We've been fighting it, all of us have become fighters in a battle that can't be won. This is realized by the time we get to recovery. We're all good fighters and have been putting up the good fight, but it is now time to stop fighting now that we're in recovery. The way we defeat our problem is by accepting it, rather than fighting it, this is what is meant by surrendering. We are no longer fighting it, because we can't lose to it if we're not fighting it, and this we do by realizing we can never win this battle, and that it's better for us if we don't even try. We accept we have this problem that we can't do anything about and stop fighting it. By doing this we're then able to move on to learning how we can live with it, rather than fighting it. We find out how we can do this through recovery and most of us found out it's actually much easier to live with this problem than it is to fight it. Once we do this we can see and understand that this problem is an inside job, one that's been being played out on the outside of us, by all of us who have been fighting it.