Ananda,
been thinking about your original post/question since yesterday.
though really, i've been thinking about it for years, asking myself the same: can you recover without a program?
(though i note that's different from your
Does anyone not do a program?, i figure you're asking if it's possible?)
i don't "do a program" as such, though there are things i do. after thirty+years of drinking and numerous tries at quitting, i finally quit over six years ago. my mainstay of sobriety support was LifeRing forum, and a weekly f2f meeting for two years. in LifeRing, the idea is to somehow develop your own sobriety program, something i've not entirely understood, as my first obvious question is how do you know it's "working" and do you only know it's NOT working if you drink again? anyway, neither here nor there.
so yes, i don't "do a program" if by that you mean a previously set out list of things to do that some other people have said is the way to do it.
(i'm a bit afraid i could go on at great length here, and don't want to get bogged down in details, but please feel free to ask if anything interests you and you want to chat more).
but i certainly do DO things: i'm part of LR forum daily. i am open to gaining more and better understanding of the programs that ARE out there. in fact, the longer i've been sober, the more interested i am, and the more sense the AA program makes to me. so i think about it, reads about it, talk with some, listen. see things much differently from when i first got sober.
i hang out with a sober friend or two.
i volunteer in recovery organization. i've helped start a new meeting.
i've started coming here.
that kind of stuff.
Have any of you found a way to stay sober without buying the party line? well, yes. haven't bought any. well, uh, that's not entirely true. i had the willpower/rational decision and total control party-line, but i gave that up. gave it up when i had to see that it didn't fit my own experience, nor did it fit with what i saw around me, what was happening to others going back to drinking. which answers your other question:
Can a person really be honest and stay sober, or must we embrace as truth something, like a carrot of hope, regardless of our own experiences?
yes, i can be honest and stay sober, and i must accept truths i may not want to be so. these are NOT truths that go against my own experience. my major struggles for the first few years of being sober were all to do with accepting, later embracing, the truths of my own experience and what i observed. the truth of being honest about that.
if anyone actually recovers without ignoring their own beliefs and experience
hm...i had to accept my experiences and see them honestly, and not run from that. my beliefs? a lot of my beliefs about who i was/how i am/what getting and staying sober entails...i had a lot of strong beliefs about all that, and most of them were wrong
often, my experience and my belief were contradictory. my experience didn't jive with some nice comfy belief-systems i'd built/bought.
sorry. going on too long and all over the place.