Epictetus, The Enchiridion
The first step asks for something that feels like defeat: admission of powerlessness. For the analytical mind, this is both the hardest and the most important step. You believe in agency, in effort, in the capacity to solve things. Admitting powerlessness feels like giving up.
Epictetus did not see it that way. He built his entire philosophy on a single distinction, one so simple it takes years to fully absorb. Some things are in our control. Others are not. And the work of a clear life is learning, with tremendous precision, which is which.
"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."
Epictetus, Enchiridion
The dichotomy of control is not about passivity. Epictetus was a former slave. He had no external freedom and every reason to despair. His insight was the opposite of resignation: by releasing attachment to outcomes he could not control, he concentrated enormous force on the narrow set of things he could.
What is in your control? Your judgements. Your intentions. Your actions in this moment. Nothing outside that, not other people's behaviour, not circumstances, not outcomes, is fully yours to command.
When you apply this to addiction: the compulsion, once triggered, is not in your control. The neural pathways that fire, the intensity of the craving, these arrive without your permission. Admitting this is not defeat. It is accurate. And accuracy is where wisdom begins.
What is in your control? Whether you act on it. The environment you build around yourself. The habits you practise. The people you call. The choices made before the craving arrives.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Epictetus would have recognised this immediately. The substance has become an external thing, outside your direct control, outside your will. Pretending otherwise has been part of the problem.
The Stoic response is this: stop spending energy trying to control what is not yours to control. Redirect it entirely to what is. You cannot control the craving's existence. You can control what you do next.
This is not weakness. It is precision. The clearest thinkers know exactly which problems are theirs to solve. Step 1 asks you to know the same about your relationship with this substance.
Write two columns. On the left: everything about your addiction and recovery that is not in your control, the compulsion, the past, what others think, how difficult the process is. On the right: everything that is in your control, this moment, today's choices, who you call, what you build.
The left column will be longer. The right column is where your entire life is played out.