(note: I have no familial religious background and don't associate myself formally with any religion or group)
Bam,
Sorry it took me so long to finally write this. Ok, so for a very long time before I got sober I had this "hole in my soul" (I hate putting it that way but that is how it felt). This is what I would tell my therapist. It felt different than depression (I'm on zoloft) because even when I was happy which was actually often it was still there looming in the background. It was unfillable. Nothing I did could fill it. I knew it was linked to meaning. I needed to find meaning in my life. For awhile I thought that had to do with career or something but nothing seemed to work. I imagined that maybe if I found the right boyfriend then I might fill the hole. But part of me knew that none of these external changes were going to help things. The hole had been there almost my whole waking life through good patches and bad and it seemed regardless of external circumstance it still was there empty. I even tried a few years ago to give up drinking as an experiment to get rid of it. For four months I did not drink, in retrospect I realize I was a dry drunk, in an attempt to fill my "hole." It did not work. I never really said in my head that it was a "spiritual void" but I knew that it had to do with meaning. I felt like my life had no meaning and again that that feeling was more existential than biochemical depression. Towards the end of my drinking career I was burning through existential and religious literature by Saints and the like trying to search for their epiphanies and make them my own.
Then I got sober. I had no idea that getting sober and filling this hole were linked. In fact, due to my previous experiment I thought that they were unlinked. But something was different about me getting sober this time— I surrendered. That is the only language I can lend to it and I don't quite understand it. I had been trying *so hard* to fix my life, to find meaning that finally I just gave up and in that something happened. I have been to a couple of AA meetings and listened to some ladies talk and they report very similar voids. I was completely offput by the AA spiritual program as well (I am not trying to get you to go to AA because I got sober without AA and don't think I could have done it with AA) but now I get it. Their program of recovery, the steps, all of it is about filling that hole which so many alcoholics tend to have. That is probably what drinking is about. For the first time in my life, in sobriety, my hole seems to be filling up. I don't understand it. I don't necessarily attribute it to God or an HP. In fact I really dislike the language of AA and don't understand it. I don't understand talking to your HP. I don't understand giving your will over to God. So much of that I do not understand but if you can find your way and I don't think that means you need to subscribe to God or even an HP, I think that you can find meaning in your life. Lately, I have been reading a lot about Buddhism and recovery which to an atheist might be tolerable. I am getting into mindfulness because I have seen its effects on me when I try to stay in the present moment. For me, "my spiritual awakening," has not been an a-ha moment, like for zencat, maybe that will happen for you. I basically spent four years waiting for that to not come. It has been a progressive journey. It is hard for me to write about because a lot of it I don't understand. Mainly because so much of it is not in my rational mind. I guess my advice which is probably the secular version of let go and let God, is give up and be open. Although I think that is a lot easier said than done.
I just read an amazing book on recovery called
Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction by Thomas Bien. I think it doses out spirituality without being too fruity or in the clouds while also giving practical advice and pretty sure it is not heavy on the God or HP stuff. I really suggest it. I don't think that atheism is in conflict with finding meaning. I do, however, think that
clinging to any idea too rigidly is in conflict with healthy recovery.
Hopefully what I wrote made some kind of sense
