eteprebos721

Hey everyone, I'm newly sober again. I've had various lengths of sobriety ranging from a few weeks to 12 years at one point. I just left a behavioral health facility and am 6 days away from my last drink. Longest I've gone in about a year. I'm here looking for support in finding secular recovery methods. I'm very familiar with AA and 12 step programs. I know they can work for atheists like myself and I have the utmost respect for them. I'm just not interested in a 12 step approach at this point. I have looked into SMART , but their website is not very user friendly, at least not for me. I'm particularly interested in finding secular online meetings. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you

doggonecarl

I can't help with secular recovery, but I want to welcome you to Sober Recovery and mention that there is a secular recovery forum. Not particularly active, but contains a wealth of information, especially about rational recovery and AVRT.

advbike

Welcome to the forum. You will find a lot of support here, many using different methods.

Here you go. This is in the Secular Recovery section of the board, general discussion of methods. I use the Rational Recovery (AVRT) approach.

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...r-connections/

Hevyn

Great to have you with us, eteprebos. Congratulations on your 6 days sober.

I have great respect for AA & acknowledge it's importance, but there are many here who have become sober without it. I've found reading & posting here each day keeps me vigilant & sober. I hope you'll continue to participate. You are never alone.

Anna

Welcome, and I'm glad you found us. The main thing is to find what works for you. There is lots of information and support here.

LoveHateWhine

There is a website called Omagod that lists hundreds of Zoom agnostic and humanist AA meetings. There are a few other types on there too such as LifeRing. Omagod meaning “our mostly agnostic group of drunks”.

I participated in one of the Humanist meetings and they were not 12-step oriented.

least

Hello and welcome to the family. Do check out the Secular forum. Lots of useful information there that might interest you.

Glad you found us.

DriGuy

Yes, it's hard to get much of a feel for SMART from their website. I think you probably have to join, immerse yourself, and then make a judgement. But that's also true for most any program out there. You need to really try it on to give it a fair shake. Then if it doesn't work, try something else. Better yet, rather than rejecting any program in its entirety, just find the useful parts from various sources, and fashion them into something eclectic that works for you. Right now, YOU know what you need to do if at only a semi conscious level, so you can design your program.

One of the useful things about this forum is there are a wide variety of resources from others who have found their way, some closely aligned with specific programs, and some that found sobriety on their own. It's a very diverse group, and that makes for a good learning environment, because no one program can serve everyone. There are many paths, and each of us is different. Having said that, I believe every program has something to offer. Almost every book on recovery has some little tip that you can find useful. Some make lots of sense, others not so much.

Throughout all this, there are a few universal truths about what you can and cannot do to be successful. Beyond those few truths, being all in and totally committed to your sobriety is a good place to start. Recovery is a big deal. For me, it became my whole life early on. Everything thing I did or planned came second to not taking a drink. It's not that way now, since I don't even think about taking a drink anymore, so my life is what I call normal. But in the beginning, I was "all in and focused on that one thing about never taking a drink. The rewards were/are big.

D122y

When it comes to my sobriety and have put all my irons in the fire.

I pray all the time, but I also am a huge believer in the science of addiction.

Specifically, the irreversible brain damage that occurs from booze and other drugs.

The way I see it...

My brain didn't heal from getting clean, it rewired.

The new paths are not as robust as the original ones.

That mean any relapse causes way worse recovery issues. Relate those issues to clinical insanity etc.

The only way to get this clean is to suffer over a long long long time. Several years.

Any relapse causes the crave and crazy to start over again.

Addict for life here.

I was not born a drunk, it was a learned behavior.

SR taught me this. SR saved my life.

Thanks.

BeABetterMan

I use AA, BUT I can share one key thing I have learned during recovery that can be done with or without the help of God.

Learn to live with your thoughts. Learn to accept them. To sit with them, to acknowledge them. Early sobriety and life in general really can be so hard and alcohol has become our “medicine”. When you accept your own thoughts and your own feelings and realize that thoughts are not facts it helps from running back to our medicine. Frequent guided mediation also helps.

AA or no AA , you have to work your ass off to change. Sitting, waiting, wishing will accomplish nothing. You have to get a program and work it. Best of luck and the doors of AA will always be open for when, or I mean, if you decide to return