Old 02-17-2009, 03:52 AM
  # 6 (permalink)  
paulmh
Member
 
paulmh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: UK
Posts: 1,415
First of all you know there's a secular recovery forum - and also a secular 12 step forum - on SR.

Second, AA is about programmes of actions which help alcoholics like us to stop living life one way - the way you are now - and to start living it a different way. It's not about beliefs. What other people believe - or what you think they believe - doesn't get you any more sober. It's the actions that you take that get you sober. In the beginning I would say that the most beneficial action you can take is to get your arse to a meeting. The next most beneficial action you can take is to learn to listen to people without comparing yourself or judging them (that's not a personal comment to you, just a general principle!). After that, the actions you need to take will be made plain to you.

Honesty. Open-mindedness. Willingness. Nothing there about religious beliefs, but these are the best tools you can look to cultivate in AA in the early days. Seems from your previous post that you might be starting to get honest, so that's great! Suffering in drink does that to us. It forces us, eventually, to get willing, or to die. It forces us to acknowledge that the scale of the problem we face outweighs any of our own resources, and we better get open to other ideas - or die.

The most hopeless alcoholics may drink themselves to death eventually. But we're dead men walking a looooong time before out bodies give it up.
paulmh is offline