Shining a light on the obsession in a meeting without judgment is the key to recovery.

History, especially with regards to Bill Wilson shows us that it is neither helpful nor useful to look at people's compulsive behavior or depression as a moral failure or lack of willpower. It is as Dr Silkworth put it, "A physical allergy combined with mental obsession." Shining a light on the obsession in a meeting without judgment is the key to recovery. It's a formula that has transformed everything from hoarders to debting.
Extrapolating this wisdom, we can see that "challenging" someone to give up smoking is like challenging someone to quit having diabetes. "C'mon" someone may say, "go on a diet, I challenge you to take off 50 pounds," which may work for a couple months only to see the weight put right back on again. Why? Because there is an illness at work here, not a matter of flipping on a switch and changing behavior. But the illness, once a light shines on the underlying reasons can be arrested.
Or how about depression? Now there's a misunderstood disease. How many articles do we read about depression being something where you can think your way into a positive outlook? For Wilson, he suffered deeply from depression after AA got on its feet and people accused him of "not working the program." But depression functions very much like addiction, as many of us in recovery can attest, in that it too is an illness, that has it's own unique recovery process.

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