There are some earmarks to having this problem that we all share. Ones that are most commonly known are excess and compulsion. Often, before we get to recovery we all justify things that we did in these two ways as being good things we've all have gotten ourselves in real trouble by doing this. This is where we can't help ourselves, this is how the problem works on us, by thinking it's okay, that whatever we're doing to excess or compulsively won't hurt us, when nothing could be further from the truth. And even when we knew this, we equally knew there was nothing we could do about any of this on our own. We're in real trouble here, and if we don't begin to start to do something about all this, we'll risk losing everything. Recovery can show us how we can learn to live with the very excessive compulsive nature of our problem, without having it destroy us.