“We Give Up One Thing For Everything”

The AA principle "we give up one thing for everything, as opposed to everything for one thing" captures one of recovery's most profound truths about the nature of exchange involved in choosing sobriety. This saying illuminates the fundamental difference between the losses of active addiction and the supposed "sacrifice" of recovery.

This self-assessment is designed to help you examine your relationship with this crucial recovery principle. It explores how deeply you understand the true nature of what you've gained versus what you've lost in recovery, identifies areas where you might still be mourning the "loss" of substances rather than celebrating what you've gained, and helps you develop a more complete appreciation for the profound exchange that recovery represents.

The assessment examines both your intellectual understanding of this concept and your emotional integration of it. Many people can understand this principle intellectually while still experiencing recovery as primarily about loss rather than gain. This assessment helps identify where grief for substances might be overshadowing gratitude for recovery gains.