Category: From AA Agnostica

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF LISTENING

Life Lessons and Inspiration For All of Life’s Struggles
From the Collective Wisdom of People in Recovery

Review by Thomas B.

My name is Thomas and I am an alcoholic. I have been sober for 48 years and I have learned a lot as I listen to other people in recovery. That’s what Glenn’s book, Twenty Five Years of Listening, is all about.

A truly interesting book.

But first let me tell you a bit about my own recovery… and how “listening” helped.

I’ve been gifted with recovery from addiction to the liquid, legal drug, alcohol — preferably Colt .45 in sixteen ounce cans by the case lot — in the rooms of AA, since I attended my first meeting in New York City on a chilly, rainy Thursday evening in late October of 1972. I didn’t go to that meeting to stop drinking; I went to get my second wife back!

Since that first Thursday night AA meeting, I’ve been “blessed” to attend meetings throughout many of these 49 United States, to include Hawaii, as well as in Ontario, Canada.

For the past year, I’ve lived (again) in Tucson AZ, the home of Wally P., who does Back to Basics workshops throughout North America.

Fellow members of my home group bring their copies of Big Book, most copiously underlined with multi-colored markers to every meeting. As well, a number are enclosed in fancy leather Big Book Blue binders with an insert to hold their latest sobriety coin.

Truth be told, I’m somewhat envious of their simplistic devotion to a book first published on April 10th of 1939, whose biblical first 164 pages haven’t been substantially altered in any way subsequently except to correct obvious typos.

But I am not one of them. I find the Big Book ancient and now rather irrelevant. I read many, many books from folks in secular AA. I wrote my own and it is called Each Breath a Gift. And one of most recent and wonderful books Staying Sober Without God.

Now back to the original topic!

I enjoyed Twenty-Five Years of Listening. Glenn got it right: there is so much to be learned in recovery and what you hear at AA meetings can indeed be helpful and even inspiring.

Following a short poem, “Listen” and a brief introduction. Glenn divides his book into the following six sections.

  • Addiction
  • Funny
  • Acceptance
  • Advice
  • Inspiration
  • Relationships, and
  • Taking Charge of Your Life

In addition to being an accomplished chronicler of what he has heard at meetings, Glenn is also a gifted artist; scattered copiously throughout the written pages are pencil sketches he’s drawn of alcoholics at the New York City meetings he attends, being careful, he notes, to protect their anonymity.

One of several reviewers on the back cover, Robin K., states,

Twenty-Five Years of Listening puts a real face on recovery in contemporary language with sketches of Glenn’s fellow travelers to give a human form to the ideas expressed. What they have to share has universal value to anyone searching to live a happier, peaceful and more fulfilling life.”

To end this book review, I’ll quote two or three of the pithier quotes from each of the six chapters to give you a taste of the wisdom contained in this excellent addition to literature about recovery from addiction.

Addiction

Alcohol gave me wings to fly and then took away the sky.

If twelve steps is too much to handle try two steps.
Step out of your house. Step into a meeting.

Funny

For me having a drink was like having sex with a gorilla.
It’s not over until the gorilla says it’s over.

Some people drink normally. I normally drink.

Acceptance

I wish I could tell you it gets better.
It doesn’t. But YOU get better!

Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.

Accept what is, let go of what was and have faith in what will be.

Advice

You can be narcissistic or compassionate, but not at the same time.

Do what you love and the money will follow. Maybe not enough to pay the rent, so don’t give up your day job.

Inspiration

If I can let go of what I think I should be, then I have a change of becoming what I might be.

I finally have a life I have no wish to take a vacation from.

Relationships

I am so codependent that when my girlfriend holds her breath,
I turn blue.

When you judge someone, you aren’t defining them. You are defining yourself.

Inside every woman sleeps an angel, a princess and a demon. The one you wake up will be the one you get.

Taking Charge of Your Life

You are the world.

The door is you and the key is you.
Only you can give yourself the key and open the door.

Actions prove again and again why words mean nothing.

So, there you have it – some idea of what Twenty-five Years of Listening can offer you.

Click on the cover to see the book on Amazon.

For myself, I found it intriguing, not only for what I read, but also for the wonderful pencil sketches of AA attendees he captured – I kept trying to identify them from the scores of meetings I attended in New York City throughout the thirty-five years I lived in or near Manhattan.

If you want a welcome alternative to the sometimes hackneyed official literature of AA recovery, I strongly recommend this book. It will offer you, as it did for me, numerous examples of the common wisdom that is always available within the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous:

If we take the time to carefully listen…

“Glenn S. is a recovering alcoholic, a ‘Richard Dawkins atheist’ who helped found three humanist AA meetings in New York City, and an artist who for twenty-five years brought a sketchbook to meetings where he took notes and sketched the people around him.”

To listen to a podcast with Glenn and John S, posted on AA Beyond Belief on December 2nd, click here: Episode 199: Twenty-Five Years of Listening.

Thomas has been active in AA general service since he attended his first meeting on the Upper Westside of New York City on October 19, 1972. He was co-chair of the first New York City Young People’s conference in the spring of 1978. He’s been active in Secular AA since he attended the 2014 Santa Monica Conference. He  helped establish secular AA meetings in both Seaside and Portland, Oregon. He’s written many articles for both AA Agnostica and AA Beyond Belief. His memoir, Each Breath A Gift, was published by AA Agnostica. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, and attends three AA meetings a week.

Counting today’s, Thomas has now written a total of 21 articles published on AA Agnostica:

He has also posted a total of nine articles on AA Beyond Belief:

 

The post TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF LISTENING first appeared on AA Agnostica.

The Beginning

Chapter 7:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Brent P.

In returning to AA in 2010, broke and briefly homeless, I had already decided, before someone made the point by asking, “so what are you going to do differently this time?”, that I indeed had to change my attitude to AA.

After 27 years of toying with the program I knew that one more flagrant, arrogant FU from me to AA spelled the end. It’s only in AA that so many stories begin with “The End” and, if fortunate, end with “The Beginning”.

The End

An alcoholic addicted to opiates and crack cocaine, I had fulfilled two of the three prognostications promised to alcoholics if they continued to drink: institutions, jail and/or death. You can figure out the one I’ve eluded so far.

Nevertheless I knew what it meant to be a “shivering denizen” of King Alcohol’s dark realm. I had experienced those last 10 to 15 years of absolute horror. The ominous, apocalyptic sound of the Four Horsemen’s mounts, their hooves pounding relentlessly with grim determination, shot electric fear through every nerve in my body.

What I had come to believe was my last stab at AA began when I came out of an institution that treats alcoholics. A hospital that medically detoxed me then put me into a program that fundamentally told me a lot of what I already knew. My brain was damaged as was my liver. The degree to which either would repair themselves was entirely up to me and my constitution. But the real message was, stop assuming that you’re at the head of the class, shut up and take seriously what others can tell you about alcoholism and addiction, whether doctors or peers in AA.

After seven weeks of balanced meals, exercise, massage, acupuncture, art therapy, doctor’s lectures, group therapy and other things I can’t remember, I was polished, dressed up and pushed out the door. They’d done all they could, including suggesting I start attending AA meetings (again!). ASAP.

There were a few days of sleeping on a friend’s couch before I secured a small bachelor’s apartment.

Now, I wonder, have I painted my self portrait clearly enough that you can picture me in your mind? Low bottom drunk/drug addict with a high opinion of himself. Dirty, rough looking, someone you’d hurry past on the sidewalk?

If that’s what you imagine, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

However it only took three of those 27 years to arrive at that station. The previous twenty four years I was a successful advertising copywriter. I traveled to some of the world’s most exotic locations, with a hefty expense account, to make commercials. Commercials!

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.

Though not rich I was at the upper end of the wage scale. I had a salary that allowed me to buy and sell – one at a time – a 3 story building that was renovated to the nth degree, two houses in a very desirable downtown neighborhoods and, finally, a condo that was one of 17 unique units in what had once been a carpet factory.

I moved there shortly after an embarrassing incident cost me my partnership in a start-up agency. Or almost did. Since our partnership agreement was still to be completed, the other two partners had no basis upon which to sever me from the partnership. Nevertheless they wanted me gone. Some sort of arrangement would have to be crafted. Basically it would involve them paying me to stop showing up there.

I was in a rehab when the negotiating began. I left it to my brother to act for me. He happened to be the CEO and one of three senior partners in a sizeable law firm. That he was also a chartered accountant meant I had formidable representation. My brother and the accountant who was representing my partners, settled on a low six figure payout.

I won again, or so it appeared. Back in charge of my own life I decided I could take six months off; rest, recuperate, then like Lazarus, rise to take the job market by storm. I had to pause to admire my fine work! I was already calculating what a spectacular financial year it was going to be. Double the amount I’d settled for and that’s what my salary would be. Easy Street would be my address once again.

There was a recession and advertising agencies couldn’t afford much more than one senior guy like me and he/she was usually the creative director. While I thought I was perfectly cut out to be a creative director, nobody else appeared to share that confidence. My reputation had changed from one of a young, clever, big picture copywriter, to serious drunk, who looked and smelled the part. If you got me on a run of good days, then you were lucky; a run of bad days and anything could happen. I once passed out in an important meeting, my face dropping, slowly at first then more rapidly, until it was flat on the boardroom table. That ground the meeting to a halt while I was removed.

When I won that payout from my former partners, I didn’t realize that was it for me in the advertising business.

Fast forward a few years, after I’d been robbed by masked, armed crack-heads, been ripped off for $13,000 in a set up dope deal and repeatedly seen the most nightmarish side of humanity, I knew it was time to get out of Dodge. So I sold my condo and moved to an apartment in one of the city’s nicer neighborhoods. With the cash from the condo I could buy drugs and booze by the bundle and not have to leave the apartment for days.

I lived that way for about a year and I knew my brain was not functioning properly, that the tiny strokes that occur in your brain every time you smoke crack, were catching up to me. That every time I smoked crack I could have a sudden, crippling stroke. The alcohol I needed to accompany every crack-isode was so that I didn’t go into a major panic attack and bite my tongue off, was burning through the lining of my stomach. I was mixing vodka with Pepto Bismol and still my stomach burned and stung like I’d swallowed a swarm of bees. Finally, what started out as an occasional thing to help me sleep, opiates were required every day in greater and greater amounts. So when my brother finally caught up with me and said, “you need help”, I wrapped my arms around his waist – I was sitting and he was standing – buried my head just below his chest and let go with great heaving sobs.

So what are you going to do differently this time?

I was just over seven or eight weeks sober and still in a complete fog. Work wasn’t an issue since I didn’t have any nor could I have done any. I went primarily to daytime meetings and usually just sat there. On one of those occasions I thought to myself, “This is what you do all the time. Once you start feeling better you become argumentative, challenging the crap that inevitably drives you nuts. Then when you feel like you’re back to normal, you tell yourself you can’t take anymore of the nonsense and you stop coming”.

That was something I could do differently. The next change was a deal I made with myself; I could say anything I wanted in AA as long as it wasn’t driven by anger, wasn’t meant to be provocative nor could it be hurtful. Sure, it sounded good but could I do it? Turned out, with a little practice, I could. In fact with the nonsense I found amusing ways to show it for what it was.

It took awhile but I joined that group and pitched in all I could. It wasn’t until six months that you could chair a meeting so that kept being held out to me as a carrot. What they didn’t know was that I had severe anxiety accompanied by panic; the very last thing I wanted to do was chair a meeting. Rather than let that drive me out, as it had in the past (without knowing it part of my drinking and using was me self medicating), I decided I needed some outside help.

I finally ended up with two doctors, remarkable men whose compassion was equaled only by their BS detectors. I was prescribed a mild tranquilizer to use only in the most extreme cases (I only ever had a few pills at any time) and I was taught how to relax. Relaxing is a skill that you have to practice before you can really use it. But I practiced and if I still couldn’t halt the anxiety in a critical (to me) circumstance, I had the medication as back up.

I had dealt with two of the things that could make me walk out of a meeting, but there was another that had been a deal breaker so many times in the past – God and all the Judeo Christian constructs that infused many of the meetings. Add to that a Big Book that hadn’t changed in 75 years – I think it still refers to wives as “the little woman” – a book that people read and re-read as if there were treasure buried deep in its pages.

It was then somebody suggested I checkout AA Agnostica. I was suspicious. But I returned several times and finally wrote a kind of harsh rebuttal to one of the articles that appear fresh and new every week. They thanked me for my opinion!

I was invited to contribute some articles to the site. And as happy as I felt I could be in my regular AA group, I was growing more and more connected to this movement that became noticed here by virtue of an Intergroup hearing and ruling that would determine if secular groups in Toronto could be listed. They couldn’t. But that didn’t seem to impede the progress of AA Agnostica. The website flourishes as many are drawn to it and, for the first time, an atmosphere of open mindedness – not the kind that means turning off your critical faculties so you can accept a fairy tale as the reason for your sobriety – but instead the kind that encourages new ideas while caring little or nothing for your religion. AA Agnostica, the website, is a barometer of the movement around the world while bringing hope to people who either had to keep their thoughts to themselves or often live with them bottled up. The optimism the site exudes is palpable and compelling, telling this alcoholic, AA is changing and one day, in the not to distant future, the secular meetings and their members will be leading the charge to an AA that enjoys a symbiotic relationship with Science & Medicine, Mental & Physical Health Facilities and much more.

So I thank AAAA and AA Agnostica for giving me the hope I’m not certain I ever had. And I thank AA for its groundbreaking work and the vital insight it brought to treating that most acute symptom every alcoholic struggles with, loneliness. AA is a real community that AAAA continues to learn from and show gratitude towards.

Despite the fact that I’m still broke and on a disability pension that barely covers my monthly costs, I’m happy. I have inside help and I have outside help. My current doctor is a member of AA herself and actively involved in the science of addiction.

And for the first time in my life I wake up almost every morning now and on the cinema screen in my head I see, in a fantastic font, the words I’ve so desperately wanted to see at the introduction to my story:

The Beginning

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 The Beginning first appeared on AA Agnostica.

The Beginning

Chapter 7:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Brent P.

In returning to AA in 2010, broke and briefly homeless, I had already decided, before someone made the point by asking, “so what are you going to do differently this time?”, that I indeed had to change my attitude to AA.

After 27 years of toying with the program I knew that one more flagrant, arrogant FU from me to AA spelled the end. It’s only in AA that so many stories begin with “The End” and, if fortunate, end with “The Beginning”.

The End

An alcoholic addicted to opiates and crack cocaine, I had fulfilled two of the three prognostications promised to alcoholics if they continued to drink: institutions, jail and/or death. You can figure out the one I’ve eluded so far.

Nevertheless I knew what it meant to be a “shivering denizen” of King Alcohol’s dark realm. I had experienced those last 10 to 15 years of absolute horror. The ominous, apocalyptic sound of the Four Horsemen’s mounts, their hooves pounding relentlessly with grim determination, shot electric fear through every nerve in my body.

What I had come to believe was my last stab at AA began when I came out of an institution that treats alcoholics. A hospital that medically detoxed me then put me into a program that fundamentally told me a lot of what I already knew. My brain was damaged as was my liver. The degree to which either would repair themselves was entirely up to me and my constitution. But the real message was, stop assuming that you’re at the head of the class, shut up and take seriously what others can tell you about alcoholism and addiction, whether doctors or peers in AA.

After seven weeks of balanced meals, exercise, massage, acupuncture, art therapy, doctor’s lectures, group therapy and other things I can’t remember, I was polished, dressed up and pushed out the door. They’d done all they could, including suggesting I start attending AA meetings (again!). ASAP.

There were a few days of sleeping on a friend’s couch before I secured a small bachelor’s apartment.

Now, I wonder, have I painted my self portrait clearly enough that you can picture me in your mind? Low bottom drunk/drug addict with a high opinion of himself. Dirty, rough looking, someone you’d hurry past on the sidewalk?

If that’s what you imagine, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

However it only took three of those 27 years to arrive at that station. The previous twenty four years I was a successful advertising copywriter. I traveled to some of the world’s most exotic locations, with a hefty expense account, to make commercials. Commercials!

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.

Though not rich I was at the upper end of the wage scale. I had a salary that allowed me to buy and sell – one at a time – a 3 story building that was renovated to the nth degree, two houses in a very desirable downtown neighborhoods and, finally, a condo that was one of 17 unique units in what had once been a carpet factory.

I moved there shortly after an embarrassing incident cost me my partnership in a start-up agency. Or almost did. Since our partnership agreement was still to be completed, the other two partners had no basis upon which to sever me from the partnership. Nevertheless they wanted me gone. Some sort of arrangement would have to be crafted. Basically it would involve them paying me to stop showing up there.

I was in a rehab when the negotiating began. I left it to my brother to act for me. He happened to be the CEO and one of three senior partners in a sizeable law firm. That he was also a chartered accountant meant I had formidable representation. My brother and the accountant who was representing my partners, settled on a low six figure payout.

I won again, or so it appeared. Back in charge of my own life I decided I could take six months off; rest, recuperate, then like Lazarus, rise to take the job market by storm. I had to pause to admire my fine work! I was already calculating what a spectacular financial year it was going to be. Double the amount I’d settled for and that’s what my salary would be. Easy Street would be my address once again.

There was a recession and advertising agencies couldn’t afford much more than one senior guy like me and he/she was usually the creative director. While I thought I was perfectly cut out to be a creative director, nobody else appeared to share that confidence. My reputation had changed from one of a young, clever, big picture copywriter, to serious drunk, who looked and smelled the part. If you got me on a run of good days, then you were lucky; a run of bad days and anything could happen. I once passed out in an important meeting, my face dropping, slowly at first then more rapidly, until it was flat on the boardroom table. That ground the meeting to a halt while I was removed.

When I won that payout from my former partners, I didn’t realize that was it for me in the advertising business.

Fast forward a few years, after I’d been robbed by masked, armed crack-heads, been ripped off for $13,000 in a set up dope deal and repeatedly seen the most nightmarish side of humanity, I knew it was time to get out of Dodge. So I sold my condo and moved to an apartment in one of the city’s nicer neighborhoods. With the cash from the condo I could buy drugs and booze by the bundle and not have to leave the apartment for days.

I lived that way for about a year and I knew my brain was not functioning properly, that the tiny strokes that occur in your brain every time you smoke crack, were catching up to me. That every time I smoked crack I could have a sudden, crippling stroke. The alcohol I needed to accompany every crack-isode was so that I didn’t go into a major panic attack and bite my tongue off, was burning through the lining of my stomach. I was mixing vodka with Pepto Bismol and still my stomach burned and stung like I’d swallowed a swarm of bees. Finally, what started out as an occasional thing to help me sleep, opiates were required every day in greater and greater amounts. So when my brother finally caught up with me and said, “you need help”, I wrapped my arms around his waist – I was sitting and he was standing – buried my head just below his chest and let go with great heaving sobs.

So what are you going to do differently this time?

I was just over seven or eight weeks sober and still in a complete fog. Work wasn’t an issue since I didn’t have any nor could I have done any. I went primarily to daytime meetings and usually just sat there. On one of those occasions I thought to myself, “This is what you do all the time. Once you start feeling better you become argumentative, challenging the crap that inevitably drives you nuts. Then when you feel like you’re back to normal, you tell yourself you can’t take anymore of the nonsense and you stop coming”.

That was something I could do differently. The next change was a deal I made with myself; I could say anything I wanted in AA as long as it wasn’t driven by anger, wasn’t meant to be provocative nor could it be hurtful. Sure, it sounded good but could I do it? Turned out, with a little practice, I could. In fact with the nonsense I found amusing ways to show it for what it was.

It took awhile but I joined that group and pitched in all I could. It wasn’t until six months that you could chair a meeting so that kept being held out to me as a carrot. What they didn’t know was that I had severe anxiety accompanied by panic; the very last thing I wanted to do was chair a meeting. Rather than let that drive me out, as it had in the past (without knowing it part of my drinking and using was me self medicating), I decided I needed some outside help.

I finally ended up with two doctors, remarkable men whose compassion was equaled only by their BS detectors. I was prescribed a mild tranquilizer to use only in the most extreme cases (I only ever had a few pills at any time) and I was taught how to relax. Relaxing is a skill that you have to practice before you can really use it. But I practiced and if I still couldn’t halt the anxiety in a critical (to me) circumstance, I had the medication as back up.

I had dealt with two of the things that could make me walk out of a meeting, but there was another that had been a deal breaker so many times in the past – God and all the Judeo Christian constructs that infused many of the meetings. Add to that a Big Book that hadn’t changed in 75 years – I think it still refers to wives as “the little woman” – a book that people read and re-read as if there were treasure buried deep in its pages.

It was then somebody suggested I checkout AA Agnostica. I was suspicious. But I returned several times and finally wrote a kind of harsh rebuttal to one of the articles that appear fresh and new every week. They thanked me for my opinion!

I was invited to contribute some articles to the site. And as happy as I felt I could be in my regular AA group, I was growing more and more connected to this movement that became noticed here by virtue of an Intergroup hearing and ruling that would determine if secular groups in Toronto could be listed. They couldn’t. But that didn’t seem to impede the progress of AA Agnostica. The website flourishes as many are drawn to it and, for the first time, an atmosphere of open mindedness – not the kind that means turning off your critical faculties so you can accept a fairy tale as the reason for your sobriety – but instead the kind that encourages new ideas while caring little or nothing for your religion. AA Agnostica, the website, is a barometer of the movement around the world while bringing hope to people who either had to keep their thoughts to themselves or often live with them bottled up. The optimism the site exudes is palpable and compelling, telling this alcoholic, AA is changing and one day, in the not to distant future, the secular meetings and their members will be leading the charge to an AA that enjoys a symbiotic relationship with Science & Medicine, Mental & Physical Health Facilities and much more.

So I thank AAAA and AA Agnostica for giving me the hope I’m not certain I ever had. And I thank AA for its groundbreaking work and the vital insight it brought to treating that most acute symptom every alcoholic struggles with, loneliness. AA is a real community that AAAA continues to learn from and show gratitude towards.

Despite the fact that I’m still broke and on a disability pension that barely covers my monthly costs, I’m happy. I have inside help and I have outside help. My current doctor is a member of AA herself and actively involved in the science of addiction.

And for the first time in my life I wake up almost every morning now and on the cinema screen in my head I see, in a fantastic font, the words I’ve so desperately wanted to see at the introduction to my story:

The Beginning

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 The Beginning first appeared on AA Agnostica.

The Science of Addiction and Recovery

By Rand T.

Our human response to food and sex both involve survival issues. If you don’t eat you will die. You won’t die if you don’t have sex (you might think you will but you won’t) but getting pleasure from sex ensures we will seek it out and then there will be babies which ensures species survival. Drugs like alcohol, opiates, cannabis and stimulants work in the same brain pathway as those natural survival mechanisms.

The primary reward neurotransmitter is dopamine; food and sex stimulate dopamine release – and drugs also stimulate a high level of this release.

This occurs in our mesolimbic dopamine system which is below the level of thought. Our brain is hard-wired to respond to reward and the mesolimbic system doesn’t know what is okay or not okay. It just “likes”.

Once we like something we seek it out and start to have an anticipatory dopamine response to the thought of doing it again. Then we do it again, and again receive the reward. This is the fun part.

The not so fun part is that as we recreate that chemical reward we start to reduce the availability of dopamine and also serotonin (sense of well-being transmitter). Dopamine, in addition to being a reward transmitter, is also a connection transmitter. As the availability of these two are reduced (from overuse/overstimulation) our brain functions are reduced, particularly in the prefrontal cortex. Consequently, we have a harder time problem solving, decision making, and managing stress. Remember this is occurring in the same pathway as a food reward. When we are hungry we eat, when we are feeling stress or frustration we look for something to fix that and our limbic system will remember the reward we felt from the drug (including  alcohol) and seek it out again.

The problem is that it works to change how we feel and we have just created a new brain pathway that becomes our primary response to stress. The neurobiological rule is the neurons that fire together wire together. Unfortunately, every time we do this we are weakening our natural stress response system (it’s like paying someone else to go to the gym for you) and more and more things feel stressful which creates more and more desire to use to escape from the stress.

At this point, the “addiction” (substance use disorder) is primarily emotional, as the use increases, we will start to develop physical dependency as well. With both of these as soon as the level of the drug starts to go down our stress response system activates and we start seeking more drugs.

In recovery, we essentially reverse the process and start to recreate and exercise our natural stress response system.

Rand T. is in long-term recovery, having been free from alcohol and other drugs since March 26, 1972. That freedom “from” has given him the freedom “to” do a lot of other things.

Recovery has also given him the energy to expand much of his work into helping others affected by substance abuse. He is a Canadian Certified Addiction Counselor and an Internationally Certified Prevention Specialist in drug and alcohol concerns (kids call him the Drug Teacher). He is very grateful that he has been able to do as much work as he has in the field of substance abuse.

Rand recommends three books in particular (their covers can be seen above):

You can also read another article by Rand, posted on AA Agnostica some two years ago, right here: Life in Recovery from Addiction in Canada.

 

The post The Science of Addiction and Recovery first appeared on 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.