the paradox: too enslaved to lose it, praying to lose your mind
a little-mentioned paradox of Substance addiction is: that once you are sufficiently enslaved by a Substance to need to quit the Substance in order to save your life, the enslaving Substance has become so deeply important to you that you will all but lose your mind when it is taken away from you.
Context
The book's central statement of the trap, and one of its most exact: the very degree of enslavement that makes quitting a life-or-death necessity is the same degree that makes losing the Substance unendurable — so recovery begins at the precise point of maximum agony. And the prayer it produces is not for relief but for the loss of the mind itself, to set the mind down in an alley and walk away from it, which is the honest measure of early sobriety's pain.