Estimated read time: 12 min
One of the most obvious things about living in South Georgia is the inundation of churches. There is literarily a church on every corner. I mean good god, (pun intended) there are big churches in even the smallest towns.
There are churches in strip malls. There are cathedrals in larger towns and cities. There are tiny churches that seem to be kept alive by one or two families. In some places, you can feel like you are passing through the wilderness without a human soul around when suddenly you see a white, cinderblock church on the side of the road. Then, you see nothing else for miles.
At times, it seems like there are more churches than there could possibly be people to fill them. If you are ever in the area and looking for an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meeting, a good place to start is—you guessed it—a church.
Interestingly enough, my very first AA meeting did not take place at a church. We took the treatment-van convoy to a clubhouse and wandered into a large room where all the men were sitting on one side and all the women were on the other. Our group of a little over 20 green, recovery recruits found a back row. At the front and center of the room on a raised platform was a lectern not unlike ones used by pastors in small rural churches.
As I glanced around the room, people came up the podium and read something that could have been biblical passages out of a large note book on the lectern. Then, when one person was reading, all of the sudden everyone—even several of the people I road in with–chanted something, and I realized I was sitting in the middle (well, technically, the back row) of a CULT.
I felt queasy, and began glancing around in earnest, waiting for someone to be ritualistically sacrificed. Okay, I was still on detox meds, and most likely, felt like I was about to be indoctrinated into some religion. I wanted no part of that.
I think it best to understand that I was raised in a Baptist Church and generally, most of the time, when I thought about it, followed the tenets of that faith until my last two years in high school. That’s when I realized that Baptists believe drinking is a sin, hence the grape-juice communions. I personally planned to do a whole lot of that type of sinning and was off to a great start.
Also, I really didn’t feel like bearing the guilt for that and everything else I thought about that also could be declared sinful. So, being a good alcoholic I began shopping for a religion that would make me feel the way I wanted to feel when I wanted to feel it.
I visited a lot of churches, a couple of synagogues and a cathedral or two in my search for a more ME religion. With the microscope of what was wrong with each place laser-focused, it is not surprising I couldn’t find anything that suited me. I didn’t mind most of the people I met. I just couldn’t follow the dogma that came with each group.
It was not so much the message from the white, hippy-haired, bearded -guy, wearing silk gowns in the Middle East where all people are brown that threw me for a loop. It was this need to MAKE other people go to HELL for not following the same belief.
I couldn’t get behind sending people to hell or constantly feeling guilty about things I did that didn’t seem out of step with the one commandment of loving one another that is the sole tenant of the Christian religion.
But, that didn’t stop many church people from explaining that I had sins of the flesh that I had to keep under control and railing about the 10 commandments, which as I read in the Bible, were replaced by the hippy-haired, white-dude’s one: Love one another as I have loved you. (Yes, I have read the Bible, twice, and some parts more than that).
So, I’m a little suspicious of religious people and religion as a general rule, and the 12 commandments that I saw on the wall of this cult clubhouse had the “G” word at least twice. There was that whole chanting thing, a guy giving a curse-word-filled, funny testimony that didn’t seem like a sermon, but a lot of people were nodding in agreement, and they passed an offering basket at the end. It was suspicious. For Christ’s sake, the guys couldn’t even sit with the girls! (I found out later that this was not the case every night.)
I was waiting for a dude to show up wearing a too-long brown woolen hoodie at any moment, or for a basket of rattlesnakes to brought and passed down the aisles to show faith.
All right, I was on detox meds and a little out of it at this meeting so I might have been imagining a lot of things. But the “G” word was a part of it and I was not down with that. I had long ago decided whatever set the universe in motion had more important things to do than worry about than who wins a ball game, keeping me safe each day as long as I ask, or even keeping up with the number of sins I committed so that I could bath in a lake of fire for eternity. And, I had no use in going to a heaven that didn’t have dogs, cats, koalas, and the people who thought a different thing started the universe so they were screwed.
In truth, I did pray to god on occasion. Usually, that occasion was brought on by a police car following me when I had a drink between my legs and six in my stomach. There were the occasional toilet bowl prayers, followed by the promise that if I get out of this I will never, ever do this again.
Never, ever usually showed up by the weekend if not the next day. I prayed for a similar reason that a coaching friend of mine refused to wear ties to basketball games. There was no point in bringing on bad luck.
Yet, a few days after my introduction to AA, I was still a little sketched out about the meeting thing and had been told that I had to find a higher power to guide me in sobriety. I was sitting in a room staring at the “G” word in step 3 and realized I was done for.
There was no way I was buying into giving myself to God. I had tried that several times in several different ways, and I just couldn’t see a male-being of some type, playing with my existence like a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. My chance at sobriety shriveled away before my eyes.
A man, who is totally amazing, and I consider to be one of my best friends and who I still love dearly to this day was sitting nearby.
“I get that I’m powerless over alcohol–sort of, and my life is definitely unmanageable,” I told him, hoping for understanding. “There’s just no way I can buy that I have to find a god as a part of staying sober.” Then, he said the second smartest thing ever. (He also said the smartest thing ever, but that’s a different story).
“All you have to do is don’t drink today and go to meetings,” he said. “Don’t worry about the rest of that for now. God will find you.”
That soft spoken statement was all I needed to keep moving forward. Not too long after, we were asked to draw a picture that symbolized our higher power. My first attempt was a bottle of booze. There was no longer a doubt in my mind that alcohol was bigger, stronger, and more powerful than me.
By the end of my time in treatment, I had been applauded for burning my life to the ground when I picked up a white chip, and I even chanted with the rest of the people at the right moment, but that took a lot more practice than I care to admit. I still was not so sure about a higher power, but I did trust other alcoholics and what they said made sense whether I liked it or not.
The “G” word continued to bother me in early sobriety. Whether it was in Big Book discussions or shares by other alcoholics, I felt my hackles go up each time someone professed that, “God keeps us sober,”(And God kept us drunk by that reasoning.) “Let Go and Let God,” (I kinda like this one, but I’m not going to tell anyone that.) or my least favorite, “God is mentioned 281 times in the Big Book so that should tell you what you need to know” (Alcoholics is mentioned 312 times so I think the “we” idea is a little more powerful, personally).
Every time someone was sharing and I heard the idea that god could be anything of your choosing, I perked up only to feel shut down again when the person mentioned church or pastor in the next breath. One of my close friends would often talk about how hitting your knees in prayer first thing in the morning is the only way to get enough humility to stay sober.
Still, I kept staying sober without hitting my knees. I kept trying to do the next right thing, and for me it was to be honest about not praying, or trusting a particular god. Then, one day, during a discussion of the Third Step, surrounded with professions of all that “He” has done to keep the other individuals sober, an old-timer shared, “My sponsor pointed his finger at me and said, ‘All you need to know about god is that you ain’t it. You’re a bum that only knows how to get drunk and destroy other people’s lives.’”
That was the first time I hadn’t felt isolated in a discussion of the Third Step since treatment. I later found out the old-timer was a preacher, but one who was very comfortable with other members believing in whatever higher power or even none at all.
Another group I attended didn’t close the meeting with the Lord’s Prayer, but closed with a moment of silence, and they all seemed to be sober. I met another friend that leaves meetings just before the Lord’s Prayer is recited because he does not practice that belief, and he is still sober.
My sponsor declared himself a “recovering catholic” and was comfortable with my trust in the program and its members as a whole as a power greater than myself as we worked the steps. I think he was the first person I heard say, “You can get sober if you believe in a god. You can get sober if you don’t believe in a god. The only people who can’t get sober believe THEY are god.”
I don’t know that a god of any sorts has ever found me, but members of AA, like my friend, who has mellowed in his fervor about “hitting your knees,” certainly have been a higher power of sorts when I needed them. And, those preachy, churchy, AA members have never once forced me to go to church or told me I was going to hell. In fact, they and the not so churchy alcoholics often said “We” had been to hell in active addiction and were able to find a way out. They also said that WE need to reach out and help others who are still in hell.
As I have continued attending meetings and staying sober, my initial fight with the concept of needing a high power has gone the way of my fight to drink normally. I just don’t fight. I am excited by people who believe a god is keeping them sober because they are sober! I’m just as excited, honestly, a little more, when I find agnostics and atheists who are walking the wide path of sobriety with the rest of us.
At meetings, I share my understanding of a higher power, and make sure I push back on the need to “Find God,” as the only way to be sober. I don’t hide that I don’t believe a god keeps me sober, but I don’t force anyone to follow my understanding. I want to keep the umbrella of recovery as wide as possible so that no one gets left out.
The only requirement to attend meetings is a DESIRE to stop drinking (You don’t have to have stopped drinking. Hell, you can be drunk at a meeting.). I want to make sure that no one who needs help is turned away by the misconception that this is a god-only program.
So if you’re a monotheist, pantheist, polytheist, atheist or agnostic, and you want to find people who understand what it is like to struggle with addiction, 12-step meetings are a good place to start. You can make life-long friends there no matter your or their systems of belief.
Don’t drink and go to meetings and the program will find you. And above all, don’t fear the “G” word.
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