this is your story, this is your first step

The program's central move performed on an outright fabrication, which paradoxically shows the move at its clearest: the addict's own history — the overdose, the amputations, the days face-down — is not a shameful past to bury but the material of the First Step, the thing you own and tell in order to begin. Pat blesses a counterfeit as a first step because the ritual works on whatever story is placed in it.