ZamZam

Hey, is there anybody else here who is an atheist in recovery?

A lot of people seem to turn to God or a higher power but I ain't a believer.

I am thinking of going to an AA meeting for the support and for the social aspects but I am not a believer

zerothehero

I consider myself a nontheist, which basically means that the question of the existence of god is irrelevant.

But I hear you about AA. Lots of folks try to redefine the "higher power" thing to mean something other than a deity, but that doesn't really work for me. You might want to search for SMART recovery (a cognitive-behavioral approach) meetings in your area, or even Refuge Recovery if mindfulness/Buddhism (secular) is okay with you.

JeffreyAK

I'm an atheist who's done with recovery. You don't need religion to get and stay clean and sober, you just need to get and stay clean and sober. Depending on where you live, there may be no-to-many secular non-religious support groups you can check out instead of AA.

Soberpotamus

I'm nontheist and found AA wasn't a good fit for me. I happen to live in the Bible Belt, and there just aren't any agnostic AA groups around here. I wish there had been, cause I would've joined one for sure. I looked into starting one, but there are no other people in my city who were interested.

Face-to-face support is invaluable. I wish I'd had that opportunity outside of IOP and Continuing Care. SR is/was my maintenance support group.

IvanMike

Yes. I'm a no fooling Dawkins category 6 de facto atheist.

We get to recover too.

This is the non 12-step forum so I'll only say that I found that I could practice the steps in NA as an atheist and leave it at that.

Welcome.

dwtbd

I even paid money for the Out Campaign and have my scarlet A tee shirt and lapel pin
But for steps I only went for two
Stop
Don't
You will find tons of support on SR , take what works and leave the rest
Btw I think this particular corner of SR is for 12 Step, just of the secular variety.

graced333

2 steps that have kept me sober: done and be present.

freshstart57

Secular recovery is not just for atheists and nontheists. I have a faith, but He said Buddy you are on your own here. You can do this, so what are you waiting for?

Two steps for me too. Stop. Never look back.

graced333

inspiring to see this thread active!

schnappi99

One nice thing about AA/Alanon is you get to choose your own higher power if you feel inclined to choose any, you need not discuss it with anyone and no-one in the rooms has the slightest business involving themselves in whatever you choose to believe or not except as insofar as you choose to share. If the AA fellowship helps you stay sober then attending is a win far as I'm concerned.

The "people who wouldn't ordinarily mix" thing has proven true with me wrt religion, I've met a number of religious & spiritual people and consequently unlearned a few prejudices on that front- pretty cool.

Boleo

Just so happens that my favorite religion is wrtu religion (Whatever Runs The Universe).

shockozulu

I was agnostic. My higher power was the force of the big bang. If that isn't a power greater than myself (or my addiction) nothing is. I'm now Greek Orthodox Christian but that happened long after I stopped going to AA and there are times when my belief slides back to agnostic.

After a year clean I switched entirely to SMART Recovery (They actually work well together). I moved to the town over and the 12 Step meetings here are really unhelpful. For my recent chip, I went to the birthday dinner at my old group. I hadn't realized it until it was cake time but the sponsor who had worked me through the steps and traditions, and my former service sponsor when I was a GSR also had their birthdays last month.

My old town had fantastic fellowship, and recovery. I miss those meetings so much.

As for SMART, I just finished over 50 hours of training to be a meeting facilitator. Although SMART is a secular program over 60% of meeting attenders are religious. It looks like us religious and and secular peeps do both types of recovery, which I think is fantastic.

zerothehero

I think you make an important point, shokozulu. Most recovery programs or philosophies are not religious or spiritual, but that doesn't mean people don't bring their own forms of faith into them. In my experience, only A.A. and its spinoffs explicitly refer to God or a Higher Power as central to the recovery process.

awuh1

Shackozulu, I was a hard core agnostic with very strong atheist leanings when I first started the 12 steps. My perspective changed dramatically with regard to spiritual traditions when I did the steps and simultaneously looked at these traditions . Interestingly all this has sparked a very strong interest in physics.

When you said that your higher power was the force of the big bang it reminded me of two things. First is a quote I just love by Terrance Mckenna who said that 'all science is asking us to do is grant it one miracle (the big bang) and it can explain everything'.

It might interest you to know that most scientists, including Einstein had trouble with the "big bang" theory and the idea of an expanding universe. They thought that the universe had always existed and was in a "steady state". It was a catholic priest (George Lemaitre) who combined Einstein's theory of general relativity with astronomical data and gave is the theory of the big bang and an expanding universe. He was a very interesting guy. BTW Einstein came around and the big bang theory is now main stream science.

Here is a video on Lemaitre called "The Greatest Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of"
https://vimeo.com/171397809

cairn

lol! Mine was 'he-or-she-it' until i started seeing changes that it wasn't me who made. Then it morphed to a 'presence wiser than ourselves' and that locked in some coordinates, and i just don't feel quite so alone lost afraid misunderstood desperate and helpless and ******** no more.

I now have rudimentary faith that we take our little self importances and personal constructs waaaaay too seriously...there are very clear creative forces we don't avail ourselves of enuff, and anyone who reduces? the ego says so.

Far as i can tell, them alkies who got the AA show running swiped god right out from under the pope's nose, and went and passed it round downtown where it belonged...roll your own! And they were probly even split atheist-agnostic-cosmic santa claus-whatever. Sure beats what the politicians manage.

I like to show up at meetings of the 'faithful' just to remind them of their roots Keep a toe in the door for the next poor stumbling fool who isn't making the grade. Raise all the stink you want there. It survives. They even make a mockery of themselves, i think, pressuring the 'faithful' to solicit outside donations (against their very own policy that they only read part of) ...big joke on the one hand, deadly serious on the other, survives either and even the lukewarm and puzzled in between. Weird thing, that AA. 100% owned and controlled by nobody.

shockozulu

Awuh1, will give it a read. My mother is a physicist so I always have been interested in these things.

Darwinia

The god part of AA is irritating, but the rest works.

shockozulu

I was lucky that although my sponsor was Christian she was not only open to alternate beliefs. She taught me my HP can be anything stronger than me (which led to the big bang idea).

graced333

mindfulness seems to work for this one brain cell left gal.

Soberpotamus

In my opinion, the take away from this thread and similar ones is that nontheists (atheists and agnostics in any combination describing themselves as secular, nontheist, and so on) can get and stay sober, contentedly.

We do it all the time.