You are never alone in AA.

https://sites.google.com/site/theatheistaa/Home

http://theatheistsway.blogspot.com/2008/08/sobriety-without-god.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/08/28/an-atheist-goes-through-alcoholics-anonymous/

http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/ALK-FREE.HTM

There are plenty more. Good Luck amivel78. I would just say to keep an open mind.

Tom

Hello and Welcome to MIP!

We have a program that offers suggestions and our Solution is in the Steps applied in all areas of our lives being guided by a Power greater than ourselves(not us) and at least greater than our addiction. It is not about who or what this Power is but about how this Power can help us in our recoveries(the group,Good Orderly direction,the Power of the Steps,a process of coming to believe.. You have come to an AA forum and WE always suggest beginning the healing by putting down the substance,making meetings and getting into our solution,the Steps ,worked with a sponsor and applied in all areas of our lives and the process of changing our attitudes and behaviors a day at a time...AA has helped many who are agnostic,atheists and members from all walks of life. belief systems and backrounds...WE have found that Key ingredients for success are honesty,openmindedness and willingness..If you care to share a little more about whats going on with you,your addiction and anything that may help us share our ESH(experience ,strength and hope) with you.There are many roads to recovery WE can only suggest giving a meeting a try and listen to learn and learn to listen.We are glad you are reaching out,a good step toward doing whatever it takes to find recovery, a day at a time.Hope to hear more from you.....

Welcome!

I came in thinking people who believed in God were idiots.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you this program turned me into a religious freak - but I do believe today - that there is a power out there greater than me that I do not understand, and that works for me.

I think it's Jerry or Dean here on the board who always says to me: "Could you be wrong?"

Well - there was that possibility I guess. That opened the door for me. Being able to say "I don't know" was the turning point. I don't know one way or the other what's out there, or up there, or beyond the universe. Thinking there for sure was nothing was pretty arrogant. How could I know for sure? If I thought I knew for sure there was nothing, then I was saying that I believed that God doesn't exist. Well to say he doesn't, means I'm recognizing that he's something to people - and that meant I understood the concept of Him, therefor = he did exist. Maybe just not how they said... but still... if I know a tune or write a song in my head - no one else knows about it or that it exists... it's not on paper and has never been heard by another person, yet I know it exists, because for me it is there and true.

I hope that makes sense. And I hope you keep an open mind enough to at least admit you don't know for sure and can't know. This is beyond our brains capacity to really truly know. That still works for me today. I've developed on it quite a bit in the past year and a half - but that power I do not understand is still my God, and it's pretty much a tune only I can hear or know about.

And I don't think I'm much different than the majority of people in the program... it just took some time to see that.

-- Edited by justadrunk on Wednesday 14th of August 2013 08:48:01 AM

Yeah...I like what others have been saying. AA can work for you - you will just need to get creative on what you consider your HP. Also embrace that your views might change. Right now your are convinced that "a loving God" doesn't exist. It sounds like your are pretty firm in your atheism but ideas can change just like you can experience the miracle of sobriety. My views on "God" today are probably not even the ones I will have in a couple years. AA has allowed me to have that kind of spirituality and it's a good thing.

It's not so much believing in a specific thing but being open to the process of believing that is critical. If you are more open to the process of believing (whether it be in "goodness" the group of people in AA meetings, spiritual principle but not necessarily a traditional "God"), then you will be more likely to stay focused, to feel serenity, keep working, to not give up, to not sef-sabotage...etc. It may be hard to listen to others who do have more traditional "God" beliefs, but don't take that to mean you have to believe like they do. You don't.

First things first. Addiction and your substance abuse. AA does have tools. Concrete ones and you can listen for those and learn. Working on your spirituality will be a process - not an endpoint. And yes, I know plenty of spiritual people that don't believe in "God." I know plenty of people who work great AA programs and are both sober and atheists.

Welcome Amivel!  Lack of power is our dilemia.  We have no power over the unamanageability of life or the first drink.  That power must come from somewhere.  Why not take it one day at a time and focus on The Process that's worked for millions of others.  If it worked who are we to argue.  The Process is: Meeting attendance, working with a Sponsor, Steps, fellowship and helping others.  The Process can be your higher power.  Worked for me until things changed over time.  When I get twisted in the HP thing, I go back to The Process.  I seen it work in others and in my own life.  Keep an open mind, things may change for you too!

 

 

Aloha Amivel...welcome to the board; the family of recovering alcoholics and addicts who support the recovery from alcohol and drug addiction in people like themselves, such as you.  For me I identify with where you are at.  I read you post and my early feelings of helplessness and hopelessness along with the panic which came with the thinking I would die this way, urge me to cry out again and then express the sign that I won't every have to bo back there again.  I also came into AA with conditions about Higher Power or a God of anyone's understanding and the fellowship read me correctly as they sized me up and tagged me correctly..."He's afraid".  Simply afraid; afraid of dying and of living the way he is living.  I wanted help conditionally and later found out that it was the close minded approach.  When I first heard the support of "if you keep and open mind you will find help" I was able to understand that it was I who was looking for help and not the others.  I reached out conditionally and with a closed mind and blocked all the early help that was being offered to me.  I wasn't ready...I was close to death...I had to stop fighting reality.  The reality was that if I continued to try to manage my existence as I already was I would certainly die...mind, body, spirit and emotions...I was already 3/4ths there and was just waiting for my body to lay down and stop breathing.   The other reality was that if I just gave up fighting and sat with these people who were not like me at all I might find a crack in the wall of whatever it was that was holding me captive and then escape.

Higher Power...God, Jesus Christ, Satan, myself, booze...all failed me.  I knelt to each and everyone of those when I was drinking.  You could add others and they also left me in failure.  My resistance and denial was about me hanging tightly on to my perceptions of what I feared and I would not learn until I was gifted with sponsorship who loved me more than I loved myself and who knew my shoes and who could direct me as they were directed.  Humility...being teachable.   Qualifying question to humility..."could you be wrong"?   I didn't dare answer no to that question for fear of appearing egotistical, self centered and arrogant in the open to someone else.   Openmindedness seemed such a small request in the quest of saving my life and so I fired my own voice while sitting in the rooms and this forum of those who had/have what I needed.

If you add up the numbers of years of sobriety of all who have come to your cry here would those years/days/hours/minutes be what you are looking for?  Like you we all have just this one day and also like you we are not alone.  The sobriety of others who know how to work this program and who are rewarded by another day with the absense of fear, an abundance of love and self confidence is a gift from my higher power who I choose to call Akua...from the culture of my birth.  I wasn't born alone and did n't create the world I came into not even the disease of alcoholism which greeted me in the delivery room.  

When I came into recovery I was planning a 3rd suicide attempt...I failed in the first two...there had to be better management don't you agree?  I mean who the hell survives a toxic shock event with alcohol by accident?  Who also looses the power to pull the trigger?  

If you keep and open mind you will find help.  Open mindedly I did commit suicide and that is found in the new realizations of my recovery as I have been given it by both the Al-Anon and AA programs.   The new realization is, "Suicide isn't so much about ending your life as it is about ending how you live your life".  I no longer live the alcoholic life and would not end the life I have now for any reason of which I have none.  

You don't believe in God and you believe that you want to have a happy, joyous and free life one which you have not terminated early by whatever means.   Your plea for help is answered when you reached out to the depth of recovery here.   You can have what we have.  You seem willing to want to work for it.  You have been given direction by those who have a power greater than themselves to, for now, let go of the God idea.  Do not let it get in the way of what you need most and soonest...freedom from alcoholism.

If you suffer from depression you ought not drink at all...alcohol is a chemical depressant.  Low to No self esteem is a characteristic of depression and alcohol causes and supports it.  Don't drink at all...find an open AA meeting to call home along with the others available to you...get a big book...get a sponsor...work the steps...always keep and open mind...you have now found help.   

Keep coming back.   

amivel78 wrote:

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I don't believe in god,  So how do I recover?

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There's no "God' requirement in the A.A. preamble. In fact, the only requirement for A.A. membership is a 'desire' to stop drinking, nothing more. But it's not the only game in town.

If the "God" factor bothers you that much, than I suggest you explore a more healthy alternative, like P.A.W. S or Rational Recovery.  The treatment options are endless, but like any recovery program they require us to change. There are a lot to choose from, so pick and choose wisely.

Oh, one more thing: Don't take this disease too lightly. It's a life and death battle were talking about here.  So I suggest you get involved early, wherever that might be, and do what others suggest as a program of recovery. The rest you can learn along the way. Onward...

-- Edited by Mr_David on Friday 16th of August 2013 01:46:20 AM