Those of us old enough to have survived the drug culture of the 70's and 80's have probably read an extremely popular book by a psychotherapist of that period which contained the memorable Eschatological Laundry List: A Partial Register of the 927 (or was it 928?) Eternal Truths. Among them was the following:

If you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way.

Hero-worship is a feature of early recovery for many of us. Despite warnings to put principles before personalities, we latch onto some old-timer celebrity of our local program in the hope that he will be able to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. There is a sad symbiosis about these relationships: We need to worship, and the personality we adore all too often has built his own recovery on being worshipped. It is usually the case that we worshippers get disillusioned with the game before the old-timer does. It doesn't seem to do us much damage, but it can cause the old-timer a great deal of harm.

One of the great advantages of practicing Steps 10, 11 and 12 is that this latter part of the program doesn't really encourage hero-worship. Indeed, you can make out a good case for saying that the more years it took us to start working those Steps, the less we should be an object of attraction to anyone else. And anyway, approval by an old-timer is the worst possible reason for focusing on the last three Steps. As an Eastern religious figure said about two and a half thousand years ago:

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, "The monk is our teacher." When you yourselves know: "These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness," enter on and abide in them.