And welcome to the board.  You checked in on Hillyard's post and asked how does one work step 1.  Lots of family's gonna stop by and offer their experience on the question also and for me working Step one meant realizing that the problem was alcohol and drug addiction and that everything I had wished or done about it to either reduce its affect on the marriage and family including physical retribution to trying to teach her how to drink was not and would not ever work at getting it to either stop or get less and more reasonable.   I didn't know anything about alcoholism and didn't even know that I didn't know from the start...I was dumb as a stick so how could I expect to alter or change anything.  It was altering and changing us which is one of the early things I learned about the chemical and disease of it "....mind and mood altering chemicals."    I had to quit the battle field as I was loosing my own will to live and so I took the 1 step in two parts; backwards and then took it anyway.   My life was unmanageable and that is why I was at an Al-Anon meeting with others in the same raft while rationalizing the first part rather than admitting I was powerless over it.  The rationalization went like..."Yah of course I am powerless over it...it just sits in a bottle and doesn't even move ...blah blah blah" and then I just gave up even doing that kind of crazy thinking and surrendered to the fact that it was more cunning, powerful and baffling than anything I'd ever had in my life even my rationalizations.  I was nuts, crazy and suicidal...and that is when step two came into the program for me...the last word of which is Sanity.   There are many here that will tell you their experiences on this and also many more at the face to face meetings who will show you more.    Keep coming back...this works when you work it.   (((((hugs)))))