“Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom.” (Page 24, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
It is easy to confuse three different questions, firstly the circumstances that precede first attendance at meetings, secondly the emotions that precipitate attendance, and thirdly the acceptance of Step One, which activates the working of the remainder of the Steps.
Clearly, when people come into recovery, the gravity of the circumstances vary. Some people have had only ‘a nip of the wringer’, as the Twelve and Twelve has it, whilst others have been to prison or are homeless because of their addiction.
The first point to note is that the circumstances are absolutely not what bring people into recovery. Virtually everyone that has come into recovery has had months, years, or even decades of experiences that should but do not drive them to seek help. And others seek help without there being any particularly notable experiences.
No, the seeking of recovery comes because of divine intervention (or at least a spontaneously arising impulse that is not a mechanical result of bad experiences or even bad emotional responses to those experiences). Circumstances never brought a single person into recovery; if they did, everyone would seek recovery at the first occurrence of such ‘circumstances’.
Consequently, the first rock-bottom is not really the array of circumstances but the collapse of the ego and the sense of desperation that arises out of the egoic self-deception being temporarily taken offline. The sense of desperation does not correlate with the circumstances.
We can conclude, therefore, that it is really desperation that provokes the impulse to come into recovery, although even desperation alone is insufficient: desperation can drive people to stop fighting and just resign themselves to the addiction or to worse. It needs hope and resolve, and that’s where God comes in.
Neither the circumstances nor the desperation, hope, and resolve that prompt first attendance are the really operative rock-bottom, however.
The really operative rock-bottom is Step One: the realisation that one must take the rest of the Steps not because of past or future consequences but because one is subject to an overpowering compulsion which has temporarily abated and which can be combatted durably only by developing a working relationship with God, combined with the observation that opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, and, if the opportunity is not taken up now, it might never arise again.
This operative rock-bottom therefore has nothing to do with circumstances and nothing to do with emotion but is the 100% intellectual acceptance of Step One, that, if I carry on as I am, I will use again, and, when I use, I may never stop. In other words, I am powerless, and, as a consequence, I am unable to manage my own life (which has nothing to do with neurosis, immaturity, disorganisation, incompetence, or failure) but is a technical recognition that I am the host of the parasite of addiction, and it, not me, is calling the shots.