Zencat

I use SMART Recovery (a secular approach to recovery) as a part of my personalized addiction treatment plan. As a non-theist/deist I have found that I can recover from a seemingly hopeless state without God beliefs. I have experienced that there is no one correct way to recover from addiction. Finding what works best and working it to the best of ones ability will do the job. Thats what I did and it works for me. I say remove the stumbling blocks and forge a path to wellness that is meaningful to you.

Pinkcuda

So If it's needless to rely on God and his inspiration for strength when it comes to sobriety why rely on faith in God for anything? Why pray for peace and an end to world hunger? Let's just nail the Church Door shut and tell the congregation that they're wasting their time.
The answer is that with faith we get strength. With belief we get hope. With trust, we get inspiration.
I'll put my faith and trust in God and you keep scratching lottery tickets in hopes of winning. All you need is faith that it will happen someday. Right??? We keep scratching no matter how many times we've lost in the past. Faith and hope keeps us in line to buy tickets again and again.
Fortunatley when we put faith in God, we're instant winners. When we have faith in Lotto Tickets we'll be scratching for a long time.
Sorry for the analogy, but faith is faith.

NoMoBeer

The point of AA is that we don't have to "struggle" to stay sober...
Sorry if I am calling you out here, but what I am reading in your post is that you just don't want to quit drinking. If you do, then you need to just follow a plan of action. "Simple, but not easy. A price had to be paid." That price is hard work.... Your post tells me that you are looking for a reason to stay drunk, or at least have the 'out' to go back and then say you tried.

Step one. Start there.

Then, as you progress (and I would advise working with a sponsor) - you can worry about the God thing. Just a thought on that as well -- the Big Book suggests "why don't you choose your own conception of God?" on page 12. It's in italics, which means it's important.

Hang in there, don't throw the towel in (or think in a way that gives yourself the excuse to throw the towel in) ...

TexasMan

Know I'll probably get flamed for this but this was written in the 1930's and we've learned a lot since then.

I also do not agree with the AA approach of treating a psychological dependency with a religious approach (which it is regardless).

Check out SMART Recovery which I believe another poster also recommended. They also don't accept the "disease" notion that AA espouses.

Mark75

It's fine to disagree, but do it accurately.... AA does not espouse alcoholism as a disease. You can find individual AAs who call it a disease, but many like myself, don't. There has been many a discussion on this...

I am close to giving up on this next point...... but AA is spiritual, unapologetically so... not religious.

Mark

DayTrader

I'm really loving your posts man. You're bringing back some memories for sure.

1. We "do" plenty. If just doing nothing worked, believe me, meetings would be empty. There IS some work to be done on our parts and part of that work is relying upon God. What we get is a daily reprieve (from alcoholism) contingent upon our spiritual condition (or spiritual fitness). (notice, daily reprieve /spiritual condition is NOT "just don't drink one day at a time") Keeping in fit spiritual shape isn't easy and a lot of AA's bail out when it starts getting difficult. Tokens are for newcomers to see but they're also something to be proud of because, if you make it a year (we don't give tokens out or less than a year in my home groups) you've probably done a lot of work and you deserve some congratulations for a job well done.

2. We all have free will. We have the option to follow God's path (which I believe is to live a sober {not JUST dry} life. I have the option all day to garbage can that idea and do what I want.... including picking up a drink, be it the first or the second. You'll notice, if you choose to go your own direction, God's not going to stand in the way. You know that 1 leads to 2 to 3 and so forth.... God's path for me is to avoid that first one. If I jump the rails and go off on my own direction, it's every man for himself.

3. Ah........ my BIGGEST conundrum when I was new. "IF God loves me and wants me to be happy and can do ANYTHING, why doesn't He just snap his fingers and let me do whatever I want with NO consequences (drink, control, manipulate, lie, etc)? It took some time to wrap my head around this one and I probably won't explain it well. Upon further study (heh, makes me feel smart) I realized that, like step 1 says, we're not powerless over everything. There's plenty I DO have power over. For an alcoholic though, we tend to think we have dominion over all. It's that warped sense of power and control that needs to be reigned in. You'll have plenty of "power" to try to exercise self restraint over your repetitive shortcomings and character defects down the road.... and you won't WANT that power. In time, I came to believe that God "gives" me just what I need vs. what I want but don't really need vs. what I want that I'll in turn use to destroy myself. Often, it takes some time to realize that getting what you need is way more fun in the long run than getting what you want.

ClayTheScribe

I may be a little late on this, but I empathize with you and your questions about AA. They're one of the reasons that made me decide not to use AA in my recovery. I think it can be a fantastic program for the right program, but don't let anyone tell you that if you're an atheist and/or if you don't do a 12-step program you will die. Surely, for some people that is the truth. But it's not an absolute for everyone. I will be 10 months sober on Tuesday and I don't do AA. I just don't need it. You may find it's just a program that doesn't fit you. There's no shame in that, no matter what anyone says. As the Big Book says, AA does not corner the marketplace on recovery.

And it is possible to get something out of the meetings without doing the actual 12 steps. Some people go to AA for the fellowship alone. I have also been to LifeRing meetings and use SMARTRecovery. There's a lot less of those meetings around the country, but they offer programs that do not revolve in believing in a higher power. Some AA members even supplement their work with SMART tools. SMART is also free and has online meetings everyday. Regardless of my personal feelings of the 12-step program, I am, and I think most people on this site, are for people doing whatever works best for them. I am told it is possible to be an agnostic or atheist in AA (see the Secular 12-step sub-forum here), I just was not willing to put in the work to make it work for me and at this point I don't need a program like that to keep me sober. You should not feel pressured by anyone here or in real life to work any specific program any specific way. Make recovery yours, but make it work!

ClayTheScribe

For maybe the first time I'm going to disagree with you Bam. Atheism IS the belief there is no God. To me it is a belief system. The absence of belief is nihilism, and with the exception of our lovely nihilists, everyone believes something even if they believe that they don't believe in God. Just like agnosticism is the belief that one can not know or prove whether or not God truly exists. I don't purport to be able to prove God's existence, I simply don't believe in a God. I'm probably closer Zencat in that I'm a non-theist which means God is irrelevant to my spirituality. Another reason I have distanced myself from atheism recently is that it is too much like a religion in that, if you talk to a lot of atheists, there are certain core beliefs and even politics you have to have to be considered true atheists, for example if you are an atheist, than you can't believe in a spirit or a soul. And through the collected actions of atheist and secular groups they have made atheism into a religion and I just don't care much for that.

Justsomeguy, I wouldn't bet on the fact that you can outlast this alcoholism thing long enough to pay back people. I wouldn't be where I am in life right now if I were still drinking. I know that to be true. If you're frustrating yourself into a corner with the HP and AA thing, look to another program. Don't try to fit yourself into a box just because you think it's the only thing around or because other AA members or Big Book thumpers are trying to pressure you into it. And, from what I can gather, everyone else is right about AA and a HP, you don't have to have a firm idea of what that is to be successful in the program. From most of the atheists and agnostics who went into the 12 steps, their idea of a HP evolved over time. Regardless of whether or not it's AA or something else, you need to set yourself down a path of sober living. If that meets hitting three meetings a day, do it. Figuring out the God thing while trying to get sober would seem like a lot for many people, so don't. Just work on the first step until you get some sober time and your mile-a-minute brain slows down some and you calm down a little. Then try step 2. Or don't. Just get yourself into a way of life that revolves around getting you more healthy.

ClayTheScribe

He.ll yes! Better than anything I could've said.

Bamboozle

sorry...my post was way off topic. please disregard.

Catkill23

don't know, I'm just glad I'm not GOD and knowone else is. I am also glad that when I'm at my lowest points in my life I have someone not in this material world that seems to get me through that moment by giving hope that it will pass. If I didn't have this I don't know who or what would convince me it will be better. So I believe in something.

Boleo

Here lies the crux of your problem. If you are a alcoholic of the type that the Big Book is written for, no human power can relieve your alcoholism.

While AA does say YOU will never have control, it does not say you will never find release from the obsession to to drink.

Every question you ask is both rational and logical from a normal persons perspective. The first concept that you need to grasp is that alcoholics can't rely on logic and reason once they have crossed the line into alcohol-ISM.

DayTrader

All that logic and reason got me was stuck in a 12-Step program!!!



(yeah, yeah, I say that tongue-in-cheek - but it IS true... hm........maybe my "logic and reason" is WAY smarter than I give it credit for and it planned for me to be here all along....... nahhh....no way...... no way God had anything to do with it either )

ClayTheScribe

For me logic and reason is what got me sober and to some extent keeps me sober. It was no longer logical or reasonable to continue drinking when it caused me so many problems and it is still illogical and unreasonable for me to drink and expect a different result. However after meeting lots of addicts/alcoholics online and in-person I've come to the conclusion I am an unusual case. Often alcoholics need more than logic and reason to keep sober and some need faith in a higher power. You may or may not be one of those people. I still don't think trying to rationalize God or a HP is your top priority right now--right now it's getting and staying sober.

And you must have a certain desperation to get sober. Despite my logical thinking, I didn't quit drinking until I was so desperate for relief from my lifestyle that I wanted to be sober more than I wanted to get drunk. One piece of advice I got as an atheist interested in AA way back then was to use the AA fellowship (Group Of Drunks) as your God until you firm up your own HP. I'd say if you're desperate enough to quit, but struggling with the God thing, that may be your best bet right now.

Mark75

I don't. Too much work.