Category: source

By bob k

Thank the Lord (in a manner of speaking) for the wonderful liberals among the God-believers in Alcoholics Anonymous as I encountered them years ago. These delightful creatures were more interested in seeing me get sober than in coaxing me into a new relationship with the Almighty. Alcoholics Anonymous provides the narrowest of gates for some of us.  I remain genuinely grateful for the broad-minded folks who helped me to slither through.

The members of AA are a diverse group, of course. There were then and are now, many of a different ilk. The “Get God or die” proclaimers are alive and well and in most instances, they loudly vocalize their pronouncements of what PRECISELY needs to be done to get sober. As they see it, that involves suiting up for the “God could and would if he were sought” team.

The inimitable Joe C. of Toronto and I have more than once discussed AA’s decreasing inclusiveness over the past few decades. That unfortunate development has been closely tied to a resurgence of interest in our society’s now eighty-one year old text, and the spread of “Thumperism.”

Ten years ago, the late conference speaker Sandy Beach, anonymously penned a screed against atheists and agnostics in AA. In his “WHITE PAPER ON THE MATTER OF AA ATHEIST/AGNOSTIC GROUPS AND RELATED CONCERNS,” Mr B. let it be known that heathens could quietly take up membership in AA, but they needed to shut the Hell up about their non-conforming beliefs. That rambling discourse brought to mind the odd position taken up by the U.S. military regarding members of the LGBTQ community. “Please afford us the opportunity for plausible deniability. We’d like to go on pretending that you’re not even here.”

In “The ‘Don’t Tell’ Policy in AA” one of the finest essays ever to appear on this website, Roger C. looks at the similarity to AA in the U.S. military’s “Speak No Evil” stance.

Freethinkers in AA have been anything but silent in the twenty-first century. They are writing books, starting groups, and speaking out. The growth of the secular demographic in recent years has been remarkable. Closet atheists and agnostics have exited their armoires and are breathing the fresh air of free expression. Most recently, Zoom has brought the idea of non-religious AA to folks who otherwise could not have imagined such things.

Sorry, Sandy.

Of course, the fundies have been inspired to push back — hence the polarization.

But let’s return to the liberals. Those generous folks offered me a navigable path to sobriety. Forgive the cliches, but I was invited to replace the rejected God of my understanding with various G-O-D’s that included “Good Orderly Direction,” and “Group of Drunks.” Uncapitalized “higher powers” were offered for my consideration. The closest of my new friends made little effort to convert me.

Regarding my uncontrollable drinking, I was open to accepting the help of those who had overcome problems with alcohol that were similar to my own. I came to see a benefit in confession, restitution, helping others, and blending myself into the AA community. Earlier, I had come to a full acceptance that there is no path to moderate drinking for people like me and that quitting drinking on one’s own is a very tall order. The substitutions for God had not been presented to me as temporary measures, but many of my new friends were surprised that years of AA sobriety resulted in no alteration of my “Big Picture” worldview.

The Bigga Booka

The literature presents a different picture.

For the sake of brevity, I will bypass the 12 + 12 with its “Seven Deadly Sins” etc., to focus exclusively on the Bigga Booka, as my North Bay friend Lena likes to call the divinely-inspired source of all wisdom. The root of the popular “higher power” term is found in AA’s second step: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” The liberals had told me that there were a lot of powers greater than me including alcohol. Employers, police, judges and wives were also mentioned.

It did not escape my notice that none of those “powers” come with capital “P’s.” Did any of these come with power sufficient to restore human beings to sanity? As it turns out, the somewhat liberal-sounding “Power greater” has a very brief shelf life. This temporary power is a mere place-holder – a set of training wheels shortly to be discarded. Those paying close attention were warned of this early in the book: “It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power (capital “P”) greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point.” (BB, p. 12, Bill’s Story)

On page 46, the pretense that “Power greater” and “God” are something different is dropped: “… it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power which is God.”

Presto Change-o

Magicians have some very cool names for their trickery – “prestidigitation,” “misdirection,” “legerdemain,” “hocus pocus,” “sleight of hand.” A distraction is created to disguise what’s really going on. While the left hand is doing something dramatic and eye-catching, the right hand engages in something sneaky. “Power greater” and “own conception of God” are left hand activities. The right hand is the Hand of God. It was there all along. In the literature, these issues are quite transparent. The “non-God” God option is a temporary measure – a single step onto Jacob’s ladder.

The agnostic, or atheist (God forbid), is expected to come around “sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.” Look at “Our Southern Friend” Fitz, New York Number 3. The minister’s son had abandoned the religion of his childhood after finding it incompatible with his taste for hedonistic “sinning.” A mere half-hour after being visited by Bill and Hank, Fitz finds himself on his knees crying and praying, his “militant” atheism seemingly poofed away by the Grace of God.

(I am contemplating a lawsuit against the English department of the University of Toronto as I appear to have developed a very poor understanding of words like “militant.”)

Some of AA’s self-declared “militant atheists” were angry at God. Others such as Fitz were fearful of the divine wrath destined to come as retribution for his “sins of the flesh.” It was wishful thinking that perhaps the punishing God of his Christian upbringing was mythological. The mislabelers have contributed to the poor understanding of the “real” atheist and the educated agnostic in Alcoholics Anonymous circles.

The personal story of Bill’s book-producing business partner, Hank P., was called “The Unbeliever.” He too found himself bawling and praying to what he called a “Universal Power.” Although God was likely pleased by the capital letters, He may have found the mislabeling offensive, as He reversed Hank’s awakening and returned him to drinking less than five months after the Bigga Booka came to print.

Alcoholics Anonymous employs the magician’s chicanery although a word search of the sacred text reveals no “abracadabra’s.” They are implicit, I suppose.

My new AA friends had performed all manner of liberal-sounding misdirection. Most were sincere in their inclusiveness as they sought to change my drinking moreso than my philosophy. Their liberal talk is not backed up by the literature. The book is far more supportive of the fundamentalist’s position. “Get God or die.” “no human power,” etc.

The magician’s left hand holds up the “own conception” idea for the briefest time before we are presented with AA’s conception — the “real” view of what God is. He is omnipotent, benevolent, an Employer, a Father, a Director, a Manager, and a Him. We are suddenly smothered by an avalanche of “He’s” and “Him’s.” The female fundamentalist is forced to bite her lip and say, “It’s all just fine.”

There is a small number of non-believers in AA who think the literature is fine. These strange creatures largely hang their hats on a single line: “When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God.” (p. 47)

They put on blinders to what comes next, not even a paragraph later: “At the start this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth… Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach... we had to begin somewhere.”

In a less kindly view, the clever subterfuge might be viewed as a “bait and switch.” The customer is “baited” by an attractive, advertised product that is unavailable. The customer is “baited” by an attractive, advertised product that is unavailable. Drawn to the store by the dishonest marketing of an unscrupulous retailer, prospective buyers are pressured by salespeople to consider higher priced items. In the world of commerce, consumer protection laws have criminalized the bait and switch. In the world of recovery, the little fraud is seen as helpful.

“But there is One who has all power – that One is God. May you find Him now!” (p. 59) Jeez! Why not just say that in the first place? Well at least we get to choose our own conception of God, right? … Right? … “Great Out Doors maybe?” No?

HEY!!! What happened to “Group of Drunks” and “Good Orderly Direction?”

The somewhat grumpy Bob Smith had been more honest. “God is God, young man,” he had told Clarence Snyder in 1938. Bill Wilson took a different tack of “getting them into the pews.” The savages’ belligerent defiance would quickiy melt away in the presence of God’s miracles, it was presumed.

This article will be offensive to some and it could have been more so; the “bait and switch” analogy could have been given precedence. Wikipedia refers to that as “fraud.” Rigorous honesty only goes so far, I suppose.

Speaking of deceitfulness, the time has come to reveal a little trickery of our own. Bobby Beach is bob k., and bob k. is Bobby Beach.

Some of you freaken suspected that.

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Bob K has been something of an activist in the secular AA community. He has been one of the most prolific contributors to the websites AA Agnostica and AA Beyond Belief. He co-founded Whitby Freethinkers in 2013 and has made some efforts to support those who have started other nonreligious AA groups. In 2015, AA Agnostica published bob’s Key Players in AA History, a book that continues to sell well. Coming soon are a few other books, including “The Secret Diaries of Bill W.”

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Articles by Bob K on AA Agnostica (those by Bobby Beach have a check mark – ):

• THUMPERTOWN THEATRE PRESENTS… Bill and Bob go to the Library (May 24, 2020)
• What If We Built It And Nobody Came? (May 13, 2020)
• The Underground Railroad (April 26, 2020)
• The One and Only Kool-Aid (February 23, 2020)
• Tales of Spiritual Experience (January 19, 2020)
• The Rainbow Group (January 8, 2020)
• WRITING the BIG BOOK: The Creation of AA (November 17, 2019)
• Unintended Consequences (March 31, 2019)
• We Are Diversity (March 20, 2019)
• Freaken Big Book Fundamentalists Hate Freaken Everything (February 24, 2019)
• The Sad Tale of the Founder of Moderation Management (January 6, 2019)
• Bill W, LSD and AA Spirituality (November 18, 2018)
• Lord’s Prayer Threatened – Fundies go Wild (June 28, 2017)
• A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous (June 4, 2017)
• The Kawartha Freethinkers (May 21, 2017)
• The Search for Self-Esteem (March 30, 2017)
• The Watering Down of AA (March 16, 2017)
  
• Remembering Ernie Kurtz (January 19, 2016)
• Carl Gustav Jung (June 28, 2015)
• Anne Smith (April 26, 2015)
• Jim Burwell (March 22, 2015)
• Dr. Bob – Part Two (Akron-Style AA) (January 25, 2015)
• William Duncan Silkworth (October 22, 2014)
• Lois Wilson (October 5, 2014)
• Bill Wilson and Other Women (October 1, 2014)
• Sylvia K. – First Lady of Chicago AA (September 14, 2014)
• William James and AA (August 24, 2014)
• Slaying the Dragon (July 2, 2014)
• Alcoholism – What’s It All About? (May 25, 2014)
• Twelve Steps to Psychological Good Health and Serenity (April 23, 2014)
• Dr. Bob, AA Co-Founder – Part One (March 30, 2014)
• Young Bill Wilson – Part Two (December 1, 2013)
• Young Bill Wilson – Part One (November 24, 2013)
• Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group (November 3, 2013)
• Charles B. Towns (October 6, 2013)
• Clarence Snyder: Almost Co-Founder (September 15, 2013)
• Anonymity in the 21st Century (April 21, 2013)
• Marty Mann and the Early Women of AA (April 14, 2013)
• Edwin Throckmorton Thacher (Ebby) (February 3, 2013)
• Christmas, Christians, Lepers, and Alcoholics (Revisited) (December 23, 2012)
• Twentieth Century Influences on AA (November 18, 2012)
• Short of a Game Changer – Appendix II (October 21, 2012)
• God As We Understood Him (June 17, 2012)
• Heathens, Spies, Websites, Water-boarding & Carrot Cake (April 1, 2012)
• AA in the 1930s: God As We Understood Him (February 8, 2012)
• Does AA Need Religion: Agnostics on CBC Radio (January 29, 2012)
• Our Father Who Art Not in Public Schools (January 15, 2012)
• Christmas, Christians, Lepers and Alcoholics (December 29, 2011)

And here are articles by Bob posted on the AA Beyond Belief website (again with a check mark – – for those by Bobby Beach):

• Sam Shoemaker (September 6, 2020)
• Richmond Walker (July 12, 2020)
• Fundamentalism’s Foibles and Follies (May 31, 2020)
• Billy Sunday (March 8, 2020)
• A Heathen Looks at the Twelve Steps (January 19, 2020)
• Powerlessness and Other Stuff (December 8, 2019)
• AA Incorporated (November 10, 2019)
• Our Perfectly Imperfect AA Founder (October 27, 2019)
• Lordy! Lordy! Lordy!!! (August 11, 2019)
• New Thought and AA (July 7, 2019)
• Dr. Benjamin Rush (June 16, 2019)
• Rowland Hazard (May 26, 2019)
• Florence Rankin (March 17, 2019)
• Ebby Thacher – An Unhappy Life (February 3, 2019)
• Selling AA – Early Publicity (May 6, 2018)
• Not Just the Washingtonians Part II (April 30, 2017)
• Toronto Agnostic AA Groups Win Fight for Inclusion (February 12, 2017)
• Floggings, Strychnine, Leeches, and Worse (November 13, 2016)
• Not Just the Washingtonians (April 17, 2016)
• Henrietta Sieberling (March 2, 2016)
• THE COMMON SENSE OF DRINKING | Richard R. Peabody (1931) (February 2, 2016)
• Willard Richardson and the Rockefeller People (February 3, 2016)
• Remembering Ernie Kurtz (January 19, 2016)
• Positive Affirmations and the Placebo Effect (January 17, 2016)
• The Washingtonian Society (January 6, 2016)
• The Fraud that is AA Fundamentalism (January 3, 2016)
• AA’s Sister Ignatia (December 2, 2015)
• ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS UNIVERSAL EDITION, By Archer Voxx (November 18, 2015)
• The LSD Experiments (October 21, 2015)
• Jerry McCauley – The Water Street Mission (October 14, 2015)
• Henry Parkhurst (October 7, 2015)

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The post Sleight of Hand; Slight on “Real” Inclusivity first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Chapter 2
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

By Doris A.

Like many, childhood was a fertile ground for becoming an alcoholic.

My mother had very serious problems with alcohol, binge drinking though her pregnancies and a good part of my childhood. While there were interesting and wonderful things about both of my parents, and childhood memories that still make me smile, there were serious problems in our home. Whether drunk or sober my mother, in the blink of an eye, became erratic and volatile, even violent at times. My dad was not as mercurial, but he was emotionally stunted; shame was his primary tool for parenting.

My mom got sober when I was 10; it was a gift to all of us, yet it did not bring peace and happiness to the family. Sobriety did not resolve my mother’s mental illness nor did it help her troubled marriage. Her enthusiasm for AA and her gift for “program talk” were often coupled with nutty behavior. It was confusing to say the least. By the time I left home I felt like I had gotten off the Titanic with a life raft full of holes.

The first time I drank I was twelve years old; I drank myself into a blackout. Surprisingly my drinking during high school was not all that dramatic. But once I left home to attend college I was off to races. I drank hard and I drank often. I felt liberated by alcohol; it was a psychic lubricant that provided a social ease I do not come by naturally.

But deep in a recess of my brain I knew I had a problem. My drinking had an edge and sloppiness to it, and my blackouts were frequent. I remember one morning in my third year of college waking up with a very severe hang-over. I had to be at school within an hour, so without missing a beat I poured a couple shots of vodka into my soda which I took on the bus to class. This was my “Houston we have a problem” moment; a thought I quickly tucked away in a mental file labeled “to be dealt with later”.

After graduation I had no idea what to do next. That year my parents had divorced. My father decided to move to another part of the country, with my younger sister in tow. My mom then literally packed everything she owned in her car, drove around the country aimlessly and then decided to live in a town not far from my father. I was accepted into graduate school but instead followed my family. It was a bit surreal.

Within a short time my mother was diagnosed with late stage cancer. I set aside thoughts of grad school or a professional job and instead worked in a tavern, drank with the bar flies and watched my mother die a horribly painful death. My drinking was rough that year, I was lost and confused, and then I felt orphaned.

Six months after my mother died I hit the reboot switch and moved to the coast. I settled in one of the nicest cities in the country and immediately it felt like home. I knew I could do better than working in a bar, and I wanted to slow down my drinking. Not ready to give it up, but I figured I could change the trajectory.

During the next several years I embedded myself in a social scene that was not about alcohol, hoping that through osmosis I would become a non-problem drinker. I found bright, interesting friends who preferred hiking or talking about books and politics over getting loaded. I met the man I would marry and spend 21 years with, and whom I loved dearly. I entered graduate school and started a career.

During this period I used smoke and mirrors to hide my problem. I was the one who went back to the kitchen for “more ice” and then poured a few more ounces of alcohol in my drink. I had half a bottle of wine before going out with people who rarely had more than a drink or two with dinner. I stopped in a bar for a drink on my way home from work or school. Garden variety alcoholic behavior.

My husband had no experience with alcoholics and was naive about all the tell-tale signs. But after we were married a year and bought our own home things changed. Within a matter of months I started drinking heavily, daily, and secretly. This went on for a year until one day I woke up, went to the phone book and called a drug and alcohol hotline. I was referred to a counselor who told me I needed to go into outpatient treatment and I needed to tell my husband. What followed were many years of trying to stay sober, not trying to stay sober, and everything in between. I never once denied being an alcoholic, but for reasons I don’t fully understand I could not totally surrender.

Shortly after the first call for help I started attending AA. A part of me, the part of me that is resilient and intuitive, knew from the beginning that I had no chance of success without the fellowship. But AA was full of land mines. The biggest problem at first was having to sit in a room hearing all the clichés and AA talk that I heard as a kid from my nutty mother. There was almost a PTSD quality to seeing all those “easy does it signs” on the wall and hearing people recite the Serenity Prayer.

Layered on this was the god talk in AA. By the time I entered the program I was an agnostic that wasn’t ready to be an atheist. The concept of spirituality seemed benign enough. But the idea of a god that would take an interest in relieving me of alcoholism while ignoring the unimaginable suffering of others seemed childish, and just plain wrong. I so badly needed other language to help me develop some type of road map, but it was hard to find. Being a non-believer in AA is not easy. However, I actually have more resentment toward treatment professionals who told me that if I didn’t get god and do the 12 steps as prescribed I would die. I am sure there are many reasons sobriety was so elusive, but being an atheist was not one of them.

Over the years I collected sober time, a few years here a few years there. Often it was a string of months. Some of the drinking periods were well hidden until there was some dramatic incident and the game was over for a while. I also added prescription drugs to the mix – painkillers and sedatives.

Although my sense of self became pretty fractured and compartmentalized, I still had the side of me that approximated normal. I was well-regarded professionally, I had many interests, and I had a stable seeming marriage as well as many personal relationships that mattered dearly to me. But my addiction had me by the throat and I acted in ways that still make me cringe to think about. I did crazy things in order to drink, was impaired at work, lied with the skill of a sociopath, acted out in a million other ways, and deeply hurt others.

By the time I hit my late 40s alcohol was taking a toll on all aspects of my life. Approximating normal was no longer easy. I was losing any margin of error. I was severely depressed and anxious and had no vision of being able to stop for good.

Around age 50 I was diagnosed with early stage cancer. Since watching my mother die from cancer in her fifties I had been scared of this for decades, but I was lucky that it was found in the nick of time. I elected to have chemotherapy and was provided with the best medical care imaginable. One would think that this would be the most obvious time to finally get sober. But it wasn’t. I drank a few times during the year of treatment. If chemotherapy hadn’t kicked my ass so hard I am sure I would have drank more.

About a month after being given a clean bill of health, I had one of those “fuck it” moments. Instead of going to work one morning I took a sedative and bought a bottle. I don’t remember much that day but later learned I had driven my car into the edge of a golf course, ran over a sprinkler system and then drove home.

For my husband this was the final straw. He asked me to leave the house or go to a 90 day treatment program. I didn’t know if I could survive another stay in treatment and reached out to family. My brother kindly offered to have me live with him and his wife to get myself sorted out. I packed a few bags and moved back across the country.

The year that followed was profoundly painful. I was demoralized beyond words, I was still a mess from chemotherapy and my heart was deeply broken. I did immerse myself in AA, got a sponsor, found a therapist and tried to cobble together a few friends. I drank a few times too. About a year after moving I went back to visit my husband to sort out our marriage. When I came back I shut myself in my room with large amounts of alcohol and drank for many days.

This was my bottom, but a divine intervention is not what saved me. What did were two people from the fellowship who showed up to help me get the professional care I needed. I had a circle of friends from AA who didn’t flinch. I had a compassionate and skilled therapist who was there with open arms to help. And I had some wee voice in my head that wanted to live.

It took a while for my life not to hurt so much. My husband asked for a divorce and then later remarried. It has taken a very long time to grieve all the losses that have resulted from my drinking. So much time was lost.

But today I can easily say that the gift of having real sobriety is broad and deep, and very tangible. I have gained emotional maturity and am sturdier inside. Life makes sense to me now and most days I feel engaged and content. When I am feeling or acting like a head case I know the things to do to get me back on track. I have better skills at managing my emotions and having honest relationship with others. I am still me, warts and all, but the dark passenger that lives inside of me has gotten very small. Self-destructive urges no longer have the keys to the car.

My alcoholism runs deep, and it is lethal. I am certain that I will always need to be an active member of AA. Having finally tapped into a small but real segment of AA that believes sobriety is possible without god has been a magnificent game changer. I am now more than ever inspired to do service work in the program, so that others like me can find a comfortable seat in the rooms of AA.

I have heard people say that they are grateful for being an alcoholic. I am not one of them. Next time around I would like to be more normal and also to be better at math. But alcohol and drug addiction were in the cards dealt to me. So like every other human being on the planet, all I can do is strive to make the most of my life, to be a half decent person and to love others. I am grateful for having a fellowship – my tribe – that offers me a solution, as we say, one day at a time.

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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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The post A Magnificent Game Changer first appeared on AA Agnostica.