Recovery Without Deity — The Convalesence of an Atheist

My name is not important and I’m a dope fiend, been one for over twenty years – that is, until I bottomed out and checked into a rehabilitation center almost exactly 180 days ago today. Better check yourself here – if you want to read textbook program material you ought to just click off this page right now. I’m no Nazi! Although I know damn well I’m an addict and have been around the rooms of NA/AA/CA (Narcotics, Alcoholics, Cocaine Anonymous) some time now, I am not, nor will I ever be, wholly indoctrinated. Along with a number of other addicts besides myself, I have a lot of issues with the twelve step approach and with the literature in general that I don’t care to discuss inside meetings. Inside a meeting, members share – we don’t debate, criticize, question. So a whole plethora of questionable ‘truths’ are taken as given. Quite often I feel the message is ‘Here are the beliefs you need in order to recover. Believe it or don’t – your choice. But you can’t recover unless and until you do.” That’s fine for meetings which by nature are centered about applying the principles of the literature to daily life. Meetings are not philosophy classes. Nor should they be. However, I feel a real need to ‘step’ back and engage in a critical discussion, particularly with respect to the importance of God. Having worked the twelve steps once already myself, I’m not unqualified to do this.

My spiritual awakening took me back to atheism.

I might sound a bit harsh to the believers out there but try to look at it from my perspective for a moment. In treatment (I have never heard of a treatment center that was not AA based) I listened to counselors sound off ad infinitum about AA being a ’spiritual not religious program’. On my second day they took us to a meeting downstairs. We closed with the Lord’s Prayer. That’s not even non-denominational, let alone ‘not religious’. Our culture is so steeped in Judaeo-Christian spirituality that individuals who’ve never been exposed to ‘alternatives’ (many of which I’ll explore here) tend to feel their principles are universal. Atheists and agnostics in the program are not only implicitly expected to change, like the guys in the stories who solve everything on their knees, but are expected to want to. That’s just not me.

The term ‘higher power’ frequently appears in the literature but is replaced in the steps by ‘God’ — except for in number two.  It’s easy to see where Bob and Bill were going with this — the restoration to sanity by a ‘higher power’ must involve coming to believe in God because when we get to step three suddenly the ‘higher power’ talk disappears and it’s time to ‘make a decision to turn one’s will and one’s life over’ to God.

As an atheist (right now the sole definition of atheist I want to get into is one who does not believe in the existence of anything even remotely resembling the judaeo-christian/muslim deity partaking of a ‘loving and caring’ nature — more philosophical and metaphysical definitions of ‘deity’ don’t merit the personal connotations the word ‘God’ bears) I think of this world as a savage garden, a beautiful, but for the most part, hostile, place wherein resources are limited, the competition over them endless and brutal, the only warmth, love, and compassion to be found that which we find it in ourselves to offer one another.

It’s important to state that my purpose here is constructive. My intent isn’t to bash the program but rather to be of service to addicts who may already be reaping the benefits this support system has to offer but are sitting on steps because the ‘god-talk’ turns them off. A fundamental tenet of my belief system is that spirituality and atheism are NOT mutually exclusive.

I’ve created this blog to share my experience of active addiction and of recovery, to provide information, links, and feeds to valuable resources, and to focus particularly on my approach, as an atheist, to the twelve steps. It’s not my intent here to argue for or against any particular form of spirituality but simply to share my own.

Furthermore, it’s important I mention that although I do speak as a member of a twelve step program, I do NOT speak as a representative of the anonymous fellowships. The views expressed herein are wholly my own. A man I hold in high esteem once said, “An addict with a great idea is a terrorist”. It is for that reason that I strongly encourage my readers — especially those new to recovery or still in active addiction — to seek out as many perspectives as possible, read everything out there on the net and in the bookstores, and discuss everything with everyone.

Be forewarned that, now and again, I find myself unable to resist engaging in off topic rants. I’ve just set the focus but will never hesitate to deviate from it, contradict myself on a near daily basis, meander here, there, everywhere, indulge myself in whatever musings suit my fancy any given day. Today, the above concerns remain foremost in my mind. I’ve got a lot of the vagabond philosopher in me and am as open and experimental about this stuff as I once was with mind and mood altering chemicals. You’ll see me bouncing all over the place — this is primarily the journal of a recovering addict.

Nothing more. Nothing less…