The first step sounds like surrender to defeat. It is the opposite. Admitting you are powerless over what has been ruling you is not the end of strength — it is the first honest thing you have said about your condition in a long time, and honesty is where God can work.
Powerless does not mean helpless forever. It means you have been trying to manage something through self-will that was never meant to be managed by self-will. The substance, the pattern, the behavior — it has demonstrated, through repeated evidence, that your own understanding is not sufficient to contain it.
Proverbs 3:5 says lean not unto thine own understanding. Step 1 is the moment you stop leaning on it. Not because you are weak. Because the evidence is in.
Self-will insists it can manage the situation if it just tries differently. One more strategy. One more boundary. One more rule. And for a time it may appear to work, which is why the admission of powerlessness is so difficult. The partial victories give hope that the next attempt will be the one that holds.
But partial victories over what has mastered you are not recoveries. They are pauses. Step 1 is the recognition that the pauses are not enough.
As long as you believe you can handle this on your own, you will keep trying to handle it on your own. The moment you genuinely admit you cannot is the moment you are available for something greater than your own effort.
This is not weakness. This is wisdom. Trust in the LORD with all thine heart. All of it. Not the parts self-will has given up on. All of it — including the part that still thinks it could manage this if it tried one more time.