Thanks @Mno. Yea, im doing all right, thanks! 
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Hi Rosa, definately no void. What I do think about a lot is how the hell I found time to drink for all those years.
Its just gone 5pm here and Ive been gardening since 9am when I returned from walking the dog.
I am off work this week, six weeks ago I would have been in the pub on my 4th or 5th pint after finishing work at 14.30.
Now I am sat in the greenhouse which is 80ºF drinking my 2nd fresh orange and diet lemonade of the day listening to the birds.
I still have lots to do gardenwise and have plenty other hobbies that I would like to get going again including photography and drawing which have been forgotten about really.
I do make time to read on here which helps me realise that I cant take not drinking for granted although sometimes im sure I do and that makes me feel guilty at how easy I am finding not putting alcohol into my body.
I am sleeping a load better and wake up ready to start the day.
I am present and conscious in everything I do now.
Not one part of me misses drinking and/or going to the pub.
Last Wednesday at around 3pm there were four police cars and an ambulance at my old ‘local’ a fight had broken out. I just walked on by and let the police do their thing. I would have been involved in that somehow, trying to break it up, maybe getting myself injured.
I think the hardest part about me not drinking was my visits to see my dad on a sunday. We used to sit in the shed or garden depending on the weather and have four or five cans between 11.30 and 13.30. Then I would go out until I was legless. The first two weeks I made some excuse up by the third week I was ready to tell him that I was off the drink for the forseeable future and last week told him that was me done for good.
I am quite happy with tea, coffee, lemonade or water. We still enjoy our Sundays the only thing thats changed is I dont drink alcohol and Im home early .
I agree with you in that feeling of thriving rather than existing
Im already planning tomorrow in my head at the same time as being ‘in the present’
Thanks for your insight.
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That all sounds wonderful. You’re in a good spot, and you’ve earned it. I think back to when I was first starting my “quits” as they say, a couple years ago or so, that’s when I grieved alcohol and had some issues with a partner who still drinks like a normie (most of the time). When I got over that hump I haven’t had that issue. Like you I’ve thrived in doing my hobbies like gardening, keeping my indoor plants happy, time with my dog, knitting, cooking etc. The times I drank in between them were stupid choices or giving in to mood influences, looking for numbing relief. I’m grateful to know that drinking keeps me from enjoying my life and my passions and another reason not to. I’m grateful to be on this path of self improvement and authentic living.
Lovely greenhouse space! I’m envious. 80F, how lovely, and your best bud by your side. I’m planning my garden now, which I’m very excited about since it’s a fresh start in our newish home. It will be a lot of work up front but I can’t wait to get it established.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m grateful to learn more about how you have gotten to where you are and what keeps you there. 
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The world without humans is neither good nor bad. These are categories that we as humans create, fill with meaning and apply.
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Yes. On a cosmic scale all this means nothing. But I’m human. Living in human society. On planet Earth. Just like you and the rest of us.
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I did not mean that good and bad means nothing. I meant that the world can only be good WITH us in it. Without us in it, this category looses meaning. We are the only ones who CAN make a difference, can make the world a better place, can choose good before evil, can appreciate all the good around us. Neither the universe, nor any (higher) power can do that. It is all in our hands.
It is the same with sobriety and recovery. Neither the universe nor any power can decide to pick up the first drink or to let it be. It is all in our hands. Literally.
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I know this doesn’t technically belong here. But this is the only context I’ll say “Hallelujah” since I am not using it in a religious way.
I can take screenshots AND see my sober counters now! Hallelujah! I am feeling this as a huge win. Life has been so insanely difficult recently but I’ll take the wins where I can find them. 
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Eureka would have been good also @Scorpn but hallelujah is fine 
I love your 925 days, well done 
!
Im on day 66 sober and day 19730ish without god.
Its a great feeling knowing I am in control of my sobriety. Not anyone else just me, this makes me a happy non drinker. Its that simple.
Hope your all having a good one today.
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Ooh yes! I like this word! I think I’ll start using it 
thanks for the idea! 
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I clapped for you just now!
@Scorpn whoop whoop 
is one of my go-to exclamations of celebration. Congrats on your days! I’m so proud of all your hard work.
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Good evening everyone.
Its been a scorcher here today, great for working in.
Day 74.
All good here. Hope your all well.
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You have to subscribe to read it 
; is it too long to put a screenshot up of the article? 
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I copypaste it her for you to read. It’s interesting stuff. Still boggles my mind for a Dutchy and a non-believer like me, how dominant 12-step programs are in the USA, both as self-help and official treatment programs covered by health insurance.
It's a bit long so I've hidden it. Click the triangle to read
People Have a Right to Nonreligious Rehab
March 11, 2023
Maia Szalavitz
By Maia Szalavitz
Ms. Szalavitz is a contributing Opinion writer who covers addiction and public policy.
In December, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York unexpectedly vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have required judges to inform drug court participants of their right to choose nonreligious rehabilitation.
The governor didn’t dispute that New Yorkers are entitled to secular care when ordered to treatment. Rather, she said she nixed the bill because disclosure requirements could become a burden for judges. But the omnipresence of religious addiction programs — and the rarity of therapies that don’t preach reliance on God — is a burden for people with addiction.
Today, around two-thirds of American addiction treatment programs for alcohol and other drug disorders, including over 90 percent of residential treatment centers surveyed, use the 12 steps originated by Alcoholics Anonymous, often telling patients that this is the only way to recover. These 12 steps — common to other “anonymous” groups, like Narcotics Anonymous — are based on Christian principles. A.A.’s founders were members of an early-20th-century revival movement known as the Oxford Group, and they adopted the steps from its doctrine.
As part of voluntary self-help, the 12 steps can be powerful and life-changing. But they can also do harm when treatment centers or judges impose them without providing other options.
Delving into the content of the steps is required to understand how religious they are. The first three include admitting “powerlessness” over substance use and turning “our will and our lives” over to the care of a higher power to “restore us to sanity.” While some members argue that this power can be anything other than oneself — even a doorknob — it’s hard to see this as anything other than a stand-in for a loving God.
The rest of the steps include taking “moral inventory,” uncovering “defects of character” that are thought to underlie addiction and praying for God to “remove” them. Many meetings close with the Lord’s Prayer. Such clearly religious practices would not be accepted as medical or psychological treatment for any other condition.
Treatment programs that center their approach on the steps argue that they are spiritual, not religious. They point out that because some atheists and non-Christians credit A.A. for their recovery, its Christian ideology is irrelevant.
However, dozens of courts have ruled on this issue, and determined that 12-step programs are indeed religious, making it unconstitutional to require participation. For example, a Buddhist pilot recently won a $305,000 judgment against United Airlines; he had been unable to obtain the medical certificate permitting him to fly again after demanding an alternative addiction treatment.
To make real progress in fighting overdose and addiction, we need to separate medical care and religion in treatment, as we do for every other health disorder. Voluntary 12-step groups can be beneficial, but they are not and never should have been seen as therapy for addiction. Advances in treatment — like the use of medication for addiction — should not be delayed because religious ideas from self-help groups rarely change in response to medical progress.
Alison Gill, vice president for legal and policy issues at American Atheists, which helped draft the legislation Governor Hochul vetoed, said her organization regularly hears from people who have been forced into religious treatment by judges or employers. “The courts have been very clear that that’s unconstitutional,” she said.
There is good historical reason for the strange marriage of faith and medicine in addiction care. By the 1930s, the health system had backed away from treating alcohol and drug problems, leaving few options for those who needed help.
However, after a stockbroker, Bill Wilson, and a proctologist, Bob Smith, known as Dr. Bob, started A.A. in 1935, stories of its success restored hope for recovery. Physicians began to develop formal treatment programs centered on it. This became known as the Minnesota Model because it was developed in that state at programs like Hazelden, which is still a leader in the field.
Many people with addiction — including me when I was given no other option in treatment — do find aspects of 12-step programs helpful. But research suggests that the active ingredient in their success is peer support, not the steps themselves, because secular groups seem to be similarly useful.
Many people find success with A.A. However, fewer than half of 12-step participants are abstinent for a year after starting, and it is clear that additional options are needed. Since the 1990s, researchers have known that different approaches for alcohol use disorders — such as cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational enhancement therapy — are just as effective at reducing heavy drinking and its consequences.
Given all of this, since 12-step groups are free and easily available outside of professional treatment, it makes little sense for government or insurers to pay rehabilitation centers that use the 12 steps in therapy groups and daily programming for these services, as they do currently. Instead, government payers and insurers should spend their limited funds on approaches that aren’t free elsewhere and that don’t have constitutional issues.
When it comes to opioid use disorder, religious elements of 12-step programs can be especially harmful. Narcotics Anonymous, the group focused on opioid addiction, is philosophically opposed to the most effective medications — methadone and buprenorphine. The group says in its literature that N.A. is a program of total abstinence — so people using these medications are not considered “clean.” This is an article of faith, not a principle based on data.
In practice, it means that in many groups, N.A. members who take medication are not permitted to speak at meetings and are not allowed to count their days of recovery (since they are “still using,” even by taking only prescribed medication). Some N.A. members shame and disparage medication, pushing cessation. A study of 368 rehabs across the United States found that 21 percent actively advised researchers posing as patients to avoid medication, in line with N.A.’s position.
This stance ignores decades of data: Buprenorphine and methadone are the only treatments that reduce the death rate from opioid use disorder by 50 percent or more — no abstinence treatment has been shown to have this lifesaving effect. Since these medications work only as long as people stay on them, encouraging quitting can put lives at risk, especially with a street market so flooded with fentanyl that a single return to use can be deadly.
So how can addiction medicine be brought into the 21st century? First, as we do with other disorders, we need to separate the medical and psychological guidance given in treatment from the ideology of religious support groups. In cancer care, the doctrine of support groups doesn’t dominate treatment. Oncologists, for example, don’t argue that only people who receive chemotherapy count as being in remission, not those who use radiation. The specialty as a whole recognizes that different people need different regimens.
Religious and spiritual support groups can still be critical to cancer care: Some patients couldn’t persist through harrowing treatments without them. But this doesn’t mean that the advice of fellow sufferers supersedes that of physicians — and the same must become true for addiction treatment.
Of course, a divorce between support and treatment needn’t mean that rehabilitation programs be banned from recommending or discussing 12-step principles or making meetings available. Instead, programs need to replace daily counseling sessions, therapy groups and lectures that teach them as gospel with unqualified support for multiple recovery paths and evidence-based therapies.
Separating 12-step and treatment also doesn’t mean rejecting the critical role that people in recovery play in helping each other. However, when hired as professionals, they need to be trained in multiple approaches.
As the death toll from overdose has risen, Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, commissioner of New York State’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports, has seen more willingness to change among providers. “I think that people really understand the need for providing medication treatment and evidence-based treatment,” she said.
An irony here is that A.A.’s co-founder Bill Wilson once told Vincent Dole, a co-developer of methadone treatment, that he hoped a similar medication could be found for alcoholism. He didn’t see A.A. as the only way to sobriety. In fact, he personally found LSD therapy useful — an idea supported by more recent studies suggesting that psychedelic drugs may aid recovery.
No single approach is ever likely to work for everyone who struggles with this complex condition. But we owe it to those who have substance use disorders to ensure that secular, science-based treatment is the mainstay of their medical care, especially when rehabilitation is court mandated.
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Huzzah! is my go to.
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This site is really cool. A complete set of lectures, well-organized and with comprehensive bibliographies, on atheisms today and how they interact, socially and intellectually, with the world at large.
(There’s also a page with an illuminating critique of John Gray’s 2018 book Seven Types of Atheism. Scroll down; it’s the last item under the heading “Books and Film Lectures”.)
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