Adaptation of the jaywalker passage from Chapter 3 of the Big Book:
Our behaviour is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for believing his own thoughts. He gets a thrill out of believing fast-moving thoughts. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up to this point you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him, and he is slightly injured several times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out. Presently he is hit again, and this time has a fractured mind. Within a week after leaving the hospital, a fast-moving thought hits him and breaks his spirit. He tells you he has decided to stop believing his own thoughts for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both spirit and heart.
On through the years this conduct continues, accompanied by his continual promises to be careful or to keep away from self-centered thoughts altogether. Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce, and he is held up to ridicule. He tries every known means to get the believing-his-own-thoughts idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he believes some of his own thoughts, which snaps his mind in two. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn’t he?
You may think our illustration is too ridiculous. But is it? … However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where believing our own thoughts has been involved, we have been strangely insane. It’s strong language—but isn’t it true?