Category: From AA Agnostica

Saturday’s Free Secular AA Zoom Conference

By Joe C.

It’s a little of the latest science. It’s a little AA folk-wisdom, some entertainment, some community. That’s what you’ll find at the International Conference of Secular AA free December 5th mini-conference.

Washington DC was slotted for our fourth biennial gathering (Santa Monica 2014, Austin 2016, Toronto 2018 and COVID cancelled our in-person 2020 gathering). So we’re going virtual.

We have some keynote speakers including Dr. Koob, director of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). We have panels including “When is it Okay to Leave AA?” + “Not an Outside Issue: Are Gender Bias and Sexism holding AA back?” + a history panel with the authors of Key Players in AA History, Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery + Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA. Our “It Came from London” panel looks at the history of The “God” Word leaflet and how it may be a bridge to more secular AA stories in mainstream AA literature. But wait – there’s more; we have a stand up comic from Kansas City and a skit from the worldly Hank Parkhurst Blackout Players.

There will be polls and announcements, discussions about diversity in AA and starting meetings and more. No registration is required. It’s on zoom and $0.00 to attend.

See the program for links, times and a full schedule. ICSAA 2020 doors open at 8:30 Pacific, 11:30 Eastern and 4:30 GMT. View the program in the link below for more details. The after-party entertainment and fellowship starts at 1 PM PST, 4 PM EST, 9 PM GMT.

We hope to see you online. More details below.

Virtual ICSAA Saturday, December 5, 2020

By John S.

The International Conference of Secular AA is meeting via Zoom on December 5, 2020, at 9:00 AM Pacific, 12:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM GMT. The doors will open thirty minutes before the official start time.  The conference is free and there is no need to register. There will be two conference rooms and a hospitality suite, so all you need to do is enter the Zoom ID and passcode for the room you want to enter. There will be events taking place simultaneously, but don’t worry if you can’t decide which room to visit, everything will be recorded so you can listen later.

Schedule

12:00 PM Beyond Belief Room (passcode 121212): George F. Koob, PhD. is an internationally-recognized expert on alcohol and stress, and the neurobiology of alcohol and drug addiction. He is the Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), where he provides leadership in the national effort to reduce the public health burden associated with alcohol misuse.

12:30 PM: Beyond Belief Room (passcode 121212): A Discussion on Diversity in AA, (Special Purpose Groups: LGBTQ+, Young Peoples, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Women’s, Secular, and other). Tell us about starting your meeting.

1:00 PM Beyond Belief Room (passcode 121212) It Came from the Kitchen: Not an Outside Issue: Are Sexism and Gender Bias Keeping AA Stuck? with Marya Hornbacher, author Waiting: A Nonbeliever’s Higher Power, Beth H, Phoenix AZ, Heather CV, Los Angeles CA.

1:00 PM: OMAGOD Room (passcode 662463): Is it Ever Okay to Leave AA? Featuring Jon Stewart from the band Sleeper, John Huey from DC, and Vic Losick from New York, NY.

2:00 PM Beyond Belief Room (passcode 121212): Dr. George Kolodner is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist who specializes in the intensive outpatient (IOP) treatment of substance use disorders. He founded Kolmac Outpatient Recovery Centers in 1973. Today, he serves as the Chief Innovation Officer. He works to increase awareness of IOP and keep Kolmac on the cusp of leading-edge treatment for women and men. Also featuring Brian Gill,  a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and the Clinical Director of the Kolmac Outpatient Recovery Centers.

2:00 PM OMAGOD Room (passcode 662463) It Came from London: The “God” Word and a way forward for a secular voice in AA literature chaired by Barry, with Cyril, London AA Freethinkers, Antonia, Stonehenge AA Freethinkers Steps, and Brendan, Rainham AA Freethinkers

3:00 PM OMAGOD Room (passcode 662463) Kathy Mitchell is the Vice President and International Spokesperson for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Ms. Mithcell has a Master of Human Services degree and is a licensed clinical alcohol and drug counselor with thirty years of experience as a national educator, clinician, and lecturer.

3:00 PM Beyond Belief Room (passcode 121212): It Came from Our Past. What it was like...Hosted by Jackie B., 2022 Chair of the AA History Symposium, and featuring Chris Finan., author of Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery, AA History Panel, Bob K., author of Key Players in AA History, and William Schaberg, author of Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA.

4:00 PM Beyond Belief Room (passcode 121212): Entertainment and Afterparty hosted by comedian David S. from the Kansas City We Agnostics and Freethinkers Groups, and featuring a skit by the Hank Parkhurst Blackout Players, “Is a belief in God(s) necessary for sustained sobriety?” post-program Q&A and discussion. Written by Sri Rahm Ohio with assistance from TJ Green, Rick Hill, and Terry Green Theatrical adaptation Terry Green Ohio Director TJ Green Iowa Producer Terry Green Technical Director Tracy Coates Ohio Actors in order of appearance Mark the panel moderator TJ Green Iowa Joel Holstein. Mega Church minister. Tracy Coates Ohio Jackie Black Recovery author. Leslie Ross Iowa Helmut Vin Schnitzel Clinical Psychologist. Michael Allen Ohio Grod. DanCoffey Thailand Zeus and Hera Rick and Judy Hill. California.

Secular AA Lounge (no passcode needed): Open throughout the conference. A place to ask questions or chat with friends.

Zoom ID’s and Passcodes

About Secular AA | ICSAA

Secular AA | ICSAA has a mission to assure suffering alcoholics that they can find sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous without having to accept anyone else’s beliefs or deny their own. The International Conference of Secular AA occurs every two years. The first conference in 2014 was known as We Agnosics and Freethinkers International AA Conference, the second conference in 2016 was known as the We Agnostics, Atheists, and Freethinkers International AA Conference, and since meeting in Toronto in 2018, the conference has been known as the International Conference of Secular AA.

Secular AA Links

Our website secularaa.org

Our Facebook Page

Our Twitter Page

Our Email [email protected]

 

The post Saturday’s Free Secular AA Zoom Conference first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Personal Privacy and Public Recovery Advocacy

By Bill White, Bill Stauffer and Danielle Tarino
Posted on the website, William White Papers, on November 19, 2020

A central strategy of the new recovery movement is sharing our stories in public and professional venues to change public perceptions and public policies related to addiction and recovery.

Drawing from earlier social movements, we learned that “contact strategies” – increasing personal contact between marginalized and mainstream populations – is one of the most effective means of reducing stigma and discrimination and expanding opportunities for full community participation.

Public attitudes toward those recovering from alcohol and other drug problems become more positive when members of the public have positive exposure to people living in long-term recovery with whom they can identify.

We also learned that there were limitations to this approach of public recovery storytelling. Changing personal attitudes of those exposed to our stories left in place much of the institutional machinery (e.g., laws, policies, and historical practices) that negatively affected individuals and families experiencing alcohol and other drug problems. Twenty years into the new recovery advocacy movement, discrimination against us remains pervasive. We must remain vigilant to prevent appropriation of our stories by others to support unrelated agendas. When this happens, we experience further marginalization.

People in recovery face discriminatory barriers in housing, employment, education, professional licensure, health care, and numerous arenas of public participation (such as voting and holding public office). Laws and regulations intended to protect us from discrimination remain unenforced. Addiction treatment remains of uneven quality, often lacking in long-term recovery orientation, and limited in its accessibility and affordability. Too many communities lack long-term recovery support services. And people in recovery continue to be excluded from meaningful representation within alcohol and drug and criminal justice policy discussions and decisions.

It is in this context that we must be clear about what our public recovery storytelling can and cannot achieve, and relatedly, who precisely is responsible for eliminating entrenched policies and practices that have such a direct impact on our lives.

There is a paradox within our anti-stigma efforts. We must challenge oppressive barriers to recovery and full participation in community life. As Frederick Douglass so clearly and eloquently stated, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Historical inertia and personal and institutional self-interests sustain structures of oppression until they are challenged. Who will pose such a challenge if not people in recovery?

Yet the ultimate responsibility for dismantling discriminatory practices rests upon the shoulders of the systems within which such oppressive machinery continues to operate. The responsibility to eliminate discrimination rests with those who discriminate. By itself, telling the perfect recovery story will not end discriminatory practices.

So where does recovery storytelling fit into all this? Our stories are a means of humanizing addiction and recovery – a means of challenging the myths, misconceptions, and caricatures that have let others objectify and isolate us. Our stories are an invitation for people to reconsider the sources of and solutions to alcohol and other drug problems. Our stories are a means of building relationships that embrace us within the human family – as people who share the dreams and aspirations of others.

Our stories, directly or indirectly, also constitute Douglass’ demand to change the structures that have prevented an embrace of our humanity and rendered us people to be feared, shunned, or punished.

This involves far more than changing people’s perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward those with lived experience of addiction and recovery. It involves identifying and eliminating the precise mechanisms (e.g., policies and practices) through which social shunning and discrimination have been institutionalized.

This is not to suggest that people in recovery have no role to play in this change process nor that we should passively embrace a victim status in the face of such systemic challenges. We can take responsibility for our own personal and family recovery, make amends to those we have harmed, and reach out to others still suffering. We can participate in recovery-focused research (to create a science of recovery that can challenge recovery misconceptions), participate in protests and advocacy efforts, offer our recovery stories in public and professional educational venues, and represent our lived experience within policy-making settings. Such actions have contributed to numerous positive changes.

Our stories possess immense power as long as we recognize our stories alone will not create recovery-friendly social institutions or recovery-inclusive communities. We must not allow our stories to stand as superficial window-dressings while discrimination remains pervasive, even among some of the very groups and institutions who on the surface support our storytelling. Our stories must support specific calls for institutional change. We must hold individuals and institutions that discriminate accountable until they eliminate such conditions.

How we craft and communicate our stories for public/professional consumption is an important element of this process of social change. Recovery advocacy organizations have a responsibility to prepare and support the vanguard of individuals who heed the call of this public story-sharing ministry. This includes building a community ethic that protects those who possess the bravery and privilege of sharing their recovery stories in public forums. Collecting our stories without meaningful dialogue about how our stories will be used and the protections we will be afforded is unacceptable.

This is the first in a continuing series of blogs on personal privacy and public recovery advocacy. We hope it will set recovery storytelling within a larger context. The remaining blogs will explore the risks of public recovery storytelling, the ethics of public recovery story sharing, and suggest guidelines on protecting personal privacy and safety within the context of public recovery storytelling. The impetus for this series comes from our knowledge of individuals who have experienced unanticipated harm related to their advocacy efforts.

As Bill just mentioned, this is the first article “in a continuing series of blogs on personal privacy and public recovery advocacy”. Here is the second:

William White has a Master’s degree in Addiction Studies and has worked in outreach, clinical research and teaching roles in the addictions field since 1969. Bill has authored or co-authored more than 400 articles and 21 books, including Slaying the Dragon – The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America and, more recently, Recovery Rising.

Bill has served as a historian and thought leader of the U.S. recovery advocacy movement since the late 1990s and has served as a volunteer consultant to Faces and Voices of Recovery and local recovery community organizations since the early 2000s.

And here is a listing Bill provided of three recovery advocacy organizations:

Faces and Voices of Recovery is committed to eliminating discrimination against people in recovery and shaping public policy and educating people by bringing recovery into the consciousness of Americans. Faces and Voices of Recovery envisions a world in which recovery from addiction is a common, celebrated reality – a world where individuals will not experience shame when seeking help.

The Association of Recovery Community Organizations (ARCO) unites and supports a growing network of Recovery Community Organizations (ROCs). ARCO links them and their leaders with local and national allies. There are now 100 of these within ARCO and their goals include educating the public about the reality of recovery, advocating on behalf of the recovery community, and delivering recovery support services.

Young People in Recovery envisions a world where all young people have the resources they need to thrive in recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol. YPR’s core values are community, caring, respect, inclusion, and commitment. It is working to make communities overall safe and recovery-ready.

 

The post Personal Privacy and Public Recovery Advocacy first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Once a Sick Drug Addict

Chapter 6:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Patricia K.

I crawled into AA as a sick drug addict. At that time 12 step programs for my drug of choice did not exist in my area. It took me a number of years of sitting in the back of AA meetings and wondering if I belonged, to understand that I was indeed an alcoholic. I had the same disease that was being talked about in the literature and from the podium, I just happened to use other drugs as well as alcohol.

When I got to AA, I was emaciated and sick of body and heart.

My use of alcohol and other drugs had rendered my 34 year old body into a knot of pain and tension that was held together by anger and resentment. I wore a black leather jacket and I had an attitude and a vocabulary to match; all meant to keep the world at bay. The reality was, I was terrified. My life up until that point had been full of abuse. Abused as a child, physically, sexually and mentally, I then become a mark for future abuse. To my mind the phrase “he hit me because he loves me”, made sense. Before recovery I used any substance I could to numb the pain: alcohol, other drugs, men, food. It took years of step work and therapy to unravel all of this.

I first hit bottom during one of my many attempts to go university. Two of my classmates were in recovery in AA. Although I was drinking and using, I had a sense that we were kindred spirits. These two women listened to my horror stories of drinking and fights, and drug sickness. They came to the hospital when I had been beaten up by my ex-husband. One day, as I was going on about what a bastard my ex was, one of these women very gently said: “Do you think maybe you are the one with the problem?“ I can still hear her voice. I started to attend AA meetings but was not convinced that I had a problem. I went to meetings drunk and high. I went to find a way to get HIM sober.

And then I had a moment of clarity. A street clinic doctor told me that I would soon die if I did not stop my destructive lifestyle. Lying on that hospital gurney and wanting nothing more than to get back to the drug that I had just overdosed on, the word powerless came to mind and I knew it was true. I admitted I was an alcoholic/addict. There was nothing divine about that occurrence. I had obviously heard what I needed to hear at the meetings I had attended even though I was under the influence.

Looking back at that young woman I was in early recovery I feel such empathy and respect for her. It was a struggle to understand life and to try to learn to accept my past and to believe that I could have a future in which I did not get beat up, I was not drug sick or hung over. Early on in my recovery, I accepted that I was an alcoholic/drug addict and that I could not safely use any mind altering substance.

However, I was tormented by pain, anger, shame and guilt for how I had lived my life, and I had yet to learn other ways to deal with these feelings. As a result, I didn’t stay clean and sober right away. I had a number of one day relapses. However, I was taught to learn from those relapses. I was told to figure out if I was doing something that I shouldn’t be, something that jeopardized my sobriety: an unhealthy relationship perhaps? I had to figure out what had caused me to relapse. Was I not dealing with the feelings that were surfacing now that I had stopped anesthetizing myself? Was I being honest? Going to meetings? Seeking the help and support I needed inside and outside AA? Was I trying to be of service? I had to grapple with these questions and figure out what I needed to do to stay clean and sober. There was no other entity earthbound or otherwise that was going to figure this out for me.

I was also grappling with the whole concept of god.

I am an atheist. I do not believe in god and yet I have remained sober in AA since Nov 9, 1986. Sober and attending a program that suggested that I could not get sober without a god.

I am one of those individuals who were told to “fake it till you make it” and I did that because I didn’t want to die. I did try to find a god of my understanding. I prayed, even so far as to get on my knees to do so. But I could not believe in a god that would grant me sobriety if I asked in the right way. When I was nine months clean and sober, I returned to school to study Addictions and Mental Health and there were two nuns in my class. I would have long conversations with them about the nature of spirituality and religion.

It didn’t help… I still did not believe.

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.

However I continued to attend meetings of AA and other 12 step programs and I am very thankful for the support that I received there. I read the Big Book and took some very good guidance from what I read. I did however change my copy so that “He” was taken out of the text. Later the term “God” was taken out. I used a paper clip to contain parts of the book such as the chapter “To Wives” because I found it to be sexist and codependent. I figured it was my book, it was my sobriety and I would do what I needed to stay sober and fairly sane.

It is only in the last 10 years that I have come out as an atheist in AA. At first, I began to speak tentatively of my non-belief. I wanted to tell the truth and I thought there may be others who needed to hear that I do not believe in any god, but I was nervous. And rightly so. I did get flak from some quarters. It was even suggest by one person that perhaps I am not an alcoholic after all, if I could remain sober without god.

However I also got encouragement and even thanks for sharing my non beliefs and the fact that I had remained clean/sober for 20 + years without god.

About five years ago, I was told that an Agnostic, Atheists and Free Thinkers group had been started in my area. At first, I was reluctant to attend. Even after many years of sobriety, I remembered what my life was like before I found the 12 step fellowships and I remembered the struggle to gain and maintain sobriety and I did not want to jeopardize my sobriety. Even though I did not believe in god and I did question much of the dogma of the program, mainstream AA and other 12 step programs had been my reed and I was afraid to let go. However, curiosity got the best of me and I finally went to a meeting of Beyond Belief.

Far from jeopardizing my sobriety, attending Agnostic, Atheists and Free Thinkers meetings has deepened and enhanced my sobriety. I found acceptance for the non-believer that I was. No one was going to try to convert me or, worse, question my sobriety because I did not believe in god. In the Agnostic, Atheist and Free Thinkers meetings I didn’t have to pretend to believe in something I did not. I did not have to deny that I believe that I am solely responsibile for my sobriety. It is up to me to figure out what to do to remain sober and then do it. Of course I am not doing this alone. I have had and continue to have great teachers and support in the fellowship.

And it has worked so far. Using the tools that I had picked up in 12 step programs, I have remained sober through the deaths of both of my parents. Relationships and jobs have come and gone. There have been financial and health difficulties but still have had not had to drink or do drugs.

My life is far from perfect but it is so much more than I ever believed I could have. I deal with depression and PTSD every day. When I was nine years clean I was suicidal and so I finally took the advice of my doctor and started to take medication. Her words “it will give you an opportunity to get a foot hold on life”. Many years of therapy and 12 step work later, I am now not on medication. However, I would have no qualms about going on a medication with the consultation of my doctors if I felt it necessary.

Although I still have these “issues” in my life, today I have a rich full life. I finally finished university. I have a good job that I enjoy. I am not wealthy but the bills are paid. I found my creativity. I found my love of nature and the joy in being outside. I am a tree hugger. The biggest payoff for me in staying clean and sober is the respect I have for myself today. I can look in the mirror and know that I have not deliberately harmed another person today. Although the wording of the original 12 steps is archaic and Christian-based, digging down, I found the essence of each step, the principle it is based on. These are my creed for living.

In Twelve and Twelve it states, “Of course, we were glad that good home and religious training had given us certain values”. Coming from an abusive and dysfunctional family I did not have that kind of education. The only values I learnt as a child were the value of a “26er” and the value of a good lie to keep from being beaten or abused. My religious education consisted of me being sent to stand outside the classroom because I would not accept some nonsense the nuns were trying to feed me.

I do not mean to sound bitter, so forgive me if I do. I am not. I honestly believe in what the late, great John Lennon said, “Whatever gets you through the night”. I am happy for believers and wish them well. I hope there is room for all of us in Alcoholics Anonymous, believers and non-believers alike.

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 Once a Sick Drug Addict first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Once a Sick Drug Addict

Chapter 6:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Patricia K.

I crawled into AA as a sick drug addict. At that time 12 step programs for my drug of choice did not exist in my area. It took me a number of years of sitting in the back of AA meetings and wondering if I belonged, to understand that I was indeed an alcoholic. I had the same disease that was being talked about in the literature and from the podium, I just happened to use other drugs as well as alcohol.

When I got to AA, I was emaciated and sick of body and heart.

My use of alcohol and other drugs had rendered my 34 year old body into a knot of pain and tension that was held together by anger and resentment. I wore a black leather jacket and I had an attitude and a vocabulary to match; all meant to keep the world at bay. The reality was, I was terrified. My life up until that point had been full of abuse. Abused as a child, physically, sexually and mentally, I then become a mark for future abuse. To my mind the phrase “he hit me because he loves me”, made sense. Before recovery I used any substance I could to numb the pain: alcohol, other drugs, men, food. It took years of step work and therapy to unravel all of this.

I first hit bottom during one of my many attempts to go university. Two of my classmates were in recovery in AA. Although I was drinking and using, I had a sense that we were kindred spirits. These two women listened to my horror stories of drinking and fights, and drug sickness. They came to the hospital when I had been beaten up by my ex-husband. One day, as I was going on about what a bastard my ex was, one of these women very gently said: “Do you think maybe you are the one with the problem?“ I can still hear her voice. I started to attend AA meetings but was not convinced that I had a problem. I went to meetings drunk and high. I went to find a way to get HIM sober.

And then I had a moment of clarity. A street clinic doctor told me that I would soon die if I did not stop my destructive lifestyle. Lying on that hospital gurney and wanting nothing more than to get back to the drug that I had just overdosed on, the word powerless came to mind and I knew it was true. I admitted I was an alcoholic/addict. There was nothing divine about that occurrence. I had obviously heard what I needed to hear at the meetings I had attended even though I was under the influence.

Looking back at that young woman I was in early recovery I feel such empathy and respect for her. It was a struggle to understand life and to try to learn to accept my past and to believe that I could have a future in which I did not get beat up, I was not drug sick or hung over. Early on in my recovery, I accepted that I was an alcoholic/drug addict and that I could not safely use any mind altering substance.

However, I was tormented by pain, anger, shame and guilt for how I had lived my life, and I had yet to learn other ways to deal with these feelings. As a result, I didn’t stay clean and sober right away. I had a number of one day relapses. However, I was taught to learn from those relapses. I was told to figure out if I was doing something that I shouldn’t be, something that jeopardized my sobriety: an unhealthy relationship perhaps? I had to figure out what had caused me to relapse. Was I not dealing with the feelings that were surfacing now that I had stopped anesthetizing myself? Was I being honest? Going to meetings? Seeking the help and support I needed inside and outside AA? Was I trying to be of service? I had to grapple with these questions and figure out what I needed to do to stay clean and sober. There was no other entity earthbound or otherwise that was going to figure this out for me.

I was also grappling with the whole concept of god.

I am an atheist. I do not believe in god and yet I have remained sober in AA since Nov 9, 1986. Sober and attending a program that suggested that I could not get sober without a god.

I am one of those individuals who were told to “fake it till you make it” and I did that because I didn’t want to die. I did try to find a god of my understanding. I prayed, even so far as to get on my knees to do so. But I could not believe in a god that would grant me sobriety if I asked in the right way. When I was nine months clean and sober, I returned to school to study Addictions and Mental Health and there were two nuns in my class. I would have long conversations with them about the nature of spirituality and religion.

It didn’t help… I still did not believe.

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.

However I continued to attend meetings of AA and other 12 step programs and I am very thankful for the support that I received there. I read the Big Book and took some very good guidance from what I read. I did however change my copy so that “He” was taken out of the text. Later the term “God” was taken out. I used a paper clip to contain parts of the book such as the chapter “To Wives” because I found it to be sexist and codependent. I figured it was my book, it was my sobriety and I would do what I needed to stay sober and fairly sane.

It is only in the last 10 years that I have come out as an atheist in AA. At first, I began to speak tentatively of my non-belief. I wanted to tell the truth and I thought there may be others who needed to hear that I do not believe in any god, but I was nervous. And rightly so. I did get flak from some quarters. It was even suggest by one person that perhaps I am not an alcoholic after all, if I could remain sober without god.

However I also got encouragement and even thanks for sharing my non beliefs and the fact that I had remained clean/sober for 20 + years without god.

About five years ago, I was told that an Agnostic, Atheists and Free Thinkers group had been started in my area. At first, I was reluctant to attend. Even after many years of sobriety, I remembered what my life was like before I found the 12 step fellowships and I remembered the struggle to gain and maintain sobriety and I did not want to jeopardize my sobriety. Even though I did not believe in god and I did question much of the dogma of the program, mainstream AA and other 12 step programs had been my reed and I was afraid to let go. However, curiosity got the best of me and I finally went to a meeting of Beyond Belief.

Far from jeopardizing my sobriety, attending Agnostic, Atheists and Free Thinkers meetings has deepened and enhanced my sobriety. I found acceptance for the non-believer that I was. No one was going to try to convert me or, worse, question my sobriety because I did not believe in god. In the Agnostic, Atheist and Free Thinkers meetings I didn’t have to pretend to believe in something I did not. I did not have to deny that I believe that I am solely responsibility for my sobriety. It is up to me to figure out what to do to remain sober and then do it. Of course I am not doing this alone. I have had and continue to have great teachers and support in the fellowship.

And it has worked so far. Using the tools that I had picked up in 12 step programs, I have remained sober through the deaths of both of my parents. Relationships and jobs have come and gone. There have been financial and health difficulties but still have had not had to drink or do drugs.

My life is far from perfect but it is so much more than I ever believed I could have. I deal with depression and PTSD every day. When I was nine years clean I was suicidal and so I finally took the advice of my doctor and started to take medication. Her words “it will give you an opportunity to get a foot hold on life”. Many years of therapy and 12 step work later, I am now not on medication. However, I would have no qualms about going on a medication with the consultation of my doctors if I felt it necessary.

Although I still have these “issues” in my life, today I have a rich full life. I finally finished university. I have a good job that I enjoy. I am not wealthy but the bills are paid. I found my creativity. I found my love of nature and the joy in being outside. I am a tree hugger. The biggest payoff for me in staying clean and sober is the respect I have for myself today. I can look in the mirror and know that I have not deliberately harmed another person today. Although the wording of the original 12 steps is archaic and Christian-based, digging down, I found the essence of each step, the principle it is based on. These are my creed for living.

In Twelve and Twelve it states, “Of course, we were glad that good home and religious training had given us certain values”. Coming from an abusive and dysfunctional family I did not have that kind of education. The only values I learnt as a child were the value of a “26er” and the value of a good lie to keep from being beaten or abused. My religious education consisted of me being sent to stand outside the classroom because I would not accept some nonsense the nuns were trying to feed me.

I do not mean to sound bitter, so forgive me if I do. I am not. I honestly believe in what the late, great John Lennon said, “Whatever gets you through the night”. I am happy for believers and wish them well. I hope there is room for all of us in Alcoholics Anonymous, believers and non-believers alike.

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 Once a Sick Drug Addict first appeared on AA Agnostica.

How The Pandemic Changed Alcoholics Anonymous

“This is the last door on the road for a lot of people.”

By Nadine Yousif
Published in The Toronto Star, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020

In a typical week, Mark attends four Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Toronto. But over the last seven months, the meetings have been far from typical.

Since the arrival of COVID-19, people who once sat together in close proximity to share their struggles with addiction now do so on a screen, their faces trapped in individual squares on a Zoom meeting. Some attendees choose not to have their camera or microphone on, making for quieter celebrations than usual for sobriety milestones.

As more than 80 per cent of the Greater Toronto Area’s AA meetings have moved online, moments of casual socialization before and after, also referred to as “fellowship time,” are no longer possible. The passing of a donation basket is a thing of the past.

“The value of the fellowship is being able to press the flesh, so to speak, to shake hands and to make that very direct, personal contact,” said Mark, whose last name has been withheld due to AA’s media policy to protect members’ privacy.

The pandemic has upended the way free, in-person addiction support groups – from Narcotics Anonymous to Overeaters Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous – operate, moving meetings online and altering the reality for thousands who rely on these groups for accountability and community.

For AA’s GTA network, that meant around 500 weekly meetups were shuttered when physical distancing restrictions began in March, marking an abrupt change for an organization that has adhered to traditions dating back to its founding 85 years ago. Prior to the pandemic, more than 10,000 AA members from Toronto to Oakville to Ajax flocked to in-person meetings to find like-minded people who share a common goal of reaching sobriety.

So the sudden move to online was met with immediate questions about how vulnerable members would access the support they found in the meetings, typically held in church basements and community halls. And while a fraction of in-person meetings have since resumed, some members say the pandemic will forever change the way the fellowship operates, creating a permanent place for people to meet virtually and uniting members around the world.

These changes come as more people are turning to drugs and alcohol to cope with widespread feelings of social isolation. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario reported higher than usual alcohol sales when the pandemic began in March, and October data out of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health shows nearly 25 per cent of Canadians surveyed are engaging in heavy episodic drinking. In 2018, 19 per cent of Canadians reported heavy drinking, according to Statistics Canada.

This has worried researchers at Public Health Ontario, who wrote in the Canadian Journal of Public Health that there is evidence linking mass traumatic events like the pandemic with increased alcohol consumption, warning of a looming addiction public health crisis in the shadow of COVID-19.

The higher rates also extend to drug use. In July, there was a record 27 opioid-related deaths reported in Toronto, exceeding the number of COVID-19 deaths in the city that same month. The opioid overdose death toll — which hit a new record of 28 in October — led Toronto Public Health to sound the alarm against using alone, citing a toxic drug supply for causing more fatalities.

Mark, who has been an AA member for 34 years and sober for 30, said some of his fellow members have recently relapsed, including one man who struggled with sobriety for the last seven years and lost his job in March due to COVID-19. He joined Mark’s AA group virtually during the pandemic in a renewed bid to reach sobriety.

“I was texting with him and having a lot of phone conversations with him,” Mark said, adding that the two couldn’t get together in person.

“He then took something he shouldn’t, and now he’s dead,” Mark said. The man’s partner still attends virtual AA meetings, finding support within a community that knew and accepted her husband in his final days.

Throughout his decades of active AA membership, Mark said he’s learned not to make assumptions on why some people relapse, and many have been able to maintain their sobriety despite the challenges brought by COVID-19. But he said there’s no question “it is far more difficult” for new people to feel connected with the fellowship and get the same support and encouragement online that they would have received with traditional in-person meetings.

It is why, Mark said, there was an urgent push within AA in Toronto to meet in person even as the city went into lockdown last March. Under city guidelines, addiction-support programs like AA were deemed an essential service, but members say many landlords closed meeting premises for fear of COVID-19 spread in the community.

A small group of members managed to restart in-person meetings in April at a Salvation Army, but for a few months, those meetings were the only daily AA support meetings in the city and they were limited to only 20 attendees.

That meant meetings had to run first-come, first-serve – an antithesis against how AA usually operates.

“You can come if you’re drunk, if you’re high, if you’re homeless, it does not matter,” said Julia, a 34-year-old AA member in Toronto. “This is the last door on the road for a lot of people, and the idea of having to close the door to a meeting is so devastating.”

Mark said some members began holding meetings in parking lots as a result, still adhering to physical distancing measures. Others met in parks or people’s backyards if the weather permitted.

When COVID-19 cases started dropping, more formal meeting spaces opened back up and as of now, there are some 71 weekly in-person meetings in the city. However, AA members are watching the second wave with concern: This month, Toronto’s daily COVID-19 case counts cracked the 500 mark for the first time and members worry the resurgence of in-person meetings will eventually grind to a halt.

With substance use on the rise, access to immediate in-person services are paramount, says Taryn Grieder, a research associate at the University of Toronto’s Donnelly Centre with a focus on addiction and mental health.

Grieder said moving AA meetings online has its benefits, but “active involvement in the program has been shown to play a huge role in maintaining recovery,” she added – a feat that is harder to achieve through an online platform. A 2009 review of research on AA’s effectiveness out of the University of California, Berkeley found that around 70 per cent of those who attend meetings weekly are able to reach abstinence within two years.

“People aren’t going to participate the same way as they would in person,” Grieder said of online meetings. “Even for a person feeling really involved in a program, they’re not going to feel as involved if they’re staring at a screen.”

Grieder said she worries about people who aren’t as extroverted, for example, who wouldn’t be able to pull someone aside during an online meeting and share their experience privately. She also worries about people from a lower socio-economic background who may not have the internet bandwidth to attend an online meeting.

“For people who don’t have a lot of money, it was easy to just walk to a meeting,” Grieder said.

For Julia, Zoom meetings lack a certain feeling of connection that has helped her stay sober for almost a decade.

“There’s just a certain magic about being in a room with other people,” Julia said. “If I’ve had a bad day or a bad week, I get to a meeting and there’s something there that makes me feel like I can breathe again.”

Julia and Mark are both active organizers with Alcoholics Anonymous in Toronto, but the fellowship operates with no hierarchy, meaning anyone can form an AA meeting. A key pillar of the organization is anonymity and no one person acts as a spokesperson for AA as a whole. A GTA Intergroup exists to offer centralized services like literature sales and a help line.

Meetings follow a set of traditions, including prayer, reading from the AA Big Book – which offers lessons on how to achieve sobriety – and passing a donation basket, as groups are financially self-supporting. Each group elects a chairperson and a treasurer, with these positions rotating periodically.

Some of these traditions are still carried out during online meetings, but others, like the donation basket, are not possible. People are still able to make donations and purchase literature online, but Mark said book sales have taken a bit of a hit during the pandemic.

A new technical host position has also been created to assist the chair in setting up the online meetings and to prevent security breaches, which caused issues earlier in the pandemic.

Some members, especially those who are older or immunocompromised and are at greater risk of contracting the virus, continue to choose virtual meetings. For these reasons, Mark said the fellowship remains divided on whether to hold more meetings in person: On one hand, COVID-19 is a public health crisis, but on the other hand, alcoholism is also a crisis on the rise.

Julia fears virtual meetings will no longer be a choice, but rather mandatory in the wake of COVID-19’s resurgence in Toronto and Ontario.

Her own group, she said, was forced to revert to online meetings recently for a period of 30 days at the request of the church where they usually met. Her only option for holding in-person meetings is finding a new landlord, which comes with steep rent costs the group cannot afford.

But there is a bright side, Mark said. He believes online meetings offer a new layer of connectivity that didn’t exist before, and therefore are likely here to stay.

It has enabled him to attend virtual meetings based in South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand. Addiction is a lonely disease, Mark said, and attending meetings elsewhere has reminded him he is not alone.

These meetings, he said, have reassured him “that there are people in many different countries, through many different cultures that have exactly the same need and that are finding exactly the same solution” through AA.

“It’s always an amazing feeling to be hearing someone speaking in India, for example, and talking about experiencing the same kind of… alcoholism and hearing about their recovery today,” he added. “That feeling of connection with people on the other side of the world is something unique.”

And despite the disruptions and lasting changes the pandemic has brought, Mark said AA’s priority remains unchanged: getting help to the people who need it, in whatever way possible – whether it be online, in-person or even through a phone call.

“We all recognize we’re dealing with a fatal condition, and we want people to be able to get in the lifeboat,” he said. “We want to be able to reach out that hand.”

 

The post How The Pandemic Changed Alcoholics Anonymous first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Can AA Please Evolve?

By Dave W

One of the things I admire the most about the simplicity of the way AA meetings are structured and conducted is the level playing field that is created for the typical one-hour duration of the gathering. No one is above anyone else. Even the chairperson, whose primary responsibility is to keep the meeting on course and at least reasonably timed, is asked to identify as an alcoholic and share a portion of their story at the beginning of the meeting.

We are a flawed, imperfect and broken peer support group in various stages of recovery. In meetings it’s common to feel a sense of admiration and compassion at the candor and courage people show when telling their stories, revealing details of past mistakes and blunders that would get you kicked out of a lot of social circles, job opportunities, and some families if the details were repeated outside our meeting rooms.

Despite AA’s simplistic structure, when change does happen it is excruciatingly slow. The plodding pace is understandable when one is dealing with a decentralized structure where autonomy flows from the bottom upwards. Change will be gradual, cautious and measured. Unfortunately, the process is handicapped further by a reluctance to understand that times change, societal norms evolve, and new knowledge about alcoholism and addiction continues to become available.

If I were to play word association, and someone said “AA” to me, my first response might be “dated”. When I attend meetings I often feel as if I have fallen into a time machine and am back in another era. Members display AA’s flagship piece of literature, an eighty-year-old book written in an archaic style and based on an understanding of alcoholism that was prevalent in the 1930s. I personally cringe at the thought of telling a newcomer that there is nothing new under the sun about alcoholism and addiction. It was all known in the 1930s. The book dismisses anyone who is an atheist or agnostic and makes it clear to them that if you do not get god you will not get sober. The sexism in the book is embarrassing and seems to imply that female alcoholics are as rare as hen’s teeth. There does not seem to be much appetite to archive the original text and present a more timely and relevant volume.

In meetings one of the first things a newcomer may notice is an apron proudly displayed across the table where the chair and speaker sit, giving the founding date of the group. Black and white pictures of Bill and Bob often adorn the walls. Slogans are displayed prominently, frequently in a font that reminds one of biblical passages. I am grateful AA has survived the decades to be here for me, but I don’t understand why there’s such an obsession with the past. I worry about the disconnect many newcomers must feel from a presentation from a different era.

In gatherings there are times when AA takes on a cult like behavior. At the Ontario Regional Conference at the Sheraton Hotel in Toronto last year, I sat in the auditorium with two fellow secular AA members awaiting the opening speaker. I witnessed what I thought at the time and still do a bizarre and creepy spectacle, the conference participants walking to the stage while almost everyone in the audience rising to their feet and clapping in unison to a precise rhythmic cadence. As I remained sitting with my two non-participating friends, I wondered how many people who joined in the ritual were thinking this is stupid, I feel awkward, why am I doing this but were too intimidated to remain seated. It did not look like an effort to show appreciation to the participants, it came off as a robotic and an extremely uncomfortable ritual practice. The act may have looked harmless, but it appeared as an intent to control people’s behavior. Synchronized clapping has nothing to do with getting or remaining sober, but if you can get people to engage in mindless rituals it’s easier to get them to conform to the dogma and rigidity that exists in some meetings and the literature.

Ritualism and repetition find their ways into AA in a multitude of behaviors and beliefs. A cornerstone of many meetings is an obsession with readings that are narrow and dated. It is amazing that there is any time left for people to share their personal stories and issues given the plethora of readings done at some meetings and other events. At any given gathering a combination of The Steps, The Traditions (don’t forget to chant “principles before personalities”), The Promises, The Concepts, How it Works, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, The Spiritual Experience, The Serenity Prayer, and often of course, everyone’s favorite, the Lord’s Prayer are trotted out.

And if the readings are not sufficient to fill an hour, we have slogans aplenty. Think, Think, Think. You Are Not Alone. Let Go and Let God. First Things First. But for the Grace of God. Stick With the Winners…. On and on and on.

This obsession with repetitious readings and slogans makes it difficult for meetings to unfold organically and allow attendees to speak freely on present moment situations. Spontaneity is lost and people are taught to put their current problems on the back burner and talk about the chosen reading instead. There seems to be a rule in some meetings that if your present situation does not dovetail with the chosen topic at hand, you better not speak. It is also an effective way to prevent dreaded outside issues being discussed. We can’t have you talking about non-alcohol related addictions; this is AA. Take your childhood trauma, your PTSD, your OCD, your other sundry mental health issues out of the rooms. Whether these problems contribute to your drinking or not, if it is not covered in the Big Book, we do not want to hear it.

One of the unfortunate legacies of AA has been the white male heterosexual Christian dominance of the fellowship. Yes, it is changing. There are now meetings for women, for LGBTQ individuals, for agnostics and atheists, for people for whom language is a barrier. Despite this evolution, narrowness and bigotry still occur. In recent issues of our local Intergroup’s newsletter a picture appears on the last page announcing members sober milestones. It looks like a sketch from the early days of AA. Every person in it looks to be either a middle age or old white man. No women. No minorities. Given what has happened in recent months and years with the emergence of the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements, the picture is horribly tone deaf in a newsletter in 2020. We are not in violation of tradition 10 by having an opinion on outside issues if we are simply showing respect for and awareness of diversity.

If there is a silver lining for the current pandemic, it has been the opportunity to sit in on-line meetings and hear people from all over North America and other parts of the world share their experiences in traditional AA. It has been a revelation to hear people’s gratitude in finding our growing secular groups and talk openly about the struggle of fitting into meetings where their core beliefs and values don’t mesh with the traditional god centric literature. It becomes clear quickly when hearing these stories that there is no one size fits everyone approach to recovery and it’s ok to go off the common path of getting a sponsor and working the traditional version of the steps as soon as you walk in the door.

I have enormous gratitude for the secular meetings I found in Toronto in May of 2018 when my drinking was out of control. Even though I was not close to dying, I believe these meetings and the people I met in them have prolonged my life. Yes, these meetings too have readings. Yes, they have some ritual practices. I am totally at home with chanting “Hi, so and so” when a fellow member identifies. At one meeting, The Serenity Prayer, minus the G word, is recited in unison. The responsibility declaration is read routinely at the close. None the less, the meat of these gatherings is largely what participants decide it is. People are free to talk on what they need to at any given point. I have yet to be censored for any of my words even though I frequently speak of personal issues where the linear path back to my drinking may not always be clear. It is quite the contrast to what I feel in many traditional meetings where my mind seems to dwell more on whether what I want to share is acceptable or not. I believe traditional AA could benefit greatly from taking the handcuffs off. AA is not going to die if non-conference approved readings are done in a meeting, or an “outside issue” is discussed or if, God forbid, we actually rewrite the Big Book to reflect current times. It may die however if fear of change continues to weigh the fellowship down in a past that still looks too much like the 1930s.

David is a sixty two year-old agnostic alcoholic whose drinking career began late in life after growing up with an alcoholic father. After twelve years of daily drinking, he came to believe that a substance greater than himself trapped him in the same addictive cycle that had trapped various members of his family on both sides. Desperate for outside help, he found secular AA on-line in 2018 and was able to avoid the conflict with religion and a mandatory belief in god that traditional AA insists on imposing on members. His home group is Beyond Belief Toronto and he will be two years sober in December 2020.

 

The post Can AA Please Evolve? first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Atheist in a Foxhole

Chapter 5:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Russ H.

On a sunny Saturday morning at the end of July, 1995, I pulled into the cul-de-sac where I lived with my wife of 19 years and our two teenage children. My sister’s van was parked in the driveway. A police squad car occupied the spot in front of our house forcing me to park across the street. I don’t recall how long I had been gone. It might have been a few hours or a few days. As I walked across the front yard I noticed that the van in the driveway was full of stuff – our stuff – and I wondered “are we going somewhere?” As I walked in the front door I was greeted by a police officer who asked me my name. The pivotal event that defines the end of the beginning of my AA story was about to unfold.

After identifying myself to him, the policeman told me that my wife and my sister were packing some things and would then be leaving with the children. He explained that he was there to make sure I didn’t do anything to make this process any more difficult for them than it already was. I was instructed to take a seat in the nearest chair and stay there until my family was gone. The 28 years leading up to this moment are littered with countless incidents of blackout drinking and outrageous behavior – usually accompanied by negative consequences. The common thread through all of those years, the singular fact that drove me to my bottom, can be summed up neatly: having that police officer there that morning was a very good idea.

They left. I had no idea where they had gone. To reach my children I had to call my sister. She would then call them. If they felt like talking they would call me. Talking to my wife was not an option. I spent the rest of that weekend in miserable solitude mulling over a brand new realization. The way I was leading my life simply was not working. As so often mysteriously happens to alcoholics approaching their bottoms, I had acquired a big book and a schedule of AA meetings in my area. I had looked at them very briefly – just long enough to know that I was not interested in what they had to offer. Now, suddenly, there was a glimmer of interest in the meeting schedule. On Monday morning I called in sick and went down to a noon meeting at the nearest AA meeting place.

The big book tells us that “If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps”. The unsteady steps I took as I walked into that meeting were the first evidence of my readiness to go to any length. I had no expectations. I simply didn’t know what else to do. I wound up going to three meetings that day.

I met people who said they were alcoholics and drug addicts. They told their stories and shared openly about what their lives had been like and what they were like now. I saw in them what it looks like when people like me stop drinking and using. I learned from them what it is like to speak frankly and without embarrassment about who we really are, what we have really done, how we really feel.

A doctoral dissertation called “Experiences of Atheists and Agnostics in AA” was recently submitted and it is based entirely on the book Do Tell. For more information click on the above image.

They allowed me to talk. They listened as I revealed anger, fear and shame and they were neither shocked nor disapproving. It dawned on me that I desperately needed to be with them. They were eager for me to join them. They didn’t require anything from me other than my own willingness to belong. The friendship and love from those people, and others in the years that have followed, changed my life.

At some point that day I realized that I wanted what those people had – to be a clean and sober person – more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. I had come to believe – not in God or spirituality – but simply that it really was possible for me to recover from alcoholism and drug addiction.

I got home late that evening. The hope and optimism I had felt while in the company of my new-found sober friends gave way to loneliness and desperation. Tears became weeping which became the convulsive sort of sobbing that makes it difficult to breathe and nearly impossible to speak. I found myself crying out “God help me. I don’t know what to do. Show me what to do.” Surprising words, perhaps, for an atheist to utter but that is what happened. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. I was in a metaphoric foxhole that evening. Apparently, not only are atheists sometimes in foxholes but some of us also sometimes pray.

The next morning I went in to work. I stopped first to speak to my boss. I told him that I was an alcoholic and drug addict. He was used to seeing me work long hours. I said I would now only be able to give him 40 hours per week – that my recovery had become my first priority. I thought there was a good chance I might be fired. Instead he looked at me and said “You look like a man who has had the weight of the world lifted from your shoulders. You have been a valuable asset here and we will stand by you now.”

Next I visited his boss, a woman named Esther. I started to tell her the same story but I had hardly begun before she stopped me and said “Well, you probably should try to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. See if you can find a sponsor. I will try to get the company to cover the cost of a 30 day rehab. If they will you should do that.” She sounded to me like she might be a recovered alcoholic herself although I learned later that day she was not. I was overcome with gratitude for the unconditional support I was receiving and told Esther I could hardly believe how wonderfully people were treating me that morning. She just shook her head and said “You expect too little from people”. How true I now realize that was.

I left her office and went to my own. As I sat there, trying to maintain composure, my boss walked in and put a key to his house down on my desk. He said “Your wife and kids need your house more than you do. Come stay with me until you get back on your feet”. I spent that night and the next several weeks accepting his generous offer. A few minutes later a coworker dropped by. News travels fast in a workplace where most people are housed in cubicles. She said she’d heard what was up and asked “So, you’re a 12-Stepper?” Of course, I really wasn’t but said I was. She smiled and said “Me too. Mine is a different ‘-A’ but we use the same 12 Steps.” Until then she had been a casual friend. That day she became a trusted confidant.

I left the office in time to make the 5:30 meeting near my home. When I arrived a man was waiting for me at the entrance to the room. He introduced himself as Scott, Esther’s son. Scott was an alcoholic and addict who’s “other” drug of choice was the same as mine. He had been clean and sober for 10 years and lived about six blocks down the road from me. Within a couple of weeks he became my first sponsor.

When I tell this story at AA meetings it is not uncommon for people to come up to me and say. “You’re an atheist? How is that possible? You prayed for guidance and the very next day you did things you formerly would not have considered doing. Your prayer was answered. It may not have been a burning bush but what happened to you was surely a miracle.” I’m inclined to agree that what happened feels miraculous. However, I simply do not believe in supernatural phenomena. When I hit my thumb with a hammer I am likely to cry out, “God damn it!” Driven to hopeless despair that evening I cried out “God help me!” The prayer was genuine but it was not a declaration of faith.

That marriage that seemed hopelessly doomed in July was reunited shortly before Christmas after a five month separation. I ecstatically shared my new and improved AA story which now featured restored domestic harmony and renewed family bonds. Then one day in early 2000 I returned from a two week business trip to learn that my wife had fallen in love with a friend of ours. For the first time as a sober man I was confronted with a devastating personal setback. It was not an easy time. I did not handle it gracefully. But I did share the experience with my sober friends. I let them see me suffer. Emotional pain has a tendency to rapidly morph into anger for me – even today – and my friends endured my anger too. As before, they did not turn away or express disapproval. I did not drink or use. Eventually the pain subsided. Life became, at first, tolerable then ultimately enjoyable once again.

I stayed clean and sober on the strength of the fellowship alone for over two years before I approached the 12 Steps with any real interest. It was then that I met the man who became my second AA sponsor. I have now known him for nearly 18 years. Although he will always be my sponsor, I no longer see him as a mentor. He is my trusted friend and one of the men in my life whom I love and know that I am loved by. He shared with me a point of view about life and recovery and AA that was, in large part, passed on to him by his sponsor. It is a point of view that resonates deeply with me and I pass it along to other men if they express an interest. It is not based on the 12 Steps as a recipe or formula for achieving sobriety.

The 12 Steps embody principles of a self-examined life that are neither unique nor new. They direct us to acknowledge who and what we are, to look for and rely upon help from outside ourselves, to examine past actions and motives, to understand that what we say and do may have greater or lesser merit, to seek to speak and act in ways that have greatest merit, to acknowledge our shortcomings, to make retribution for harm done to others whenever possible and to open our minds and hearts to great things we have not yet considered or felt. To adopt these goals (whether or not we try to achieve them specifically as prescribed in the 12 AA Steps) is a noble calling.

The notion that we should seek to speak and act in ways that have greatest merit implies that there is, in this world, an inherent morality. I believe this to be the case. Many AA members speak of seeking to do God’s will. They are using different language based on a different world view but, it seems to me, they are saying essentially the same thing that I am saying. I have heard it said that there really is no “them” in AA. There is just “us.” This applies to the whole world not just to AA.

What it’s like now is a moving target. The ups and downs of being human have not been supplanted by some persistent state of happy and joyous freedom.

Sustaining long term sobriety is inevitably accompanied by growing older. Both processes seem, generally, to smooth rough edges and round off sharp corners. The emotional extremes of my drinking and using days have given way to the much less dramatic emotional extremes of life as a sober and recently retired person. More and more the virtues of “easy does it” and “live and let live” seem to be driving my daily existence.

Sometimes I wonder why I still call myself an alcoholic. The urge to drink or use drugs vanished entirely many years ago. An alcoholic, my thinking goes, is not someone who chooses to drink but, rather, someone who is unable to choose not to drink. By that definition I am now the opposite of alcoholic. Then I remember. “My name is Russ and I am an alcoholic” is by far the most powerful admission of my life. It was the first step of my journey into a life of sobriety. Today it continues to be the simple prelude to new friendships and astonishing experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous. It connects who I am now and what it is like now to who I was during those precious 28 years of drinking and using. Every one of those years and all the things that happened during them are bricks and mortar in the foundation of my life today.

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 Atheist in a Foxhole first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Peeling the Onion: Shedding Theism In Sobriety

By Amy B

The Hero’s Journey… ?

In traditional AA, there’s a classic story, a hero’s journey if you will, about how you progress in sobriety. You come into AA, iffy about the existence of God, but as wonder after wonder happens in your life due to sobriety and AA itself, the veil is lifted. You come to your senses and join the happy, trudging crowd in some form of belief in God. Those who don’t, well, they’ll come around, or else we’re saving them a seat for when they come back. Right?

My path was different. Before I got sober I’d been forcing myself back into the US Catholic Church, in hopes that getting good would help me get well. In addition to alcoholism, I suffered from other compulsive behaviors, and what I understood at the time to be depression, insomnia, and social anxiety. And going to church did nothing for any of it, although to give credit where it’s due, I met some fellow churchgoers who changed my life distinctly for the better. But I was so mired in indistinct theism that I was ready to go into a convent, which I see now as more a need to escape the fulltime office work environment that was never good for me.

A Very Narrow Sober Life

I came into AA, got sober, and joined a small and avidly theist sect of AA. While this group did not push structured step work as a way to stay sober, they insisted that communication with a sponsor would give you “all the answers you need.” So you called a sponsor the same way you … went to confession. For a lifelong Catholic this model seemed familiar and comforting. And I was very damaged by all the substances I’d taken over the years, prescriptions for a misdiagnosis included. Having someone tell me what to do appealed to me because I was terrified that without that guidance and support I would go back to booze and pills. And per the group (and most other groups in traditional AA), God backed all of it, the same way “In God We Trust” is (or used to be) stamped on US coins.

Along with the “AA has all the answers you need” ethos came a deep group prejudice against pursuing other answers and solutions for personal problems, especially psychiatric help OR simply talk therapy. While I do believe that many active alcoholics are misdiagnosed by doctors and receive much more medication than they probably need, I also believe that some of the disorders named in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psych professionals are VERY real and potentially deadly if left untreated. Some members of that “sect” wisely (and quietly) advised their sponsees to seek outside help for issues like childhood sexual abuse. But most people didn’t talk openly about the exceptions to the rule.

Over several years, I stayed sober and plodded along in a safe gray world free of pesky individual choice, as directed by my sponsor. I went to work faithfully and did good work, but I stayed stuck in a low-paying job because “nothing else was coming along.” What this meant was that I was not to seek other opportunities: God would provide them if they were “meant to be.” Meanwhile, my social life was even more isolated than it had been before I got sober. What was that about? If I simply went to Vermont for the weekend, I’d get a nice wet blanket thrown over my plans by my sponsor: “You’re running away.” And every time I brought up doing something about my increasing bodyweight (due to compulsive food behaviors), I’d get a “maybe you can go to Weight Watchers in the spring.” Readers: spring never came.

Stepping Into A Different River

Often I questioned whether I should continue to talk to that sponsor, but I left it up to that magical mystical God to sunder the relationship if He (choice of pronoun entirely intentional) should choose. Meanwhile: I gained weight and continued in a world dominated by work, meetings, and TV watching.

The linchpin for my departure came, unsurprisingly, with a decision over bodily autonomy. My weight, driven by compulsive eating, had reached a level I hadn’t seen in years. I quietly decided to undertake a different way of eating AND to go to Overeaters Anonymous for support. I didn’t tell my sponsor. I dropped about 10 pounds in a healthy way over a couple of months. Later, when my sponsor triumphantly said (probably about herself!) “You’re worried about your weight, aren’t you?” I told her calmly, “Actually, no, I’m not.” I had a few more cycles of OA attendance and compulsive food behaviors to go before I would stay put in that fellowship, but the important thing was that I had started to break the psychological hold she and the sect had on me.

In October of that year, things came to a head. I’d been promoted at work and had promptly been hazed by several of my colleagues, including my then-boss. My sponsor had no answers for that situation other than “you told your manager, now let her take care of it.” One possible flaw in that logic: my manager was part of the problem. My mother was declining from dementia in another state and I had no in-person support like a dementia caregivers support group to help me with that: hey, why would I need that if I had a sponsor who had all the answers from God? Meanwhile, my sponsor was becoming increasingly rude and abrupt in our conversations. One night, after I got a busy signal yet again, I said to myself: “Take the hint.” And I did. I stopped talking to her and found another sponsor who wasn’t in the sect. And I started taking decisions for myself, the first of which was to find a better job.

A Question That Needed An Answer

In the ensuing years, I took all the Big Grownup decisions that were overdue because I never got a green light from my sect sponsor: I changed jobs (twice!), I bought and sold residences (and made money on the last one!), I went to OA or left as I saw fit. And I increased my attendance at the atheist and agnostic AA groups I’d found even before I left off talking to the sect sponsor: there was something about it that seemed to fit.

And I wondered, deeply, why my social life had remained so stagnant and isolated. Why did I have so much trouble with being bullied at work, and why did I develop destructive obsessions with people? Going to work every weekday for eight hours and grappling with these issues on a daily basis triggered suicidal ideation, and nothing helped: AA attendance, talking to a sponsor, psychotherapy. But I had become ingrained in the “all your problems stem from being an alcoholic” mentality that went hand in hand with the theism. So for years, even after I left off talking to the sect sponsor, I didn’t pursue an assessment for what I suspected the root cause of the social difficulties to be: autism.

I finally sought assessment for autism in April 2019. Surprise, surprise: the clinician agreed with my assessment and gave me strong evidence for her conclusion. (This is a typical outcome for people who quietly suspect they’re on the spectrum.) And other autists have confirmed what she said even if I wasn’t asking for confirmation. Social isolation, bullying, and obsessions with people are often a large part of the lives of cis women autists.

Had I waited for an interventionist deity to end my relationship with the sect sponsor, I might still be talking to her… and I would still be huddling in a corner of a meeting room, getting smaller and smaller. Instead, I ended the relationship myself, and I’m far stronger for the experience.

What’s Happening Today

Today, I’m retired from those jobs that set the stage for so much of my pain. and as a result I am no longer suicidal on a frequent basis. (I can assure you that the sect sponsor would have been horrified at that decision, but I have a good eye for my own finances.)

I identify as an autist and an agnostic who leans atheist, and I am sober in AA and abstinent in OA. I sponsor several people in OA and I lead a couple of secular OA / eating disorder recovery meetings. I have been travelling in Latin America since summer 2019 and I may make a Latin American country my retirement home. I’m taking up music practice again, which has always been fraught because of my many physical and emotional limitations from autism, but I feel better overall when I do it than when I don’t. I have sought answers for myself from within AA and from the world at large: today I know I’m the captain of my ship. And I’m especially grateful to the secular recovery movement and to my dear friend and sponsor, D, for giving me a new community and support.

Amy B is a cis woman in her fifties. Professionally she does best as a writer, editor, and translator, and she has deep and abiding interests in music (voice and banjo), performing arts, literature, and nature.

She is currently living in Latin America and her Spanish gets better every day. She has one biological son who she is proud to say is pursuing the career in the performing arts she always dreamed of herself… but she’s trying not to act like Mama Rose from “Gypsy”!

She got sober on the North Shore of Massachusetts and always feels most at home in an AA meeting when she hears someone with a Boston-area accent describe the disease.

 

The post Peeling the Onion: Shedding Theism In Sobriety first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Alcohol: A Hidden Epidemic?

By Bill White
Posted on his website, Selected Papers of William L. White, on October 1, 2020

In my early writings on the history of addiction in the United States, I document the discrepancy between public perception of substance-related problems and data documenting the actual patterns of such problems. For example, the sensationalist 1960s media coverage in the United States of marijuana and LSD use obscured fundamental shifts in alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drug use in the U.S.  Lowered age of onset of alcohol use, increased alcohol and tobacco consumption among women, and the increased prevalence of prescription drug dependence remained invisible amidst lurid tales of illicit counterculture drug use.

Two recent studies raise similar concerns that panic over recent drug surges (e.g., methamphetamines and opioids) may be similarly obscuring intensified surges in alcohol consumption and its related consequences.

In the first study, White and colleagues (2020) use data from the National Center for Health Statistics to analyze trends in alcohol-related mortality in the U.S. between 1999 and 2017. Their major findings include the following:

  • The number of alcohol-related deaths per year among people aged 16+ doubled from 35,914 to 72,558 (a rate increase of 50.9%).

  • Nearly 1 million alcohol-related deaths (944,880) were recorded between 1999 and 2017.

  • In 2017, 2.6% of roughly 2.8 million deaths in the United States involved alcohol. Nearly half of alcohol-related deaths resulted from liver disease (30.7%; 22,245) or overdoses on alcohol alone or with other drugs (17.9%; 12,954).

  • Rates of alcohol-related deaths were highest among males, people in age-groups spanning 45 to 74 years, and among non-Hispanic (NH) American Indians or Alaska Natives.

  • Rates increased for all age-groups except 16 to 20 and 75+ and for all racial and ethnic groups except for initial decreases among Hispanic males and NH Blacks followed by increases.

  • The largest annual increase occurred among NH White females.

  • Rates of acute alcohol-related deaths increased more for people aged 55 to 64, but rates of chronic alcohol-related deaths, which accounted for the majority of alcohol-related deaths, increased more for younger adults aged 25 to 34. (White et al., 2020)

Current low-risk drinking guidelines in the U.S. for healthy adults age 65 and under recommend no more than 4 drinks a day and no more than 14 drinks per week for men and no more than 3 drinks a day and no more than 7 drinks per week for women. (Women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should not drink any alcohol.) Sherk and colleagues (2020) evaluated the extent to which similar recommended low risk alcohol consumption guidelines in Canada served to reduce alcohol-related harms. The major conclusions and recommendation of this study were as follows:

  • Despite the comparatively high level of these guidelines, drinkers adhering to these limits were still exposed to increased hospital stays for both genders and increased mortality in men.

  • …even light or moderate alcohol consumption increased the risk for a number of health consequences, e.g., cancer, heart disease, digestive conditions, and traumatic injury.

  • More than one quarter (27%) of alcohol-caused hospital stays were experienced by people who drink within the weekly guidelines.

  • A gender neutral recommendation may be similar to that used in the Netherlands: don’t drink or, if you do, drink no more than one drink per day (International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, 2019).

Recent studies confirm the increase in alcohol-related deaths in the United States and that even drinking alcohol within recommended guidelines may result in untoward health consequences. These findings underscore the continued need for public alcohol-focused public/professional education, universal alcohol problems screening, alcohol-focused treatment resources, and sustained recovery support resources for individuals and families impacted by alcohol use disorders.

Alcohol and tobacco use is historically endemic in the United States. Such ritualized use is so infused into the cultural water in which we all swim that we fail to see it. That blindness has exacted, and continues to exact, an enormous toll on individuals, families, and communities.

References

White, A. M., Castle, I-J. P., Hingson, R. W., & Powell, P. A. (2020). Using death certificates to explore changes in alcohol-related mortality in the United States, 1999-2017. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 44 (1), 178-187.

Sherk, A., Thomas, G., Churchill, S., & Stockwell, T. (2020). Does drinking within low-risk guidelines prevent harm? Implications for high-income countries using the international model of alcohol harms policies. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 81, 352-361.

William White has a Master’s degree in Addiction Studies and has worked in outreach, clinical research and teaching roles in the addictions field since 1969. Bill has authored or co-authored more than 400 articles and 21 books, including Slaying the Dragon – The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America and, more recently, Recovery Rising.

To date, eleven articles authored or co-authored by Bill have been posted on AA Agnostica. Here are the previous ones, in order:

Recovery is Contagious (July 07, 2019)
Recovery Spirituality (January 20, 2019)
Addiction, Recovery, and Personal Character (June 14, 2018)
The Secular Wing of AA (March 04, 2018)
The Karma of Recovery (January 04, 2018)
Recovery Pathways are not always a Pathway (December 21, 2017)
AA Agnostica and the Varieties of AA Experience (August 03, 2014)
The Resilience of Alcoholics Anonymous (June 01, 2014)
Agnostic Groups in AA – An Interview (March 17, 2013)
A Message of Tolerance and Celebration (December 30, 2012)

The post Alcohol: A Hidden Epidemic? first appeared on AA Agnostica.

My Name is Marnin

Today we are sharing Chapter 21 of the book, Do Tell! Why?
Simply because the author, Marnin, is celebrating 50 years of sobriety!
He quit drinking on October 27, 1970.
Congrats, Marnin!

By Marnin M.

My name is Marnin and I’m an alcoholic and an agnostic/atheist. Marnin is Hebrew for he who brings joy, a singer of songs. In  my youth I was embarrassed to have such an unusual name.

I have been sober for 42 years, since my first AA meeting on October 27, 1970, in Brooklyn.

AA saved my life, and I am forever grateful for the opportunities it has provided me. Because of the AA program and therapy, I try to live as full and as emotionally satisfying a life as possible.

What It Was Like

I was born in 1935, the only child of parents with poor nurturing skills. I was nervous as a child and my parents sent me to a Jewish private school. I felt like a square peg forced into a round hole then, and for the rest of my life, before AA.

My father rarely ever spoke with me. When my mother divorced him, my father blamed me for the breakup. I felt abandoned by my parents. To this day I often feel like an orphan and find it hard to remember that I had parents.

I muddled through high school and college socially inept and feeling lost.

The first time I felt “normal,” like one of the boys, was in the Army. I liked that the army, my “Uncle Sam,” was taking care of me. For the first time someone cooked for me on a regular basis.

I found the perfect place to work when you have little self confidence and self esteem – the garment industry in downtown New York.

At the age of 28, I got my own apartment and sort of accidentally threw explosive floor shavings into the incinerator. As a result of the explosion, I was rushed to King County Hospital.

It was at this time that my doctor, who was familiar with my family history, got me into therapy. I was a very angry young man. The only emotions I was in touch with with were anger and fear. I went into therapy a college graduate, a virgin, non smoker, non drinker, and fearful that I might be gay.

And it was in therapy that I began to drink. I discovered how angry I was with both my parents, particularly my mother. In order to quell the anger I would go from the doctor’s office to a bar (Yaeger House) and meditate about what I was learning in therapy over a stiff martini.

I now had my magic solution to life’s problems – therapy and alcohol. Within a year I was in a relationship and, with enough alcohol in me, lost my fear of intimacy. No longer a virgin at age 28 I had to make up for lost time. In my mind I set out to be a Jewish James Bond of the garment industry.

After being in therapy for seven years, a serious relationship with a girl I wanted to marry ended suddenly. I was crushed and crashed. I experienced the feelings of abandonment from this relationship that were part of my life as a result of my parents.

I became a full blooded alcoholic, drinking 24 hours a day. I drank the way they describe in country music songs. I showed up for business trips without my air line tickets and all the other things that you hear in AA. Blackouts were frequent. I shudder at the thought of going through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel often in blackouts and getting up at 2 a.m. to look for my car and be sure that their was no blood or damage from an accident I did not remember.

In 1969 I met a Jewish young lady and married her in ten days. My orthodox Jewish family had considered me dead because I had been living with a Christian girl. So I was married to a Jewish woman by a Rabbi and I was now kosher in their terms. The marriage was a disaster. I was in a blackout at our wedding because I knew I had made a terrible error.

I had my first detox soon after at Freeport Hospital in Long Island. They used the 12-Step program of AA at Freeport. I heard the Steps for the first time and decided they were Christian in nature and not for me. Needless to say I continued drinking. My therapist says that if you can’t kill yourself, you marry someone who will do it for you. My wife literally tried to murder me and I went off to Mexico for a quickie divorce.

What Happened

My end came in October 1970 as a result of a suicide attempt that involved drinking, marijuana and thorozine. The thorozine had been prescribed because I had developed alcoholic neuropathy. I was having trouble walking without alcohol in my blood stream.

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.

I had a terrible drunk/trip which ended with a vivid hallucination and “spiritual experience.” I hallucinated Jesus on the cross bleeding all over me. Turns out it was my own blood. I heard Jewish music coming out of the walls. I lay there and realized that I was crucifying myself and that I did not want to die!

I called AA in New York. I told them AA wouldn’t work for me because “I’m Jewish and a college graduate.” The volunteer at Intergroup responded with “Maybe we can help you anyway.”

I joined AA on October 27, 1970. AA was the only lifeboat around so I climbed aboard.

My first home group was the Brooklyn Heights group. Coming into the rooms of AA, I perceived it to be a religious program and that is still how I view it. I looked for answers in the 12 Step program and, not believing that God intervenes in human affairs, I put the whole God thing aside and followed my own secular version of the Steps.

AA was my “religion.” When I was two or three month’s sober an Episcopalian Minister in Brooklyn Heights defined religion as the three B’s and it saved my life: Believing that AA will help me stay sober; Behaving as a responsible person, going to any length to stay sober and Belonging to a fellowship that rooted for me to stay sober.

In the 1970s, it was thought that Jews couldn’t be alcoholics. The same Minister pulled out a Jewish copy of a Biblical proverb and I knew then I could be Jewish and have a disease from the Old Testament:

Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?

Those who linger long over wine.
Those who go to taste mixed wine.

Do not look on the wine when it is red,
When it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly;
At the last it bites like a serpent
And stings like an adder.

Your eyes will see strange things
And your mind will utter perverse things.

And you will be like one who lies down
In the midst of the sea, on top of a mast.
They struck me, you will say, and I was not hurt.
They beat me, you will say, but I did not feel it.

When will I awake?
So I can seek yet another drink.

AA was my home base for sobriety. Most of my life I’ve fought the feeling that I was not good enough. This feeling sometimes overwhelmed me and it is what precipitated my final drunk. I found in AA what I had been looking for in the bottle: I was welcomed by total strangers and experienced from them the warm feelings and concern that most children receive from loving parents. Nurturing: this was what I had been looking for in the bottle. I found it in AA.

The “B” of Belonging means to me being active in AA, sharing, attending and chairing meetings. Sometimes even going to a meeting when I don’t want to.

Because of how I work the program I have not always been the most popular person in AA, and some have told me that I am not doing it the “AA way.”

It’s not surprising to me then that when members first choose to come out of the closet about their real beliefs about GOD they whisper it to me like they are guilty of a great sin. I share this message today partly in the hope that other nonbelievers will find strength in knowing that they are not alone and can still, as I did, find sobriety in AA.

I went to any length to stay sober and immersed myself in AA. I was assured my life without alcohol would change dramatically and it did!

What It’s Like Today

It was only after joining AA that I started using my real name, Marnin. Having escaped death I felt free to use my real name. I was no longer embarrassed by a unique name. Sober in AA I felt I had earned the right to be me. For my first anniversary instead of a medallion I had an ID bracelet made with my name engraved on it in Hebrew.

Since sex without alcohol was new to me I acted like a tomcat. I had another spiritual awakening this first year and discovered I could no longer act like this and live with myself.

I met my wife Fran at Grossingers Resort singles week in the Catskill Mountains in my first year of sobriety. The previous year we had both been there but I was on a seven day drunk and met no one. We have a daughter Lisa who is still finding her self. Unfortunately she eats like I drank. Since I identify with her addiction I want to “fix” her. I am learning that we are powerless over her illness and all we can do is be there for her and be loving, nurturing, supportive parents.

My years of sobriety are the happiest I have ever had. AA’s 12 steps, as I have understood and worked them, have provided me with a tool box for living that allows me to try to be the best Marnin I am capable of being, one day at a time. When we left New York and moved to Florida in 2003, I had been very active in the Promises Group in Nyack, NY. I booked institution talks for my group and was very active getting members to speak. I still sponsor and correspond with my AA friends back in New York. I’ve also created an AA speakers CD library for the group and for Open Arms, the local half way house.

I am presently an active member of the Sunday morning Tequesta, Florida Beachcombers Group Meeting. I am known at the CD man, always pitching portable sobriety in the form of AA and Al-Anon speaker CDs. Some call this my “ministry.” I call it part of my twelfth Step.

During my years of sobriety I’ve tried to be open and honest and to practice the 12 Steps in all my affairs. Many have told me that I talk about things that should not be talked about. I say “malarkey.” If it is part of my story, I talk about it!

I have answered phones at Stuart Intergroup Office for almost ten years, since I first arrived in Florida. They know here that I am an agnostic and don’t care. I guess they must think I am doing something right.

From my first day of sobriety, Alcoholics Anonymous has been my loving, accepting family.

Thank you. My name is Marnin.

Thirty-five years ago an aspiring writer in group therapy with Marnin wrote this wonderful poem about him:

Like a sailor ashore after a long and stormy voyage,
Marnin walks with exaggerated care,
expecting the earth to roll and toss him off balance.
He scans the sky looking for thunderclouds to brighten his day,
and shivers in the sun.

Prepared for tempests, he stows his joy and battens down his life,
so he won’t be washed away.
But the sea change has rooted, the gales passed.

It is the calms Marnin must weather, to avoid drifting
into whirlpools of anticipation.
Fear-fogged, snug in his own cool shadow,
only the heat of his passions can melt the mists in which he hides.

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.

 

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