“You fellows are somebody. I was once, but I’m a nobody now.” (Page 157, Big Book)
He’s got it wrong. They’re nobody, and he’s somebody.
To get sober, the drinker has to go, to stop existing.
The drinker has to disappear and be replaced by a non-drinker.
The Japanese verb meaning ‘disappear’ in the conventional sense, いなくなる, ‘inakunaru’, literally means ‘to become not being’. This is exactly what is required by the programme, all at once, or gradually.