Need some help...

gymbob

Haven't posted here in a while but I'm looking for some support. Anybody out there have a good way of staying sober without going to AA meetings? I'm an atheist and can't stand the whole AA pitch of "throw your burden on God (as you understand it)" crap. thanks, Gym Bob

transhuman68

LOL, you are on the wrong forum. This is a good place to start:

http://soberrecovery.com/forums/

Check out the Secular Recovery section.

love2Bworldly

I know how you feel. I tried to join Overeaters Annonymous to overcome my sugar addiction, and my "sponsor" was pretty much shoving down my throat all the stuff about praying & leaving it in God's hands, that I finally quit going. That was after I told her, that I didn't believe in traditional Christianity, anyway, she was a nice lady but just way too into the God stuff for me.

Not sure what to suggest for you though, because I know a lot of people who have been helped by AA to stop drinking. I'm sure there are non Christians & atheists who belong to AA, they probably are just forced to stomach all the God stuff.

Do they have a website you can post your question there?

steve2

gymbob I'm not the best person to ask being a lifelong tee-totaller. However, it amuses me that AA stakes a claim in the divine to help its members stay sober when, for untold numbers of problem-drinkers, it has been the divine messages of condemnation hat made them drink in the first place! I'd respectfully suggest professional help free from any kind of religious quackery.

gymbob

Well specifically, I was looking for people who have lost family to JW's liike me, and have a hard time dealing with it, and have turned to drinking. I haven't found, and am looking for a good support organization out there of people who are athiest, and understand JW mind-control...

BackseatDevil

AA meetings are about the worst things in the world for a person who has freed themselves from a cult.

Also, it's important to understand what kind of alcoholic you are. Not everyone is the same kind of drinker, so methods of recovery vary from changing focus in life (via working out/new hobby/online courses/etc.), some need to feel like it's a disease and they are powerless to control it (religion/AA/NA/etc.), and some people are just habitual social messes that simply need to change their friends, activities, weekends, etc.

But whatever kind of alcoholic, BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF. White collar office workers who drink a bottle of wine a night "because it's healthy" are exactly the same as the redneck who comes home from work and immediately opens a cold Coors. So find out who you are, what you are, and what triggers you the most. There are many MANY websites about keeping sober without the need of religious dogma or instilling a sense of "powerlessness" about you. (The above link isn't bad and you can google regular support groups in your area).

And if you relapse, don't punish yourself for all eternity for being HUMAN and f*cking up. Instead, use it to learn what went wrong, when and where... and build on that for next time.

The worst thing about AA is that it reduces everything you are in life... your body, mind, and soul... to "Hi. I'm ______ and I'm an alcoholic." You're not JUST an alcoholic, you are more than that. Go out there and be it. :-)

Django_Unchained

i'm not a doctor and i didn't sleep at a holiday inn express...

however i've faced my own addiction. good ol' hippie lettuce. not everything i say will be applicable to you because...we're all different right?

but hopefully some of the things i say may help you.

before i begin, for all of this, i strongly recommend a god therapist you can talk to. not meds, just a professional you can bounce your thoughts off of. i'll get more into this later. helped me a ton though.

i think, for one, you have to examine the nature of addiction. this, for me, helped.

people become addicted to many different things. of course there is booze and narcotics, but there is also sex addicts, food addicts, video game addicts, gym rats can be, internet addicts, etc. all of these seem to (here is my train of thought) cover a gap or a hole in our soul. ok, soul might not be the perfect word. as a fellow atheist, i could understand the creepy crawly feeling you get from the idea of aa. but soul seems to be the best word for what i'm trying to convey.

basically, for me, weed helped me deal with the emotions and pain and hurt from an ugly existence...thank you cult. sometimes it covered over the pain, sometimes it allowed me to hold the pain and ruminate on it, sometimes it pushed that pain aside and allowed me to giggle the night away.

good ol' hippie lettuce...though i digress :P

for me, understanding that being addicted to something didn't make me a bad person helped tremendously. understanding what i was doing (ie papering over pain and hurt) helped in some big ways. after all...how can you fix a problem if you don't know what the problem actually is? had i dropped the 420...chances are i'd have picked up something else. probably not a narcotic, could have been a video game, and i am quite the bookworm. all i'd have done is shifted my addiction from one thing to another.

so i suggest, based on my experience which may or may not be relevant to you at all, is to find out if/what it is you are papering over and to work on that. if there is something you are hiding and hurting over, then overcoming that will work wonders for you.

that can take a crazy amount of time. let's be real...as i said, my addiction to pot came from a lot of pain and hurt that i was trying to relieve myself of, virtually all of which stemmed from a cult i was raised in and lookie where i'm posting...a support board for the very cult i was raised in lol. clearly i'm not 100% past that problem, but i can for sure say the addiction phase is over and more importantly, i've recently faced my personal demon (aka the woman who gave birth to me) and i can see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as all the bs i've gone through. feels pretty damn good if i may say so.

things i would do...again these are my circumstances and were applicable to my life, i'm hoping it will help you out in some way...

face your demon. whoever/whatever that may be. call it out for what it is. tell it what it is, be honest about it. say/have our peace. we all deserve a little slice of peace.

before, during and after facing your demon...try cutting off your access to alcohol. if you have any in the house, get rid of it. this is certainly easier said than done, self control is hard to acquire and even harder to maintain at times. avoid the alcohol aisle in the store, no "reward drinks" at least until you have yourself under control...i'll get to that next...put yourself on a moratorium. no one else can really do this for you, but once you start getting it out your system...well it helps. at least it did for me.

i'd also say i temd to let things rattle around in my brain. i kinda like to philosophise. perhaps you've noticed ;)

i don't particularly believe that everyone has to go completely cold turkey on an addiction. some...perhaps. i mean, can someone really have, "just a LITTLE bit of heroin?" lol, that i doubt. knowing where my addictions are rooted and knowing how i was affected by pot, i don't feel it has any control over me. given that i was quite taken to smoking and reading/doing homework/creating/programming/ithinkyougetthedriftlol...i no longer have that fear of, "omg what's gonna happen if i'm near it?!??!?!" actually, i never really had that fear. i must confess, i've more or less been like, "dammit these people are pissing me off i wish i had a blunt!" lol. that said, i've been in parks where the future leaders of the world have been smoking like chimneys and it didn't bother me. i do drink occassionally and every blue moon have a cig, though i'm not much a drinker and that wasn't a problem for me, nor were ciggarettes. effects are somewhat similar.

as i said before, a good therapist is a godsend. i've been lucky to have a few, and they let my mind wander and explore while i've bounced all sorts of thoughts off of them. this, more or less, ties into the whole..."papering over your soul" business from earlier. i've been able to begin working on the root causes of my problems. while i'm not 100% finished, and there's a few things i'd like to kick off my bucket list and some skills i desperately want to acquire, these are all things on my personal path to recovery. the therpaist i have, and the ones i've had, were big helps. when i had no one who would listen, and felt like i was all alone in a world where i would never be loved, for xx dollars per hour...hahaha ok but seriously, talking to a therapist helps. they're trained for this and not all of them are simple "yes -men/women" i hate that bs. give it to me straight no chaser doc.

that was rather long winded. sorry for the wall of nonsensical bs. hopefully there's a nugget or two in there that'll help.

-django

BackseatDevil

also (sorry to rattle on so):

sitting around and worrying about the consumption of alcohol is sometimes worse than drinking itself, if you look at it in proportion. If your ratio of sobriety to drinking is 60:40 or higher, you need serious support from people (generally) like a rehab facility. If it's less, you just need new friends. LOL. But seriously, if you are only drinking less than 40% of the time you are awake... and then you sober up only to walk around with an AA chip, go to meetings, and think about not drinking 90% of your day, you really haven't solved anything. Alcohol is now consuming MORE of your time, with none of the fun.

It's like the "anti-smoking" commercials that trigger people to think about smoking when they normally wouldn't or the "purity" rings to remind kids of all the sex they're NOT having. SOMETIMES, drug-specific sobriety courses make it harder to overcome that specific drug. The point is, change your direction, change your life, and sobriety will follow. Put it on the forefront, and that's going to be the only thing you see.

When you change the environment, you change the game.

But that's just me, NOT for everyone.

blondie

I live in a city with a lot of alcoholic atheists. AA has their own groups for them...no god, no serenity or lord's prayer.

http://www.agnosticaanyc.org/worldwide.html

Or check with atheist groups in your area...checking online

Hortensia

Despite their god talk, I think what works at AA is associating with people who have the same experience, because you can all reinforce each other's good behavior. You need to find an atheist group of former alcoholics so you can hang out with like-minded people, get some encouragement from people who share the same experience with you.

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