Our primary purpose is to help agnostics and atheists achieve sobriety. In many ways, AA suggests one has to get religion to get sober. We doubt that. We want to know what steps we agnostics took to get sober.

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HAVE YOU MADE A DECISION NOT TO DRINK TODAY?

ONE DAY AT A TIME!

EASY DOES IT!

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COULD WE AGNOSTICS AND ATHEISTS HELP AA MORE

BY THINKING ABOUT HOW IT WORKS OUTSIDE THE BOX?

There has been so much talk lately of adapting AA's 12 steps to suit atheists and agnostics.  That's a very old tactic that I started using within one week of my sober date, August 25, 1973.  Thousands of paraphrases of the 12 steps have been written, hundreds of them published.

I propose we atheists and agnostics try another approach:  Let's try to articulate the important steps we ourselves took to get sober.  

Let's forget the number 12.  Let's forget Bill W's 12 Steps.  

Let's forget trying to write a set of steps that will fit everyone. 

Let's just try to get about 100 versions of lists of steps we atheists and agnostics took ourselves.  My own list ran to about 25 important things. 

To this end, I have rededicated the blog agnosticAAhouston.  My 25 steps are there.  I invite you to send me your real steps.   Thanks if you'd like to join this effort to discover our own truths.

AAAgnostica.org also has this great article about AA's need to reform by John L from Boston.

http://aaagnostica.org/2015/09/13/my-aa-right-or-wrong/

REQUEST FOR YOUR STEPS TO SOBRIETY

On this blog, we hope to publish a collection of short statements of the things agnostics, atheists and 

other non-religious people did on their way to FIVE YEARS OF SOBRIETY.

We ask for your contribution.  Please limit your list to one page in 12 pt type, single spaced.  Please do not do a rewrite or paraphrase of AA's 12 Steps.  Thousands of those have already been written. 

If you are already well catechized in the AA Steps, please try to free your mind of that prejudiced view of your steps and then please describe the concrete and practical steps you took. Stress those actions that made a concrete difference and helped keep you sober or get you sober.

Did you sober up without AA's steps?
We also want lists of steps toward sobriety that worked from atheists and agnostics who did not use AA at all or who used AA only very little.  Those lists might be quite helpful to others.

Email your PERSONAL STEPS TO SOBRIETY to timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com.  Attach a file in MSWord 97-2003 if you can.  We will publish your steps here as received if they match our suggestions.

Our goal is to produce accurate information which will help others like ourselves to get sober.  Please wait until you have at least four or five years of continuous sobriety under your belt before sending us your steps there.  That equals the amount of sobriety the AA pioneers had before Bill W started on the AA Big Book.  Please give us your initials and date of sobriety.  Thanks for you help.

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Sober Agnostic #1's Personal Steps toward Sobriety

1.      After 7 years progressively more frequent drinking and remorse, I gave in and said to myself:  “I’m gonna die a low class drunk and that’s that.”

2.      I stopped worrying about it and just drank at will, all day long.

3.      I found this too slow and boring, so I left a suicide note and went to jump in the river.

4.      The river in Minneapolis was frozen so I turned back around and said to myself, “Get help.” 

5.      I saw a lady shrink with my partner who told her I was a “fucking alcoholic”.  She would not give me any pills.

6.      I stopped going to bars daily and did other things including some group therapy.

7.      I went to one AA meeting then got drunk on my way to the second.

8.      I read about 300 pages of Alcoholics Anonymous, I’m OK You’re OK, Games Alcoholics Play  I did only the steps that made sense to me at first, putting the rest on the back burner.

9.      I made a decision to stay out of bars and to not drink at all one day at a time for at least a year watching to see if things got better.  I did that.  Things got better.

10.  I went to morning education on alcoholism, afternoon group therapy for drunks, and an evening AA meeting daily for three months.

11.  I did a written life history questionnaire in a professional therapy group for alcoholics. That history included a whole section on my drinking history.

12.  I did about two dozen sessions of professional group therapy in transactional analysis with a therapist who was in recovery from drug addiction.  I did some hours with a Gestalt therapist.
12a. I went to a course for sobriety counselors run by the Johnson Institute in Minnesota and learned alcoholism is a primary and progressive disease that can be put in remission by not drinking.

13.  I did about four dozen sessions of professional group therapy with two therapists doing psycho-linguistic positive reinforcement drills in how we talk to ourselves.

14.  I made a decision to tell myself I was listening to my insanity every time I thought something like “Life is not worth living.”

15.  I started picking up every coin I saw in the street, including pennies, telling myself “See there, I have as much luck as others.  What I need is the good sense to bend over and pick up the luck lying in my path.”

16.  I disciplined myself to eat three squares and sleep eight hours daily to support good mental health.

17.  I got a job working 40 hours a week and accepted the fact that I had to work for a living.

18.  I lived with other sober gay men, sharing meals often, for a couple of years.

19.  I continued going to AA meetings several times a week ignoring the religious talk and looking for new ideas that resembled what I learned in various therapies.

20.  I was very careful not to drink or take any drugs. 

21.  I went to lots of speaker meetings where sober people told their stories.

22.  I went to discussion meetings three or more times a week.

23.  I avoided meetings where they talked a lot of religion and/or spirituality.

24.  I went to meetings where they talked a lot about drinking insanity, stinking thinking and about how to stay sober. 

25.  I sponsored others and I helped start seven other meetings. I helped start a gay AA club in Minneapolis.  I became a fan of AA conventions.
TC Sober 8-25-1973 These steps submitted 9-3-2015.

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OTHER THOUGHS ABOUT SOBRIETY

"It is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking...

  than to think your way into a new way of acting." 

(Popular slogan in therapy and AA during the 1970s. A corollary:  While I was drinking everyday, I thought that was normal.  After I stopped drinking for a year, I decided that was excessive drinking.)

Hazelden and the Johnson Institute in Minnesota have taught since the 1970s that alcoholism is a primary, progressive and sometimes terminal illness which can be put into remission by not drinking alcohol. 

They call it an illness because it is a harmful  relationship between alcohol and the alcoholic's physical body which is not like the body of non-alcoholics.  

They say it is a primary illness to emphasize that it is not caused by some other condition like neurosis or spiritual decay. 

Progressive and sometimes terminal need no explanations.

We expect atheists and agnostics have little confidence in AA's claim that alcoholism is a symptom of spiritual sickness.  Hazelden trained people would tell you AA claims alcoholism is a secondary illness, like diabetes caused by obesity.  We think our readers will appreciate the approach which sees alcoholism as a primary illness, caused by drinking alcohol, not by our lack of faith.