This chapter traces the crisscrossing of various intellectual pathways that led to developing the first program to treat addiction (i.e., the so-called "Twelve Steps"), thereby outlining the historical-cultural backdrop or interpretive horizon within which its founder attempted to understand the problem. We will discover that the historical account of his development indirectly reveals a gap in the program for treating addiction, which is only partially closed by appealing to religious maxims: specifically, the paradox of how a physically based pathology can be overcome through the practice of a "spiritual discipline."