that self-direction, in the illusory world of the material, is itself part of the illusion: driven by the dictates of the material world I believe I live in, all 'decisions' are actually automated, entirely predictable outcomes of a closed algorithm. The laws of science govern the movement of the billiard balls on the table, and they move entirely predictably in accordance with those laws unless a deus ex machina picks up a billiard cue and intervenes; then, the outcome cannot be predicted. The laws of science are still obeyed, but the wildcard has been played, and the outcome is in the hands of the cue-holder.
It is right and good that I be bled of self-sufficiency, that I stop relying on myself, namely the predictable, automated mechanisms governing my actions, and seek reliance on something from outside the internally closed system. The system is closed from the inside: the billiard balls cannot affect anything outside the system. But something from outside the system can be called in, invoked, to intervene.
That's precisely what I'm called upon to do: ask God for help.
All will to resist its demands
What's the demand of the obsession: Think about me!
Once this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete
The bankruptcy is technically complete once it's complete in fact. Our acceptance or denial of the fact does not change the state of affairs. But the bankruptcy can be acted on only once accepted.