Category: From AA Agnostica

Courtenay Baylor

By bob k

If for no other reason, Courtenay Baylor should be of interest to modern AA members for being the first recovered alcoholic to work as a professionally paid addictions counselor. He set the precedent for the tens of thousands in the modern world who have gotten sober and then entered the field of guiding others to do the same. There are additional reasons to know about Baylor, most particularly for the secularist.

As his alcoholism progressed, Courtenay Baylor (1870-1949) found that he had become an insurance agent who spent a good deal more time drinking than discussing indemnity plans. In 1911, he came to Boston to consult with Elwood Worcester about his problematic drinking. Five years earlier, the Emmanuel Church had entered into co-operation with the local medical community in setting up a tuberculosis clinic in the building’s basement.

Among those seeking treatment for “TB,” there were many alcoholics. Others arrived displaying symptoms of a variety of nervous disorders falling under the general category of “neurasthenia,” a term popular at the time. Reverend Worcester and his associate rector, Samuel McComb had doctorates in psychology. They began helping people with their emotional disorders and assisted a number of alcoholics in achieving sobriety.

Courtenay Baylor was among those who were able to achieve sobriety. Instead of returning to what had been a successful business career overall, he felt that he had acquired a new life and a new attitude. His emotional rearrangement prompted him to take a position as a “friendly visitor” on Worcester’s staff. Elsewhere, he is described as being hired as a supervisor of the Social Services department.

Perhaps he intuited that such a path of service might insure his long-term sobriety.

Baylor stayed with Worcester out of a desire to help others as he had been helped. Worcester apparently never regretted accepting his offer. In his autobiography, he praises Baylor for “his originality, his psychological insight, and his extraordinary ingenuity as a teacher.” He adds: “His strength lies, partly, in his ability to impart his wholesome philosophy of life so unobtrusively as to arouse no opposition. In a short time, the pupils begin to announce his own principles as their own convictions.” (The Road to Fellowship, Richard Dubiel, p. 36)

Although neither a clergyman nor a medically trained professional, Baylor did bring the unique perspective of an intimate, “insider’s knowledge” of the malady. The former insurance agent stood before his “patients” as proof positive of his own solution – a living example that an alcoholic could be rehabilitated.

Re-published in 2017 – almost a hundred years later – Remaking a Man.

This was not a mere theory.

Real results were being attained, and Baylor’s developing therapeutic ideas and practices were given a broader audience with the publication, in 1919, of Remaking a Man. Physicians and some of those who had been “cured,” picked up on his techniques. Increased numbers were reached as the lay therapy movement grew. The progressive Christian ministers had incorporated religious practices like prayer along with what was more properly called “psychology.” Baylor focused on secular therapies.

His claimed “cure rate” of 65 percent gains credibility from the fact that his critics assailed not his numbers, but the possibility that the remarkable degree of his successes was due more to Baylor’s tremendous personal charisma than his methodology. However, similar numbers were achieved by his followers. One reason for the high percentages stemmed from the procedure of strictly “pre-qualifying” potential clients for motivation. Little time was wasted on the “wishy-washy.” “First and most importantly was a real desire to be cured.” (The Psychology of Alcoholism, G.B. Cutten, p. 283)

Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s operated much the same way.

Alcoholic Neurosis

Baylor thought that most alcoholics suffered from an alcoholic neurosis. He began with the assumption that the condition to be treated was the same whether it was the cause or the outcome of drinking.

Although a detailed analysis of Baylor’s techniques lies beyond the scope of this short essay, it’s worth taking a look at some comments from William L. White.

(Baylor) emphasized the necessity of working primarily, not upon the surface difficulty, but upon the condition behind it and upon the cause of the underlying condition… He taught techniques of relaxation that today would go by such names as thought stopping, progressive relaxation, self-hypnosis, autogenic training, and guided visualization.

Baylor’s therapeutic style involved teaching, encouragement, and a high degree of mutual self-disclosure. Because of Baylor’s emphasis on self-disclosure, his treatment contract required a mutual commitment to confidentiality. Baylor tried to cultivate in the client the development of a new focus in life. To Baylor, sobriety required a purpose, a philosophy, and a plan. He spoke not of recovery, but of ‘reconstruction’.

Slaying the Dragon, First Edition, William L. White, p. 101

Famous Clients

Courtenay Baylor had two clients who were notable from the perspective of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1922 he treated Richard Peabody (1892-1936), who went on to become the most famous of the lay therapists. The one-time American aristocrat had suffered depression, institutionalization, divorce, and disinheritance – all by the age of 30. In 1931 (sometimes reported as 1930), following several years of private practice, Peabody published The Common Sense of Drinking, a book that influenced Bill Wilson as he wrote AA’s Bigga Booka later in the decade. Phrases from Peabody’s book appear in Alcoholics Anonymous almost word-for-word. “Halfway measures are of no avail,” and “Once a drunkard, always a drunkard” come to mind but there are many others.

Baylor’s other interesting client is described on page 26 of AA’s book as a “certain American businessman.” Rowland Hazard (1881-1945) was another black sheep from a wealthy and prominent family. His Rhode Island ancestors date back to the early colonization of America.

Hazard’s story, as crafted by Bill Wilson, is used to demonstrate that the money-is-no-object quest for sobriety proved useless. We are told in conference-approved literature that Hazard went to Switzerland to be treated by the great psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. We are informed that the therapy was of a year’s duration and that it took place in 1931. Relatively recent research by the Rhode Island Historical Society demonstrates conclusively that both claims are false. The treatment period was no more than eight or nine weeks, and most likely occurred in 1926.

This seems to be a classic example of Bill Wilson’s predilection for myth-making – a full year of expensive, expert human power treatment and no result. The official AA version of the tale has Jung advising Rowland to seek a spiritual experience, and Rowland finding that solution with the Oxford Group. The truth compounds a simple tale.

What happened during the seven intervening years from 1927 to 1934?

For one thing, there was a lot of drinking interspersed with institutionalization and periods of sobriety of varying lengths. Despite having no particular objection to a religious solution, Hazard did not pursue that option with “the desperation of drowning men.” Perhaps Jung’s recommendation never happened. In any case, the Rhode Islander didn’t connect with Buchman’s group until 1933.

Did the religionists save Rowland Hazard? Perhaps, but he was being treated by Courtenay Baylor at the same time.

IF Hazard told Bill Wilson in some detail about Jung’s alleged recommendation that he seek a spiritual experience, it seems unlikely that he would misreport the timing by five years. Did Rowland fail to inform Bill that he continued to seek other therapeutic solutions? Did he forget to mention that he was being treated by Baylor at the time he got sober?

Of course, we must remember Bill Wilson’s mission. When pitching the inefficacy of non-mystical approaches, it’s probably unwise to cite examples of recovery through human power means.

Courtenay Baylor helped many drunks to reconstruct themselves. He seems to have helped AA’s famous “American businessman.” He helped the atheist, Richard Peabody, with methods that required no kneeling. The lay therapy movement had a nice run, well into the 1950s.

The pitch of the AA fundamentalist that “probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism” is contradicted at many junctures.

Alcoholics Anonymous was not the only therapy for alcoholism that flourished in its time. Other approaches to treating alcoholism, although they derived from sources very different from the influences that impinged upon AA, used similar methods and even incorporated some of the same ideas that a forgetfulness of history leads later thinkers to associate with Alcoholics Anonymous. In particular, the approach of Richard R. Peabody…not only preceded in time Wilson’s own sobriety but was well into the fifties accepted and endorsed by many doctors and clergy much more enthusiastically than was Alcoholics Anonymous.

Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Ernest Kurtz, p. 158

AA member and sobriety activist Marty Mann also described the lay therapy movement as having “considerable success.”

AA history and pre-AA history frequently contradict the pronouncements of AA fundamentalists, and that’s good fun for secularists.

Key Players in AA HistoryIn Key Players in AA History (2015), bob k covered the lay therapy movement in a single chapter. It deserves much more.

In the upcoming The Road To AA: Pilgrims To Prohibition, six chapters are devoted to this interesting AA predecessor. Also in the offing is a work of biographical fiction The Secret Diaries of Bill W.

 

The post Courtenay Baylor first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Courtenay Baylor

By bob k

If for no other reason, Courtenay Baylor should be of interest to modern AA members for being the first recovered alcoholic to work as a professionally paid addictions counselor. He set the precedent for the tens of thousands in the modern world who have gotten sober and then entered the field of guiding others to do the same. There are additional reasons to know about Baylor, most particularly for the secularist.

As his alcoholism progressed, Courtenay Baylor (1870-1949) found that he had become an insurance agent who spent a good deal more time drinking than discussing indemnity plans. In 1911, he came to Boston to consult with Elwood Worcester about his problematic drinking. Five years earlier, the Emmanuel Church had entered into co-operation with the local medical community in setting up a tuberculosis clinic in the building’s basement.

Among those seeking treatment for “TB,” there were many alcoholics. Others arrived displaying symptoms of a variety of nervous disorders falling under the general category of “neurasthenia,” a term popular at the time. Reverend Worcester and his associate rector, Samuel McComb had doctorates in psychology. They began helping people with their emotional disorders and assisted a number of alcoholics in achieving sobriety.

Courtenay Baylor was among those who were able to achieve sobriety. Instead of returning to what had been a successful business career overall, he felt that he had acquired a new life and a new attitude. His emotional rearrangement prompted him to take a position as a “friendly visitor” on Worcester’s staff. Elsewhere, he is described as being hired as a supervisor of the Social Services department.

Perhaps he intuited that such a path of service might insure his long-term sobriety.

Baylor stayed with Worcester out of a desire to help others as he had been helped. Worcester apparently never regretted accepting his offer. In his autobiography, he praises Baylor for “his originality, his psychological insight, and his extraordinary ingenuity as a teacher.” He adds: “His strength lies, partly, in his ability to impart his wholesome philosophy of life so unobtrusively as to arouse no opposition. In a short time, the pupils begin to announce his own principles as their own convictions.” (The Road to Fellowship, Richard Dubiel, p. 36)

Although neither a clergyman nor a medically trained professional, Baylor did bring the unique perspective of an intimate, “insider’s knowledge” of the malady. The former insurance agent stood before his “patients” as proof positive of his own solution – a living example that an alcoholic could be rehabilitated.

Re-published in 2017 – almost a hundred years later – Remaking a Man.

This was not a mere theory.

Real results were being attained, and Baylor’s developing therapeutic ideas and practices were given a broader audience with the publication, in 1919, of Remaking a Man. Physicians and some of those who had been “cured,” picked up on his techniques. Increased numbers were reached as the lay therapy movement grew. The progressive Christian ministers had incorporated religious practices like prayer along with what was more properly called “psychology.” Baylor focused on secular therapies.

His claimed “cure rate” of 65 percent gains credibility from the fact that his critics assailed not his numbers, but the possibility that the remarkable degree of his successes was due more to Baylor’s tremendous personal charisma than his methodology. However, similar numbers were achieved by his followers. One reason for the high percentages stemmed from the procedure of strictly “pre-qualifying” potential clients for motivation. Little time was wasted on the “wishy-washy.” “First and most importantly was a real desire to be cured.” (The Psychology of Alcoholism, G.B. Cutten, p. 283)

Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s operated much the same way.

Alcoholic Neurosis

Baylor thought that most alcoholics suffered from an alcoholic neurosis. He began with the assumption that the condition to be treated was the same whether it was the cause or the outcome of drinking.

Although a detailed analysis of Baylor’s techniques lies beyond the scope of this short essay, it’s worth taking a look at some comments from William L. White.

(Baylor) emphasized the necessity of working primarily, not upon the surface difficulty, but upon the condition behind it and upon the cause of the underlying condition… He taught techniques of relaxation that today would go by such names as thought stopping, progressive relaxation, self-hypnosis, autogenic training, and guided visualization.

Baylor’s therapeutic style involved teaching, encouragement, and a high degree of mutual self-disclosure. Because of Baylor’s emphasis on self-disclosure, his treatment contract required a mutual commitment to confidentiality. Baylor tried to cultivate in the client the development of a new focus in life. To Baylor, sobriety required a purpose, a philosophy, and a plan. He spoke not of recovery, but of ‘reconstruction’.

Slaying the Dragon, First Edition, William L. White, p. 101

Famous Clients

Courtenay Baylor had two clients who were notable from the perspective of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1922 he treated Richard Peabody (1892-1936), who went on to become the most famous of the lay therapists. The one-time American aristocrat had suffered depression, institutionalization, divorce, and disinheritance – all by the age of 30. In 1931 (sometimes reported as 1930), following several years of private practice, Peabody published The Common Sense of Drinking, a book that influenced Bill Wilson as he wrote AA’s Bigga Booka later in the decade. Phrases from Peabody’s book appear in Alcoholics Anonymous almost word-for-word. “Halfway measures are of no avail,” and “Once a drunkard, always a drunkard” come to mind but there are many others.

Baylor’s other interesting client is described on page 26 of AA’s book as a “certain American businessman.” Rowland Hazard (1881-1945) was another black sheep from a wealthy and prominent family. His Rhode Island ancestors date back to the early colonization of America.

Hazard’s story, as crafted by Bill Wilson, is used to demonstrate that the money-is-no-object quest for sobriety proved useless. We are told in conference-approved literature that Hazard went to Switzerland to be treated by the great psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. We are informed that the therapy was of a year’s duration and that it took place in 1931. Relatively recent research by the Rhode Island Historical Society demonstrates conclusively that both claims are false. The treatment period was no more than eight or nine weeks, and most likely occurred in 1926.

This seems to be a classic example of Bill Wilson’s predilection for myth-making – a full year of expensive, expert human power treatment and no result. The official AA version of the tale has Jung advising Rowland to seek a spiritual experience, and Rowland finding that solution with the Oxford Group. The truth compounds a simple tale.

What happened during the seven intervening years from 1927 to 1934?

For one thing, there was a lot of drinking interspersed with institutionalization and periods of sobriety of varying lengths. Despite having no particular objection to a religious solution, Hazard did not pursue that option with “the desperation of drowning men.” Perhaps Jung’s recommendation never happened. In any case, the Rhode Islander didn’t connect with Buchman’s group until 1933.

Did the religionists save Rowland Hazard? Perhaps, but he was being treated by Courtenay Baylor at the same time.

IF Hazard told Bill Wilson in some detail about Jung’s alleged recommendation that he seek a spiritual experience, it seems unlikely that he would misreport the timing by five years. Did Rowland fail to inform Bill that he continued to seek other therapeutic solutions? Did he forget to mention that he was being treated by Baylor at the time he got sober?

Of course, we must remember Bill Wilson’s mission. When pitching the inefficacy of non-mystical approaches, it’s probably unwise to cite examples of recovery through human power means.

Courtenay Baylor helped many drunks to reconstruct themselves. He seems to have helped AA’s famous “American businessman.” He helped the atheist, Richard Peabody, with methods that required no kneeling. The lay therapy movement had a nice run, well into the 1950s.

The pitch of the AA fundamentalist that “probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism” is contradicted at many junctures.

Alcoholics Anonymous was not the only therapy for alcoholism that flourished in its time. Other approaches to treating alcoholism, although they derived from sources very different from the influences that impinged upon AA, used similar methods and even incorporated some of the same ideas that a forgetfulness of history leads later thinkers to associate with Alcoholics Anonymous. In particular, the approach of Richard R. Peabody…not only preceded in time Wilson’s own sobriety but was well into the fifties accepted and endorsed by many doctors and clergy much more enthusiastically than was Alcoholics Anonymous.

Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Ernest Kurtz, p. 158

AA member and sobriety activist Marty Mann also described the lay therapy movement as having “considerable success.”

AA history and pre-AA history frequently contradict the pronouncements of AA fundamentalists, and that’s good fun for secularists.

Key Players in AA HistoryIn Key Players in AA History (2015), bob k covered the lay therapy movement in a single chapter. It deserves much more.

In the upcoming The Road To AA: Pilgrims To Prohibition, six chapters are devoted to this interesting AA predecessor. Also in the offing is a work of biographical fiction The Secret Diaries of Bill W.

 

The post Courtenay Baylor first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Triumph of Principles: The Story of American Spirituality in Twelve Steps

A review by John B.

This book is a mixture of psychology, philosophy, U.S. History, and the history of AA. Even though the Twelve Steps are the primary focus of the book, the book is not primarily about AA. But, this is not a bait and switch, the author is explicit, his goal is to analyze the Twelve Steps as a, “complete system of spiritual practice,” useful to anyone who seeks spiritual growth. And he means anyone: atheist, agnostic, evangelical fundamentalist, Buddhist, literally anyone, the words of Bill Wilson can be used to build a solid spiritual foundation. The book can be described as a catalogue of personal interpretations of each of the steps with suggestions as to how the step can contribute to spiritual growth.

The book is a heavy duty read (397 pages), but don’t let that be a deal breaker. Each of the chapters can be read as a stand alone unit. Chapter titles like, “The Doctor’s Opinion”, “We Agnostics 2.0”, “The Oxford Group”, “Making Amends” and “Spiritual Maintenance”, might pique your interest.

As the title of the book implies, the author views the principles underlying the Twelve Steps as a distinctly American form of spirituality and he magnifies that thought by asserting that the Steps are America’s most significant contribution to the world of spirituality. He sees the Steps as a spiritual system useful to alcoholics and non-alcoholics and states without equivocation, “This book is intended for all spiritual seekers, not just those in recovery.” (p. 14)

Throughout the book the author attaches some interesting personal interpretations to the steps. Here’s one that caught my attention early in the book. “Contrary to popular belief, sobriety is not the primary objective of the Twelve Steps. The Steps aim to affect a spiritual awakening.” (p. 14) It’s hard to argue with that statement because Step 12 begins with, “Having had a spiritual awakening”. So yes, spiritual growth was a key part of Bill Wilson’s thinking. But I seriously doubt that without the benefit of an alcohol free nervous system any new recruit to 12 step recovery will achieve much spiritual growth.

To see the book on Amazon, click on the image.

Riggs is a serious thinker and his work provided me with a lot of food for thought. In his own unique way, the author presents the Steps as a significant chapter in U.S. History. He promises a “deep dive” into the Steps underlying principles and practices and points to our nation’s pluralism, religious liberty, and pragmatism as key variables. He sees the Steps as developing along two lines, religion and temperance. Those of you who have read the book, Not God by Ernest Kurtz might notice some similarities between Riggs’ writings and Kurtz’s references to Evangelical Pietism.

In the chapter “Religion and Temperance” Riggs sketches out a history of opposition to alcohol from colonial days all the way up to prohibition. He refers to a “second great awakening” which began at the end of the 1700’s and lasted up to the Civil War. This ending of the Age of Reason led to an explosion of religious intensity in the U.S. that focused on two sins, slavery and drunkenness. The War ended slavery; it didn’t end the thirst for booze. There was a frenzied opposition to the consumption of alcohol both socially and politically that coalesced to bring about the prohibition era from 1919 to 1933. According to Riggs, the main cause for this movement to lose its momentum was its view that drunkenness was a moral weakness.

AA offered an alternative to this line of thinking which brings us to Dr. William Silkworth who had a more appealing idea to present to the alcoholic and as it turned out to the general public. The author devotes 32 pages to “The Doctor’s Opinion” and how its underlying logic, its pragmatic foundation, made it an effective tool for combatting the feeling of powerlessness that afflicts every alcoholic. In the July, 1953, Grapevine, Bill Wilson wrote that Dr. Silkworth contributed “a very great idea without which AA could never have succeeded. (p. 39) Actually Wm. Silkworth wasn’t voicing anything new. The idea that alcoholism might be a sickness dates back to Dr. Benjamin Rush who wrote in 1784 that the effects of spirits could possibly be a problem of the mind and body. Rush was saying drunkenness was a sickness, a medical problem, not a moral problem. What Silkworth had to help promote that idea that Rush did not have back in 1784 was Jack Anderson and The Saturday Evening Post magazine. Anderson’s 1941 article gave AA a huge nationwide boost and Silkworth’s idea about alcohol as an allergy hitched a ride.

Riggs makes the point that the disease concept is useful even if the allergy claim doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. It provided an easy-to-understand diagnosis that resonated with alcoholics and as an added bonus erased the stigmas of being weak willed and moral depraved. Interestingly, in a speech to the Springfield (Illinois) Temperance Society in 1842, Abraham Lincoln agreed with Dr.  Rush: “In my judgement such of us as have never fallen victims [to alcohol], have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.” – A purely intuitive reference to genetic predisposition that indicated empathy and foresight.

The author goes to great lengths (26 pages) to explain the importance of powerlessness in a person’s quest for spiritual growth. In this discussion he clearly separates himself from all the Big Book fundamentalists who worship “singleness of purpose” by stating “The Twelve Steps work for almost everyone because they are designed to remedy powerlessness, not alcoholism or drug addiction.” (p. 72) He gives a lengthy and somewhat sophisticated explanation of how the admission of powerlessness in Step 1 opens the door to a plan of action leading to spiritual improvement. I seriously doubt if Mr. Riggs would find much support for this view in traditional AA meetings. Personally, I doubt that many newcomers to AA show up at their first meeting seeking to enlarge their spiritual understanding.

Riggs makes the claim that AA, and consequently the Twelve Steps, never would have gained traction if not for the intense political fight over freedom of religion led by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. As he sees it this ongoing conflict created a diverse and pragmatic attitude towards religion where individual conscience prevailed over religious orthodoxy. This prevailing attitude created a climate where the AA compromise “as we understood Him” was generally acceptable.

Riggs, like many others, cites William James’ Varieties of Religious Experiences, as the source of much of Wilson’s thinking. He claims, “no one outside Wilson’s personal orbit contributed more to the development of the Twelve Steps than did James” (p. 112) Some might argue that the Oxford Group deserves serious consideration here. At any rate, the author contends that in 1938-39 our nation possessed a functional, pragmatic approach to religion, and he sees the Twelve Steps as a mirror image of that reality. No one size fits all, no theology, no dogma, in the steps gives us “a spiritual marketplace that emphasizes action, direct experience, and results over orthodoxy. From a purely historical perspective Riggs may be correct, but Jefferson, Franklin, James, and Wilson are no longer with us. Their words are on the pages, but my experience indicates that a Christian God dominates far too much of the AA “marketplace.”

Riggs combines pragmatism and open-mindedness to give every individual the latitude to view each step through the lease of their own conscience. He even builds a pragmatic view that the God of the Twelve Steps  can be interpreted in such a way as to be useful to avowed atheists – if they are in pursuit of spiritual growth. He begins by offering a description of God from the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell: “God is a metaphor for all that transcends intellectual thought.” (p. 152) God can be seen as a kind of symbol and as Riggs sees it, “There is nothing in the Twelve Steps that says “God” is an obligatory symbol. Replacing it with Higher Power” or any other workable notion is certainly permissible” (p. 154) Basically, every individual is free to define God devoid of any metaphysics; God does not have to signify the existence of a supreme being. I admire the intellectual level of Riggs’ work on this topic, but many of us non-believers found a much simpler route to build a personal sense of spirituality. In my case, “as we understood Him” became “as I understand it”. From there I took off on a humanistic oriented path that led to spiritual growth based on quality personal relationships. The give and get of those relationships created a steady flow of spiritual growth.

Riggs’ breakdown of the Steps and his assessment of their spiritual value is far more complex than what is found in the Big Book. His analysis of Step 4 provides us with a good example of how he lays out his more expansive view. He stays close to Bill Wilson by suggesting the need to inventory three things – resentment, fear and sex – and then states that he “will utilize the format found in Alcoholics Anonymous”.  I don’t know what definition of format Riggs relied on but the chapter “How It Works” in the Big Book goes from p. 58 to p.71; the analysis of Step 4 in his book goes from p. 212 to p. 259.

At the outset I stated that Mr. Riggs’ book is a mixture of psychology, philosophy, U.S. history, and the history of AA. It doesn’t get boring, bits and pieces pop up regularly. Just in the Step 4 analysis there are references to the Dalai Lama, Marcus Aurelius (stoicism), Emmet Fox (The Sermon on the Mount), Joseph Campbell (mythologist), Ralph Waldo Emerson (self-reliance & transcendentalism), and many, many times Bill Wilson. I don’t know where anyone could find a more detailed version of AA’s Twelve Steps.

Finally, I would put it this way: AA calls itself a design for living and Ben Riggs lays out a very intricate design. In his discussion of God and a Higher Power he makes a strong case for the agnostic position. Indeed, anyone struggling with how to fit into AA in spite of the God emphasis would get some sense of direction from The Triumph of Principles. I enjoyed the book.

The author of the review, John B, is an eighty-four year old sober alcoholic with 36 years of continuous sobriety. His alcoholism ultimately led to treatment, and eventually led to a career as an addiction counselor. John provided individual and group counseling to vets at the Marion, Indiana, V.A. hospital. He retired from the V.A. in 2001 and fondly describes it as the most challenging and satisfying job he ever had. John has also served as office manager for a major AA intergroup office in Ft. Wayne, Indiana for six and a half years. John reads 20 to 25 books a year, and three or four quality periodicals on a regular basis; mostly about politics, economics, science, history: about anything going on in the world that strikes his curiosity.

 

The post Triumph of Principles: The Story of American Spirituality in Twelve Steps first appeared on AA Agnostica.

The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings

By Chris M

The first 7 to 8 years of my sobriety, I attended meetings almost every night of the week. I live in a small rural area of Southwest Georgia. I was accustomed to driving up to 60 miles several nights per week to be able to attend a meeting every night. In years 8 to 11 of my sobriety, I was undergoing a “de-conversion” process from theism to atheism. There was simply not an availability of secular meetings in my rural area to meet my desires and I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. So, I never really considered finding any online meetings.

The only secular AA meeting that was in driving distance from me was a meeting in Tallahassee, Florida. It met one night a week on a Friday night. Tallahassee is about 60 miles from me. Due to conflicts in my work schedule with the time the meeting started, I was typically only able to attend it once or twice a month. I was continuing to attend nonsecular meetings about two to three times per week. I tried to start a secular meeting in the summer of 2019, but I found myself sitting in a rented room by myself for two months.  So, I closed the meeting.

In late 2019 to early 2020 before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, I remember seeing a small list of online secular AA meetings on a Secular AA website. I recall contemplating whether to attend one. Once the pandemic was declared and we began to have a shutdown of face-to-face meetings, I took another look at the small list of Secular meetings available. Most of the meetings were during the time of day that I was working. There were a couple that were taking place outside of my working hours, but it was only one or two nights a week.

Also, some of the nonsecular groups were asking me to start a zoom meeting for them on nights that they would meet. In February and March of 2020, I began doing this for them. Attendance was small as most everyone was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with online meeting platforms. Due to lack of attendance and other groups starting their own personal zoom meetings as well as using “covid protocol” for face-to-face meetings, I abandoned hosting any more zoom meetings. However, hosting these zoom meetings for the traditional AA groups gave me enough confidence to start attending secular online meetings.

In March to April of 2020, some secular groups began posting information about the zoom meetings they were starting in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook Group. The list of secular meetings began to grow slowly. I was not seeing those meetings on the Secular AA website for inclusion on their list. So, I started creating my own personal list of secular zoom meetings in the Notes app of my iPhone. I created a list by day of the week. Every time I saw a secular group post their zoom meeting information, I added it to my list. My list grew to a nice small selection of meetings for every day of the week.

“Service work” has always been a staple of my sobriety. Whether I was serving on a Group, District, or Area level, I have always found great value in serving. Throughout the pandemic, I was always looking for a way to be of service to the recovery community. I had the idea that others might benefit from my list of meetings. I began posting them daily in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook group. As I did this, I would have comments of other meeting information to add to my list.  My list began to grow.

I began to see a Google doc spreadsheet link being shared in the private recovery groups. It had even more meetings than were on my list. I thought about abandoning my list and just start using the Google doc spreadsheet. For my own personal preferences, though, it was a little hard to read and navigate using my iPhone. So, I kept using my list and the format that I preferred for a list of meetings. I continued to post my list of meetings each morning for the particular day of the week and my list continued to grow. As the list expanded to about 10 to 15 meetings each day in July of 2020, I created a simple single web page to list all the meetings. I wanted to make the web page easy to read, navigate, and easy to copy & paste from using a smart phone into the Zoom app.

Click on the above to visit the web page.

In July of 2020, my web page list of secular recovery zoom meetings had 207 views. In March of 2021, my web page had 3,019 views. Each month the number of views has continued to increase as people have become more comfortable with online meetings. Today there is an average of 35 to 45 meetings listed for each day of the week on my list. My list of meetings is not as heavily used nor as popularly linked to as a couple of other larger lists out there like the Google doc spreadsheet and the Cleveland Freethinkers list. I cannot imagine the number of views they are having each month.

It has been exciting to see the secular recovery community come together through these meetings. In just one years’ time due to the pandemic, I have personally gone from attending 1 or 2 secular meetings per month to attending no less than 15 to 20 per month. I have seen secular groups attendance go from an average of 5 people to an average of 30 people in the meeting. Some online secular meetings have 100 or more in average attendance! As I stated earlier, I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. My experience over the last year has proven this to be a fallacy. Do not get me wrong, if I had the availability of secular face-to-face meetings as I do with online secular meetings, I am sure I would be attending more face-to-face meetings than online meetings. For where I live, though, this will probably never be an issue. There are simply not enough secular people in recovery in my area. So, I will continue connecting to online secular meetings for a long time to come.

As the pandemic begins to fade, the ultimate question is will online secular meetings fade away as well? I do not believe they will. There are too many like me that simply do not have access to face-to-face secular recovery meetings. Sure, we can start our own secular recovery meetings. I have plans to eventually restart a face-to-face secular meeting with a couple of people. I met them in an online secular zoom meeting! I had no idea they were in the same tiny rural hometown as me. Zoom meetings made this possible! I have heard many online secular meetings state that even after the pandemic is gone, they will continue to host online meetings as well as their face-to-face meetings. This is exciting news for people like me. I have grown attached to several groups and I feel like a homegroup member of a few that I regularly attend each week. I would miss them dearly if they discontinued their online meetings.

For all it’s worth, the pandemic has brought many of us pain, misery, financial hardships, and death. But it has also brought us together as a secular recovery community in ways that probably once seemed unattainable. The pandemic brought us a multitude of zoom recovery meetings. The Zoom meetings have changed how I view online meetings and how I participate secularly in my recovery. I look forward to the secular recovery community within AA continuing to grow after the pandemic. Though the number of secular online meetings may shrink a little after the pandemic, the connection will not.

Chris M. is from Donalsonville, GA. He has been around 12 Step Programs since his early 20’s and has stayed sober since the age of 40. His date of sobriety is January 24, 2009. He has served in many positions at the Group, District, and Area levels. The past four years of his sobriety has been converting from theism to atheism while experiencing all the obstacles that confront the secular person within nonsecular 12 step program. He is the webmaster of his local district 12 step fellowship and created a web page listing of International Secular Recovery Zoom Meetings.

 

The post The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings first appeared on AA Agnostica.

The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings

By Chris M

The first 7 to 8 years of my sobriety, I attended meetings almost every night of the week. I live in a small rural area of Southwest Georgia. I was accustomed to driving up to 60 miles several nights per week to be able to attend a meeting every night. In years 8 to 11 of my sobriety, I was undergoing a “de-conversion” process from theism to atheism. There was simply not an availability of secular meetings in my rural area to meet my desires and I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. So, I never really considered finding any online meetings.

The only secular AA meeting that was in driving distance from me was a meeting in Tallahassee, Florida. It met one night a week on a Friday night. Tallahassee is about 60 miles from me. Due to conflicts in my work schedule with the time the meeting started, I was typically only able to attend it once or twice a month. I was continuing to attend nonsecular meetings about two to three times per week. I tried to start a secular meeting in the summer of 2019, but I found myself sitting in a rented room by myself for two months.  So, I closed the meeting.

In late 2019 to early 2020 before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, I remember seeing a small list of online secular AA meetings on a Secular AA website. I recall contemplating whether to attend one. Once the pandemic was declared and we began to have a shutdown of face-to-face meetings, I took another look at the small list of Secular meetings available. Most of the meetings were during the time of day that I was working. There were a couple that were taking place outside of my working hours, but it was only one or two nights a week.

Also, some of the nonsecular groups were asking me to start a zoom meeting for them on nights that they would meet. In February and March of 2020, I began doing this for them. Attendance was small as most everyone was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with online meeting platforms. Due to lack of attendance and other groups starting their own personal zoom meetings as well as using “covid protocol” for face-to-face meetings, I abandoned hosting any more zoom meetings. However, hosting these zoom meetings for the traditional AA groups gave me enough confidence to start attending secular online meetings.

In March to April of 2020, some secular groups began posting information about the zoom meetings they were starting in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook Group. The list of secular meetings began to grow slowly. I was not seeing those meetings on the Secular AA website for inclusion on their list. So, I started creating my own personal list of secular zoom meetings in the Notes app of my iPhone. I created a list by day of the week. Every time I saw a secular group post their zoom meeting information, I added it to my list. My list grew to a nice small selection of meetings for every day of the week.

“Service work” has always been a staple of my sobriety. Whether I was serving on a Group, District, or Area level, I have always found great value in serving. Throughout the pandemic, I was always looking for a way to be of service to the recovery community. I had the idea that others might benefit from my list of meetings. I began posting them daily in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook group. As I did this, I would have comments of other meeting information to add to my list.  My list began to grow.

I began to see a Google doc spreadsheet link being shared in the private recovery groups. It had even more meetings than were on my list. I thought about abandoning my list and just start using the Google doc spreadsheet. For my own personal preferences, though, it was a little hard to read and navigate using my iPhone. So, I kept using my list and the format that I preferred for a list of meetings. I continued to post my list of meetings each morning for the particular day of the week and my list continued to grow. As the list expanded to about 10 to 15 meetings each day in July of 2020, I created a simple single web page to list all the meetings. I wanted to make the web page easy to read, navigate, and easy to copy & paste from using a smart phone into the Zoom app.

Click on the above to visit the web page.

In July of 2020, my web page list of secular recovery zoom meetings had 207 views. In March of 2021, my web page had 3,019 views. Each month the number of views has continued to increase as people have become more comfortable with online meetings. Today there is an average of 35 to 45 meetings listed for each day of the week on my list. My list of meetings is not as heavily used nor as popularly linked to as a couple of other larger lists out there like the Google doc spreadsheet and the Cleveland Freethinkers list. I cannot imagine the number of views they are having each month.

It has been exciting to see the secular recovery community come together through these meetings. In just one years’ time due to the pandemic, I have personally gone from attending 1 or 2 secular meetings per month to attending no less than 15 to 20 per month. I have seen secular groups attendance go from an average of 5 people to an average of 30 people in the meeting. Some online secular meetings have 100 or more in average attendance! As I stated earlier, I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. My experience over the last year has proven this to be a fallacy. Do not get me wrong, if I had the availability of secular face-to-face meetings as I do with online secular meetings, I am sure I would be attending more face-to-face meetings than online meetings. For where I live, though, this will probably never be an issue. There are simply not enough secular people in recovery in my area. So, I will continue connecting to online secular meetings for a long time to come.

As the pandemic begins to fade, the ultimate question is will online secular meetings fade away as well? I do not believe they will. There are too many like me that simply do not have access to face-to-face secular recovery meetings. Sure, we can start our own secular recovery meetings. I have plans to eventually restart a face-to-face secular meeting with a couple of people. I met them in an online secular zoom meeting! I had no idea they were in the same tiny rural hometown as me. Zoom meetings made this possible! I have heard many online secular meetings state that even after the pandemic is gone, they will continue to host online meetings as well as their face-to-face meetings. This is exciting news for people like me. I have grown attached to several groups and I feel like a homegroup member of a few that I regularly attend each week. I would miss them dearly if they discontinued their online meetings.

For all it’s worth, the pandemic has brought many of us pain, misery, financial hardships, and death. But it has also brought us together as a secular recovery community in ways that probably once seemed unattainable. The pandemic brought us a multitude of zoom recovery meetings. The Zoom meetings have changed how I view online meetings and how I participate secularly in my recovery. I look forward to the secular recovery community within AA continuing to grow after the pandemic. Though the number of secular online meetings may shrink a little after the pandemic, the connection will not.

Chris M. is from Donalsonville, GA. He has been around 12 Step Programs since his early 20’s and has stayed sober since the age of 40. His date of sobriety is January 24, 2009. He has served in many positions at the Group, District, and Area levels. The past four years of his sobriety has been converting from theism to atheism while experiencing all the obstacles that confront the secular person within nonsecular 12 step program. He is the webmaster of his local district 12 step fellowship and created a web page listing of International Secular Recovery Zoom Meetings.

 

The post The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Take Three Degrees. Add Alcohol.

Chapter 16:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Martine R.

The decision to stop drinking alcohol, once and for all, is one I shall never regret. I will soon celebrate 13 years of sobriety, after three decades of active alcoholism. Because I am now a different, better person, my life is a different, better life. It is that simple. And yet, the journey to that simple and logical decision was long and hard and painful.

I was born and raised in France in a well-to-do family which included ancestors in the Bordeaux wine business. Being able to appreciate good wine was an indispensable part of good breeding. I never in those days associated wine with alcoholism. In fact, although wine was always served at meals, I do not remember ever wanting to drink it in large amounts.

My teen years were not happy. I was molested by my father. He was well-educated, respected and successful. In our social class, girls were expected to be proper young ladies, so they could marry respectable men. I therefore lived in an irreconcilable situation, where the very person who was supposed to raise me properly was in fact an aggressor.

When I was about 16, I drank whiskey at a party, and become drunk and sick. However, I felt grown-up and sophisticated. After that first whiskey-induced drunkenness, I loved drinking, for many reasons. First, when I got tipsy, my confusion and shame would abate for a while. Second, I was told that many of the great poets and artists were heavy drinkers, so I felt that creativity and originality went hand-in-hand with alcohol. Also, what was happening in secret at home gave me great disgust for the traditional image of womanhood all were trying to mold me into. I was supposed to be well-bred and proper? Oh no! I would drink and smoke and curse a blue streak, which was my way to rebel… I was doing very well at school and wanted more for myself than just finding a good husband.

One summer when I was 18, my favorite aunt took me to the United States for summer vacation. There I happened to meet a boy my age and we fell in love. He came to France the next summer and as he was about to return to the States, we found out I was pregnant. There was an uproar and much disapproval in both families, of course. I went to the US, we were quickly married. We lived at first with my husband’s parents. Our daughter was born there, at about the time her father was graduating from college. Then he went to Medical school for four years.

We had almost no money. Buying alcohol of any kind, even cheap wine, was impossible. I took whatever small jobs I could find, I was a waitress, a nanny, and eventually I taught French in a small private school.

After my husband graduated from Medical school we moved to California where he did his internship and residency. Our financial situation was improving a little; I was also able to get a scholarship for a Master’s degree in French. I wanted to have better credentials to get better teaching jobs. We had a second child. Then after having obtained my Master’s, I was offered another scholarship to do a Ph.D. There was a lot of work and a lot of juggling between work and child care.

Every once in a while I could buy a bottle of wine to drink with meals. I felt civilized again. Every once in a while, I did get drunk. I was not worried about it. I felt it was a necessary outlet, it hurt no one, it was all in fun. And it was only wine, which, as everyone knows, is good for you…

The major event of those years was my husband being drafted and having to go to Vietnam for a year. I remember that year almost as if in a dream. I was completely petrified that my husband might be hurt or killed. I lived in terror of not being a good enough mother to protect the children while I was alone with them. Somehow we all survived. I probably drank a little during that year, but not much. I did not dare. Obviously, I was then at a stage where I still had some control.

A doctoral dissertation – “Experiences of Atheists and Agnostics in AA” – is based on the book Do Tell. For more information click on the above image.

Our next move after that year in Vietnam was back to the East Coast, to Baltimore, where my husband got his first real job teaching and practicing in a hospital. I found a teaching job at a nearby university. We bought a house and put the kids in good schools. We met a lot of nice people in our new neighborhood and we began to have a busy social life.

I was too busy to take much time to reflect and wonder about my life. What I considered quiet time, was to sit down with a glass of wine, I never ever questioned whether I was perhaps drinking too much. I had several episodes of getting drunk at parties but thought nothing of it.

Any reproach from my husband or snide remark from a friend I would dismiss, because they had no idea what I had gone through, no idea that drinking was an absolute necessity. I felt that without it, I would go mad. Wine was holding me together.

There was love and many other good things in my life. Our daughter got accepted at a prestigious college, the same one her father had been to, when she was just 16. Our son was doing well in a good school. He ended up going to the very same college. As far as I knew, I must be a good mother, since my kids were doing so well.

Despite all these appearances of success and happiness, I was feeling restless. I decided to go to Law School. I managed to pass all courses despite a lot of drinking. After graduation I got a good job as an associate in a small but well-connected firm. I was not a great success there. I had started drinking at lunch time, running home from the office to have some lunch and some wine. I went to bed early instead of working long hours and it had been noticed. Already, my drinking “a little too much” was no longer a secret. When I said we were moving, no one said they were sorry about it.

We moved again because my husband now took a position in Massachusetts. During the next fifteen years, I lost almost all control over my drinking. The children were no longer at home. My husband was busier than ever at the hospital. At first I got a job at a prestigious law firm, the best-known in that area. Then I left them when it became obvious they did not really “appreciate” me. I went to another firm, who thought, erroneously, that they were “snatching” me away. Little did they know that the prestigious firm was very happy to get rid of me. After a few years in that second law firm, I left again and ended up practicing law by myself.

As I look back on these 15 years, from where I am now, I see clearly the disaster that was unfolding, which I could not see at the time. There was a repeated pattern: First, I would impress people with my credentials (three graduate degrees, imagine that!). Then I would start surprising them by how little actual work I was doing and by not being at all a team player. There were a few times where I accomplished something, in or out of court, which was brilliant. But one does not build a career and gain a good reputation by just a few strokes of brilliance.

What was happening is that I had become a full-fledged alcoholic; I was moody, unpredictable and untrustworthy. I have no good memories from these years. At some point, I realized that I was drinking much too much. I decided I would reduce the amount I was drinking.

At this point of my story, my narrative becomes totally predictable, because I went through all the moves every desperate alcoholic goes through: drinking only after a certain time of the day; drinking only certain days of the week; stopping completely for a time, then starting again (because I was surely cured after stopping for three months!)

Nothing worked and my life was miserable. I did not want to live any more. I no longer had much of a family life or social life. I had no hope; I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

And then my husband announced we were moving again, to a town near New York. I welcomed the move. It meant an end to my law career unless I could get admitted to the New York bar, but I did not care. I announced to everyone that I was going to practice law in New York State, but not immediately. First, I was going to take a sabbatical.

My sabbatical consisted, of course, in drinking more and more for about 18 months. I did not look for a new job. I did not try to make friends with anyone. I just drank. I was desperate, even suicidal. I kept telling myself “today is the last day drinking, I cannot go on like that”. I wanted to stop drinking more than I had ever wanted anything, but I could not.

One day, about thirteen years ago, I was picking up our son at the railroad station to drive him somewhere. Once he had gotten in the car, he looked at me and said: “Mom, you look tired”. “Tired” was the word he had always used when he saw that I was drunk. And he was right: While still able to drive, I had been having already a few glasses of wine and it was not even noon.

I had been caught being drunk many times before. This time, however, for some reason, it felt like the end of my world. I was so ashamed I almost collapsed. I did bring my son to his destination and returned home. Then I called AA.

I had heard about AA many times. As a lawyer, I sometimes took care of clients who had got into some scrapes because of drunkenness. When passing sentence or decreeing probation, the Court would usually demand that they attend AA meetings. Once, I had even gone to an AA meeting. There, I discovered that in order to become sober one must not drink AT ALL. I was horrified. That would not do for me. I needed my wine!

When I called AA that day in February thirteen years ago, a man told me he would meet me the next day at a meeting not far from my house. I went to that meeting. He greeted me and spoke to me kindly. It was February 22nd and the beginning of my new life.

I could not bear to say in public those words “I am an alcoholic”. I started sobbing every time I tried. But I eventually managed to say it. By now, I have said these words thousands of time, and I know they are true.

All these years of struggle trying to stop drinking on my own ended with that first meeting. The obsession to drink was lifted. Something in me changed irrevocably when I heard one person after another person just like me, as sick as I was. The relief was enormous. I was not unique after all, not bad and shameful in a unique way as I had thought.

Then, I heard people tell about how much time sober they had. One woman had 25 years! Her husband had just died, she was obviously grieving, BUT SHE WAS STILL SOBER. When I realized that, I felt a surge of hope… a sensation I had not felt for so long. I, too, could become sober, it was possible! (That woman became my sponsor. She has helped me immensely by her gentle counsel, as has, by mere example, the man who introduced me to that meeting.)

It did not bother me much, at first, that the meeting often ended with the Lord’s Prayer. I did wonder, though, about using a Christian prayer to close the meeting, in a country with so many different religions. As I attended more and more meetings, I began to be concerned about the very religious attitude of many AA members, especially when leaders of meeting aggressively declared that, in order to be sober, one had to “let God into one’s life”.

I happen to be an agnostic. While I respect the right of everyone to his or her own philosophy, I was disappointed that AA did not make itself more inclusive. That did not deter me from coming to meetings. I just resigned myself to hearing a lot of “God talk” and to keep my own counsel.

Then one day when I was about three years sober, as I was glancing at a list of AA meetings in Chicago, I saw the word “agnostic”; I was thrilled! I had never heard of agnostic AA meetings. I made inquiries and soon got a list of such meetings in New York City.

When I went to my first agnostic meeting, I felt some of the relief and hope I had experienced at my first meeting. This time it was the relief of being able to express myself freely. Basically, I felt fully included, which I had begun to despair of in regular meetings.

Now I can truly say that my sober life is more authentic and joyous and free than my drinking life. Those years of hiding the extent of my drinking are over. I no longer have to engage in constant damage control to hide all the failures and mishaps caused by drunkenness.

I did not return to the practice of law, but I found other uses for my new free time in sobriety, including doing service for AA and volunteering for a political cause I am passionate about. I now feel that my life is useful, not a total waste as before.

One does not escape entirely the “wreckage of the past”. I did not get a blank pass for my past behavior. I have a difficult relationship with my grown children. I know they feel hurt by so many things I did or failed to do, and by my becoming sober so late in my life. They grew up with an active alcoholic, nothing can change that.

From Day One in AA, I felt hope. That has not stopped. I still have hope that somehow, by dint of dealing calmly and courageously with the after-effects of the past, I will be able to help others as others have helped me. I know this is not the end of the story.

Do Tell! [Front Cover]This is a chapter from the book: Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA.

The paperback version of Do Tell! is available at Amazon. It is also available via Amazon in Canada and the United Kingdom.

It can be purchased online in all eBook formats, including Kindle, Kobo and Nook and as an iBook for Macs and iPads.

The post Take Three Degrees. Add Alcohol. first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Take Three Degrees. Add Alcohol.

Chapter 16:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Martine R.

The decision to stop drinking alcohol, once and for all, is one I shall never regret. I will soon celebrate 13 years of sobriety, after three decades of active alcoholism. Because I am now a different, better person, my life is a different, better life. It is that simple. And yet, the journey to that simple and logical decision was long and hard and painful.

I was born and raised in France in a well-to-do family which included ancestors in the Bordeaux wine business. Being able to appreciate good wine was an indispensable part of good breeding. I never in those days associated wine with alcoholism. In fact, although wine was always served at meals, I do not remember ever wanting to drink it in large amounts.

My teen years were not happy. I was molested by my father. He was well-educated, respected and successful. In our social class, girls were expected to be proper young ladies, so they could marry respectable men. I therefore lived in an irreconcilable situation, where the very person who was supposed to raise me properly was in fact an aggressor.

When I was about 16, I drank whiskey at a party, and become drunk and sick. However, I felt grown-up and sophisticated. After that first whiskey-induced drunkenness, I loved drinking, for many reasons. First, when I got tipsy, my confusion and shame would abate for a while. Second, I was told that many of the great poets and artists were heavy drinkers, so I felt that creativity and originality went hand-in-hand with alcohol. Also, what was happening in secret at home gave me great disgust for the traditional image of womanhood all were trying to mold me into. I was supposed to be well-bred and proper? Oh no! I would drink and smoke and curse a blue streak, which was my way to rebel… I was doing very well at school and wanted more for myself than just finding a good husband.

One summer when I was 18, my favorite aunt took me to the United States for summer vacation. There I happened to meet a boy my age and we fell in love. He came to France the next summer and as he was about to return to the States, we found out I was pregnant. There was an uproar and much disapproval in both families, of course. I went to the US, we were quickly married. We lived at first with my husband’s parents. Our daughter was born there, at about the time her father was graduating from college. Then he went to Medical school for four years.

We had almost no money. Buying alcohol of any kind, even cheap wine, was impossible. I took whatever small jobs I could find, I was a waitress, a nanny, and eventually I taught French in a small private school.

After my husband graduated from Medical school we moved to California where he did his internship and residency. Our financial situation was improving a little; I was also able to get a scholarship for a Master’s degree in French. I wanted to have better credentials to get better teaching jobs. We had a second child. Then after having obtained my Master’s, I was offered another scholarship to do a Ph.D. There was a lot of work and a lot of juggling between work and child care.

Every once in a while I could buy a bottle of wine to drink with meals. I felt civilized again. Every once in a while, I did get drunk. I was not worried about it. I felt it was a necessary outlet, it hurt no one, it was all in fun. And it was only wine, which, as everyone knows, is good for you…

The major event of those years was my husband being drafted and having to go to Vietnam for a year. I remember that year almost as if in a dream. I was completely petrified that my husband might be hurt or killed. I lived in terror of not being a good enough mother to protect the children while I was alone with them. Somehow we all survived. I probably drank a little during that year, but not much. I did not dare. Obviously, I was then at a stage where I still had some control.

A doctoral dissertation – “Experiences of Atheists and Agnostics in AA” – is based on the book Do Tell. For more information click on the above image.

Our next move after that year in Vietnam was back to the East Coast, to Baltimore, where my husband got his first real job teaching and practicing in a hospital. I found a teaching job at a nearby university. We bought a house and put the kids in good schools. We met a lot of nice people in our new neighborhood and we began to have a busy social life.

I was too busy to take much time to reflect and wonder about my life. What I considered quiet time, was to sit down with a glass of wine, I never ever questioned whether I was perhaps drinking too much. I had several episodes of getting drunk at parties but thought nothing of it.

Any reproach from my husband or snide remark from a friend I would dismiss, because they had no idea what I had gone through, no idea that drinking was an absolute necessity. I felt that without it, I would go mad. Wine was holding me together.

There was love and many other good things in my life. Our daughter got accepted at a prestigious college, the same one her father had been to, when she was just 16. Our son was doing well in a good school. He ended up going to the very same college. As far as I knew, I must be a good mother, since my kids were doing so well.

Despite all these appearances of success and happiness, I was feeling restless. I decided to go to Law School. I managed to pass all courses despite a lot of drinking. After graduation I got a good job as an associate in a small but well-connected firm. I was not a great success there. I had started drinking at lunch time, running home from the office to have some lunch and some wine. I went to bed early instead of working long hours and it had been noticed. Already, my drinking “a little too much” was no longer a secret. When I said we were moving, no one said they were sorry about it.

We moved again because my husband now took a position in Massachusetts. During the next fifteen years, I lost almost all control over my drinking. The children were no longer at home. My husband was busier than ever at the hospital. At first I got a job at a prestigious law firm, the best-known in that area. Then I left them when it became obvious they did not really “appreciate” me. I went to another firm, who thought, erroneously, that they were “snatching” me away. Little did they know that the prestigious firm was very happy to get rid of me. After a few years in that second law firm, I left again and ended up practicing law by myself.

As I look back on these 15 years, from where I am now, I see clearly the disaster that was unfolding, which I could not see at the time. There was a repeated pattern: First, I would impress people with my credentials (three graduate degrees, imagine that!). Then I would start surprising them by how little actual work I was doing and by not being at all a team player. There were a few times where I accomplished something, in or out of court, which was brilliant. But one does not build a career and gain a good reputation by just a few strokes of brilliance.

What was happening is that I had become a full-fledged alcoholic; I was moody, unpredictable and untrustworthy. I have no good memories from these years. At some point, I realized that I was drinking much too much. I decided I would reduce the amount I was drinking.

At this point of my story, my narrative becomes totally predictable, because I went through all the moves every desperate alcoholic goes through: drinking only after a certain time of the day; drinking only certain days of the week; stopping completely for a time, then starting again (because I was surely cured after stopping for three months!)

Nothing worked and my life was miserable. I did not want to live any more. I no longer had much of a family life or social life. I had no hope; I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

And then my husband announced we were moving again, to a town near New York. I welcomed the move. It meant an end to my law career unless I could get admitted to the New York bar, but I did not care. I announced to everyone that I was going to practice law in New York State, but not immediately. First, I was going to take a sabbatical.

My sabbatical consisted, of course, in drinking more and more for about 18 months. I did not look for a new job. I did not try to make friends with anyone. I just drank. I was desperate, even suicidal. I kept telling myself “today is the last day drinking, I cannot go on like that”. I wanted to stop drinking more than I had ever wanted anything, but I could not.

One day, about thirteen years ago, I was picking up our son at the railroad station to drive him somewhere. Once he had gotten in the car, he looked at me and said: “Mom, you look tired”. “Tired” was the word he had always used when he saw that I was drunk. And he was right: While still able to drive, I had been having already a few glasses of wine and it was not even noon.

I had been caught being drunk many times before. This time, however, for some reason, it felt like the end of my world. I was so ashamed I almost collapsed. I did bring my son to his destination and returned home. Then I called AA.

I had heard about AA many times. As a lawyer, I sometimes took care of clients who had got into some scrapes because of drunkenness. When passing sentence or decreeing probation, the Court would usually demand that they attend AA meetings. Once, I had even gone to an AA meeting. There, I discovered that in order to become sober one must not drink AT ALL. I was horrified. That would not do for me. I needed my wine!

When I called AA that day in February thirteen years ago, a man told me he would meet me the next day at a meeting not far from my house. I went to that meeting. He greeted me and spoke to me kindly. It was February 22nd and the beginning of my new life.

I could not bear to say in public those words “I am an alcoholic”. I started sobbing every time I tried. But I eventually managed to say it. By now, I have said these words thousands of time, and I know they are true.

All these years of struggle trying to stop drinking on my own ended with that first meeting. The obsession to drink was lifted. Something in me changed irrevocably when I heard one person after another person just like me, as sick as I was. The relief was enormous. I was not unique after all, not bad and shameful in a unique way as I had thought.

Then, I heard people tell about how much time sober they had. One woman had 25 years! Her husband had just died, she was obviously grieving, BUT SHE WAS STILL SOBER. When I realized that, I felt a surge of hope… a sensation I had not felt for so long. I, too, could become sober, it was possible! (That woman became my sponsor. She has helped me immensely by her gentle counsel, as has, by mere example, the man who introduced me to that meeting.)

It did not bother me much, at first, that the meeting often ended with the Lord’s Prayer. I did wonder, though, about using a Christian prayer to close the meeting, in a country with so many different religions. As I attended more and more meetings, I began to be concerned about the very religious attitude of many AA members, especially when leaders of meeting aggressively declared that, in order to be sober, one had to “let God into one’s life”.

I happen to be an agnostic. While I respect the right of everyone to his or her own philosophy, I was disappointed that AA did not make itself more inclusive. That did not deter me from coming to meetings. I just resigned myself to hearing a lot of “God talk” and to keep my own counsel.

Then one day when I was about three years sober, as I was glancing at a list of AA meetings in Chicago, I saw the word “agnostic”; I was thrilled! I had never heard of agnostic AA meetings. I made inquiries and soon got a list of such meetings in New York City.

When I went to my first agnostic meeting, I felt some of the relief and hope I had experienced at my first meeting. This time it was the relief of being able to express myself freely. Basically, I felt fully included, which I had begun to despair of in regular meetings.

Now I can truly say that my sober life is more authentic and joyous and free than my drinking life. Those years of hiding the extent of my drinking are over. I no longer have to engage in constant damage control to hide all the failures and mishaps caused by drunkenness.

I did not return to the practice of law, but I found other uses for my new free time in sobriety, including doing service for AA and volunteering for a political cause I am passionate about. I now feel that my life is useful, not a total waste as before.

One does not escape entirely the “wreckage of the past”. I did not get a blank pass for my past behavior. I have a difficult relationship with my grown children. I know they feel hurt by so many things I did or failed to do, and by my becoming sober so late in my life. They grew up with an active alcoholic, nothing can change that.

From Day One in AA, I felt hope. That has not stopped. I still have hope that somehow, by dint of dealing calmly and courageously with the after-effects of the past, I will be able to help others as others have helped me. I know this is not the end of the story.

Do Tell! [Front Cover]This is a chapter from the book: Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA.

The paperback version of Do Tell! is available at Amazon. It is also available via Amazon in Canada and the United Kingdom.

It can be purchased online in all eBook formats, including Kindle, Kobo and Nook and as an iBook for Macs and iPads.

The post Take Three Degrees. Add Alcohol. first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Secular People in AA

By John S

Back in December, I was contacted by a reporter who wanted me to help him with an article he was writing about secular people in AA. I don’t think he ever published the article, at least not yet. I ran across the questions he sent and my answers to them, and thought I would go ahead and post them here.

1. Your name, title, and affiliation as you want it to appear in the piece (just to clarify your relationship to AA Beyond Belief).

My name is John S, and I am the host of the AA Beyond Belief podcast and the founder and webmaster of the AA Beyond Belief website. AA Beyond Belief is a community of AA members who walk a secular path to sobriety within Alcoholics Anonymous.

2. Any of your own personal history with addiction, like what substance, for how long, and how long you’ve been sober.

I am a recovered alcoholic. My sobriety date is July 20, 1988, so I have been sober for over 32 years. Alcohol was my drug of choice. I didn’t get involved with other substances. I first recognized that I might have a drinking problem when I was 19 years old, but I didn’t seek help until just before my 26th birthday. I sought help in AA, and I’ve been happily sober ever since.

3. Are secular/atheist/agnostic 12-step groups at odds with the step that refers to “turning our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him” or is there a way to be an atheist and remain consistent with this step?

I can’t speak for every secular AA member or group. However, I have talked with a few hundred of them over the years. We have also conducted surveys on our website, so I understand the agnostic and atheist community within AA as good as anyone.

AA groups are autonomous and can do as they wish, but AA groups don’t generally take a position on any of the Steps. It is up to each individual to determine for themselves what the Steps mean to them personally. Some AA members, secular or otherwise, don’t bother with the Steps at all, but most of us do, and all of us, whether we believe in God or not, have to interpret them. We have to ask ourselves what these things mean to us personally as an individual.

When I was a newcomer in AA, even before I realized that I was an atheist, I understood Step Three as a decision. Many people focus on the part about turning our will over to God, but they forget the most important part of this step, in my opinion. That is we, make a decision. We make a decision to change and that can be done by working the rest of the 12 Steps. Those of us with a secular world-view respect the experiences of our more religious members who rely on their faith to make this change. However, there is no reason that we can’t make the same decision without a belief in God.

The way that I see step three is “We made a decision to change”. I don’t need to turn my will over to something that I don’t believe in and there have always been many loving people around me who will help me when I need help. I didn’t go through the steps alone. Other people helped me.

Believers and atheists in AA who work the Steps have more in common with each other than not, and they have similar experiences with the Steps. The 12 Steps are practical. There is a phrase in the Big Book that I like which describes the Steps as a “practical program of action.” As an atheist, I focus on the action I take, not on what I believe. However, I would never suggest that my understanding or my way of expressing my experience should be the way for everyone. The only difference between the experience of a believer and nonbeliever when it comes to the Steps is how they describe the experience. I learned that from the former Chair of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Rev. Ward Ewing. He was a non-Alcoholic trustee of AA and is a supporter of secular AA members.

4. What was the impetus behind the creation of AA Beyond Belief? Was it just so nonbelievers would have somewhere they could go to work the steps, or is there more to it than that?

There is another website called AA Agnostica that publishes articles written by secular AA members, and they have been doing this for almost ten years now. A little over five years ago, the person who runs that site thought he would retire and asked me if I would be willing to start a new website to carry on his work. I agreed and decided that with the website I would also have a podcast. It turns out that the person from AA Agnostica never retired, but we continued with AA Beyond Belief none-the-less.

I do this as a service, but it is a labor of love. My experience with the website and podcast has been transformative, and I’m grateful to have this opportunity and participate in such a supportive community.

AA Beyond Belief provides a space for secular AA members to share their experience in recovery. AA works primarily through the sharing of personal experience. When somebody recognizes their own story in that of another person, it can be incredibly comforting to know that if that person who had the same experiences as me could get sober, then maybe I can too.

5. Why do people who are not believers need their own space to work the steps?

Alcoholics Anonymous is a brilliant organization because there isn’t a top-down hierarchy that insists all AA groups operate the same way. Each group, as I mentioned before, is autonomous. For many years, decades, there have been special-purpose groups in AA. There are AA groups for medical professionals, for young people, for LGBTQ+ people, for pilots, women, and men, and there are special-purpose groups for agnostics and atheists.

It is helpful to have these groups so people can be with others who understand them. I like to go to secular AA meetings because I am around others who understand me and my approach to recovery in AA. I have had some negative reactions from believers in meetings, as have other nonbelievers, and it can feel uncomfortable when groups close with the Lord’s Prayer when you are an atheist. However, for the most part, other people in AA are accepting of us. They just don’t understand us as well as we understand each other. The same is true for the LGBTQ+ community or young people, or medical professionals.

6. Anything else you’d like to add?

Atheists and agnostics have been part of AA since it’s founding. Hank Parkhurst, one of the original AA members, was an atheist, and we may not have the Big Book if not for him. Jim Burwell, also one of the early members, was an atheist and is credited with widening the gateway in AA by insisting that the steps read “God as we understand him,” or “higher power.” Secular AA meetings have been going on since 1975 and today is well established and accepted by the fellowship at large.

Our primary purpose in AA is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. We don’t care what they believe or don’t believe. Anyone with a desire to stop drinking is welcome at an AA meeting, secular or otherwise.

On February 22nd of this year (2021), John retired the AA Beyond Belief website. He was very interested in continuing to do podcasts, his rather favorite activity. So he launched a brand new website called the Beyond Belief Sobriety Podcast. To date there have been over 200 episodes of John’s podcasts.

 

The post Secular People in AA first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Sharing my Ramblings

By Russel S.

My rock bottom was horrific and resulted in an attempt at suicide. Back then, I hated my life, I hated myself and I wanted to die but as it turns out, I was very afraid of death. The paradox of my recovery is that I now love life, I love living and I have learned to love myself and treat myself with kindness. I do not want to die, but death is no longer something I fear as I know it is just part of my journey as a human being.

I have developed the view that recovery and sobriety is something I have to work at constantly. It is imperative for me to perpetually train my mind and coach myself in a new way of thinking to be the genuine and authentic version of myself – the best “me” I can be. Perhaps in the same way that an athlete trains for his sport on a daily basis to be the best competitor he can be.

Part of my “exercise” regime is journaling about my addiction and recovery. This takes many forms; I write gratitude lists, letters to people past and present (most never actually sent), essays and a bit of poetry. I have personally found this activity to be very cathartic for me personally. For me, getting my thoughts down in writing has a twofold benefit: (a) I find the process purgative and cleansing and (b) I can go back in my journal and recollect the state of my mind at that time in my recovery journey.

Disclosing my journaling is a thorny problem. Of course, the writings are quite personal, but the complication arises as to my reasons for sharing them. I always have to check my motives about sharing some of my ramblings. Am I seeking affirmation? Is it ego related? Etc. It’s always a bit tricky to find the absolute honest rationale.

That said, I have decided to share something I wrote in 2019 as I truly believe that it could be of benefit to others as it details some of my journey and the avenues I pursued to find a manageable way to live with my disease.

The Goal Post

The goal post forever shifting, never knowing how to fit in
Happiness so out of reach, what to learn, what to teach
How to act and how to be, who is the genuine me?
Where to find authentic truth, so conflicting from my youth
Life changed, I grew estranged or perhaps deranged
Disconnected from the world, it all appears extremely blurred
Who is that guy I used to be? A spurious stranger or simply me?
Where to look where to seek, the philosophy of an ancient Greek
Socrates professed a method, which the parliament rejected and thus to his death directed.
Aristotle extraordinarily wise, but how to know they weren’t just lies?
A demonic narration, like the matrix simulation or Descartes’ meditation
Zeno, Seneca and Epictetus did they have something they could teach us?
These Stoics claimed to know a way, but does their code apply today?
”Virtue brings forth happiness”, I kinda like its snappiness
But does it have a practical place on a rock hurtling through empty space?
Perhaps my search could be ceased, by the sages of the East
Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching, may extinguish life’s harsh sting
But I am neither water nor am I stone; I am living flesh on bone
Confucius schooled morality, justice and sincerity to achieve some normality
Life’s not that complicated, it’s my mind that’s infiltrated, perforated
So many philosophical isms, unfeasible to take a position with conviction
Religion claims clarification on how to deal with temptation
But who or what is a god, it is to me rather odd, flawed, a fraud
Conjured to deceive, something hidden up a sleeve but not to believe
I cannot put all my faith in a wraith, somehow it just feels unsafe
Like magic beans, sleepless dreams and internet memes
So unsettled, so confused, my mind suffers and feels abused
What should I do?  I need a break-through to find the TRUE and not be blue
I searched and yearned. Is happiness learned, or maybe earned?
I want to give up and seek no more. Looking for peace is such a bore, a real chore
How do I break free of anxiety and find illusive serenity
My brain’s continual commotions with ever present unruly emotions
Unconditional happiness is what’s most desirous
A Bhodi tree could inspire near the village of Bodhgaya
Where Buddha finally freed his mind and was no longer confined
To society’s hectic bustling plundering and innate suffering
I crave for the panacea, and suddenly a humble idea
From deep within my mind wakes  a notion to be refined
Perhaps I read it or someone said it
A thought so profound, what you seek cannot be found while you’re still looking around
Only when my searchings’ cease, can I begin to find any peace
It has been there all the time, hidden, subtle and sublime
A tiny spark of excitement on discovering this enlightenment
Living life consciously, humbly with love compassion and honesty
Irrelevant is what has past and so daft to live by forecast
What I need is enrolment, to only living in the MOMENT
Significant is the here and now, not elite, not high-brow
A concept that’s so simple to grasp, to live in the NOW and not in the past
The future imagined is mostly unpleasant, so I do my living in the PRESENT
No longer a human doing and perusing
A human BEING, is all too freeing.

Russel is a 59 year-old alcoholic and addict whose active addiction began early in his teens. After a horrendous and terrifying rock bottom he  was duped into attending rehabilitation in 2015 and has been clean and sober ever since. He co-founded the first secular AA meeting, Secular Serenity, in Cape Town, South Africa in 2017 which remains his home group. He is a student of philosophy and enjoys writing poetry about his addictions and recovery. In his free time he enjoys serene activities such as motorcycling, scuba diving and deep sea fishing.

Back in January Russel wrote this article, posted on AA Agnostica: MY Program, not The Program.

 

The post Sharing my Ramblings first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Sharing my Ramblings

By Russel S.

My rock bottom was horrific and resulted in an attempt at suicide. Back then, I hated my life, I hated myself and I wanted to die but as it turns out, I was very afraid of death. The paradox of my recovery is that I now love life, I love living and I have learned to love myself and treat myself with kindness. I do not want to die, but death is no longer something I fear as I know it is just part of my journey as a human being.

I have developed the view that recovery and sobriety is something I have to work at constantly. It is imperative for me to perpetually train my mind and coach myself in a new way of thinking to be the genuine and authentic version of myself – the best “me” I can be. Perhaps in the same way that an athlete trains for his sport on a daily basis to be the best competitor he can be.

Part of my “exercise” regime is journaling about my addiction and recovery. This takes many forms; I write gratitude lists, letters to people past and present (most never actually sent), essays and a bit of poetry. I have personally found this activity to be very cathartic for me personally. For me, getting my thoughts down in writing has a twofold benefit: (a) I find the process purgative and cleansing and (b) I can go back in my journal and recollect the state of my mind at that time in my recovery journey.

Disclosing my journaling is a thorny problem. Of course, the writings are quite personal, but the complication arises as to my reasons for sharing them. I always have to check my motives about sharing some of my ramblings. Am I seeking affirmation? Is it ego related? Etc. It’s always a bit tricky to find the absolute honest rationale.

That said, I have decided to share something I wrote in 2019 as I truly believe that it could be of benefit to others as it details some of my journey and the avenues I pursued to find a manageable way to live with my disease.

The Goal Post

The goal post forever shifting, never knowing how to fit in
Happiness so out of reach, what to learn, what to teach
How to act and how to be, who is the genuine me?
Where to find authentic truth, so conflicting from my youth
Life changed, I grew estranged or perhaps deranged
Disconnected from the world, it all appears extremely blurred
Who is that guy I used to be? A spurious stranger or simply me?
Where to look where to seek, the philosophy of an ancient Greek
Socrates professed a method, which the parliament rejected and thus to his death directed.
Aristotle extraordinarily wise, but how to know they weren’t just lies?
A demonic narration, like the matrix simulation or Descartes’ meditation
Zeno, Seneca and Epictetus did they have something they could teach us?
These Stoics claimed to know a way, but does their code apply today?
”Virtue brings forth happiness”, I kinda like its snappiness
But does it have a practical place on a rock hurtling through empty space?
Perhaps my search could be ceased, by the sages of the East
Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching, may extinguish life’s harsh sting
But I am neither water nor am I stone; I am living flesh on bone
Confucius schooled morality, justice and sincerity to achieve some normality
Life’s not that complicated, it’s my mind that’s infiltrated, perforated
So many philosophical isms, unfeasible to take a position with conviction
Religion claims clarification on how to deal with temptation
But who or what is a god, it is to me rather odd, flawed, a fraud
Conjured to deceive, something hidden up a sleeve but not to believe
I cannot put all my faith in a wraith, somehow it just feels unsafe
Like magic beans, sleepless dreams and internet memes
So unsettled, so confused, my mind suffers and feels abused
What should I do?  I need a break-through to find the TRUE and not be blue
I searched and yearned. Is happiness learned, or maybe earned?
I want to give up and seek no more. Looking for peace is such a bore, a real chore
How do I break free of anxiety and find illusive serenity
My brain’s continual commotions with ever present unruly emotions
Unconditional happiness is what’s most desirous
A Bhodi tree could inspire near the village of Bodhgaya
Where Buddha finally freed his mind and was no longer confined
To society’s hectic bustling plundering and innate suffering
I crave for the panacea, and suddenly a humble idea
From deep within my mind wakes  a notion to be refined
Perhaps I read it or someone said it
A thought so profound, what you seek cannot be found while you’re still looking around
Only when my searchings’ cease, can I begin to find any peace
It has been there all the time, hidden, subtle and sublime
A tiny spark of excitement on discovering this enlightenment
Living life consciously, humbly with love compassion and honesty
Irrelevant is what has past and so daft to live by forecast
What I need is enrolment, to only living in the MOMENT
Significant is the here and now, not elite, not high-brow
A concept that’s so simple to grasp, to live in the NOW and not in the past
The future imagined is mostly unpleasant, so I do my living in the PRESENT
No longer a human doing and perusing
A human BEING, is all too freeing.

Russel is a 59 year-old alcoholic and addict whose active addiction began early in his teens. After a horrendous and terrifying rock bottom he  was duped into attending rehabilitation in 2015 and has been clean and sober ever since. He co-founded the first secular AA meeting, Secular Serenity, in Cape Town, South Africa in 2017 which remains his home group. He is a student of philosophy and enjoys writing poetry about his addictions and recovery. In his free time he enjoys serene activities such as motorcycling, scuba diving and deep sea fishing.

Back in January Russel wrote this article, posted on AA Agnostica: MY Program, not The Program.

 

The post Sharing my Ramblings first appeared on AA Agnostica.