Identify not Compare: the one universal Substance-career — "yes gradually less and less actual…"
yes gradually less and less actual fun but with some physical need for the Substance, now, instead of the former voluntary fun; then at some point suddenly just very little fun at all, combined with terrible daily hand-trembling need, then dread, anxiety, irrational phobias, dim siren-like memories of fun, trouble with assorted authorities, knee-buckling headaches, mild seizures, and the litany of what Boston AA calls Losses
Context
The theme's master-narrative of addiction, and the doctrinal reason the meeting is staged for empathy ("Empathy, in Boston AA, is called Identification"). The arc is delivered as a single generic second-person career because that is the claim — every addiction is the same addiction: voluntary fun decaying into involuntary need, pleasure inverting into "terrible daily hand-trembling need," and the whole descent measured in "Losses." Identification, not sympathy, is the mechanism: you are cured by hearing that a stranger's ruin is identical to your own, which is why the counselors seat you close enough to see the speaker's nose-pores and forbid you to Compare.