The crux of the problem.

How then shall we help our readers determine, to their own satisfaction, whether they are one of us? The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful, but we think we can render an even greater service to alcoholic sufferers and perhaps to the medical fraternity. So we shall describe some of the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking, for obviously this is the crux of the problem.

What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon. Why does he? Of what is he thinking? - Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 34-35

Before we launch into Jim's story, it would be advantageous to study these introductory paragraphs.

Up to this point we have been describing the hopeless nature of the alcoholic malady. Bill has taken great pains to hammer this point home. But now the book begins to paint a clearer picture of alcoholic insanity utilizing a couple of actual cases along with a humorous analogy.

 By the time we reach the end of "More About Alcoholism" pretty much everything related to Step One has been said. If the reader finds himself or herself in agreement at this point, then Step One has been taken.