Powerlessness as Ontological Revelation
This article proposes a novel theological interpretation of Step One of the Twelve-Step recovery program—"We admitted we were powerless"—through the lens of Jewish mystical thought on being (yesh) and non-being (ayin). Drawing on the scholarship of Elliot Wolfson, Gershom Scholem, and the radical theology of Jonathan Eybeschütz, alongside the author's own clinical-theological work on divine concealment in therapeutic encounters, this essay argues that the admission of powerlessness constitutes not merely a psychological acknowledgment but an ontological revelation. The addict's encounter with powerlessness mirrors the kabbalistic understanding of ayin as the sacred ground from which authentic being emerges. This reframing resolves the apparent theodicy problem posed by addiction—namely, how a beneficent God permits such suffering—by relocating the question from explanatory theodicy to transformative encounter. The collapse of false selfhood in Step One becomes structurally identical to the mystical process of bitul (self-nullification), wherein non-being serves not as nihilistic void but as the generative matrix of spiritual rebirth.