Understanding the addiction cycle is important because it helps explain why for both the Oxford Group and for Bill Wilson, the admission of powerlessness is the first step to recovery. Otherwise, we remain caught. If we rely on willpower alone, then the only thing we know to do is to escalate our addiction to get out of the pain. Step 1 calls us to do less - to yield, to surrender, to let go.
Serenity, A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery, p. 22-23

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Step 1 is the first step to freedom. I admit to myself that something is seriously wrong in my life. I have created messes in my life. Perhaps my whole life is a mess, or maybe just important parts are a mess. I admit this and quit trying to play games with myself anymore. I realize that my life has become unmanageable in many ways. It is not under my control anymore. I do things that I later regret doing and tell myself that I will not do them again. But I do. I keep on doing them, in spite of my regrets, my denials, my vows, my cover-ups and my facades. The addiction has become bigger than I am. The first step is to admit the truth of where I am, that I am really powerless over this addiction and that I need help.
- From 12Step.org

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The principle that we will find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 22

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Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.'s remaining eleven steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry the A.A.'s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this prospect - unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.

Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A. and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation. Then, and only then, do we become open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We stand ready to do anything that will lift the merciless obsession from us.
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 24

I believe the delusion of control and power finally breaks down at the point where we are not able to alleviate the stress and our pain thorugh any effort in our repertoire. Evidently what we all want is happiness, yet with all we have accomplished or acquired with our attemps to be in control, many of us reach a place at which we not only cannot control our happiness - even with an addictive substance or behavior - but we cannot control our pain and stress, which has reached an agonizing level. By this time the family may have left; the job may be gone; or one's health may have been destroyed.

But we don't have to go this far down. We can see the patterns of powerlessness and go for help. When we begin to realize how we act and feel when no one is around, or in our car alone in traffic, or in line in a store, or when we listen to a political commentator, or in our most intimate relationships in our homes or in our beds, we can look around in our lives and see other signs of powerlessness and unmanageability. In the end it is usually the pain of our compulsions, addictions, and denial and the resulting strained or broken relationships that drive us to the stark awareness of our powerlessness. Unfortunately it may take a tragedy or crisis to break through our delusion of power - a divorce, a family member's addiction, a runaway child, a terminal illness, a bankruptcy, a death.
- A Hunger for Healing, p. 25