Sober without god. An atheist / agnostic thread. Please be respectful!

Life in Recovery
#1

As the title says, this thread is dedicated to methods to stay sober that don’t involve religion, god, or a higher power. And aimed at people that find their way through their sobriety without using religion, god or a higher power.
This is NOT a place to question these methods, and also not a place to try and convince people that in fact they should use other methods.

The original poster of the recent atheist’s thread felt that there where too many posts that were not helpful to the thread and their recovery, so they asked for the thread to be closed. To keep the many excellent contributions that where in the thread, and the space for people that don’t use god or religion in their recovery, the moderators created this new thread, omitting the entries from the OP.

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Atheist and Sober without god - please be respectful
#2

:black_heart::black_heart::black_heart: atheist here

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Atheist and Sober without god - please be respectful
#3

Welcome @Compen! :wave:

Try SMART Recovery - all the recovery, none of the religion :innocent:

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#4

Absolutely! I had tried to read/listen to the big book or AA book before and it wasn’t for me. And I am in no way knocking who it does help. I’m sure a lot of people benefit from it and that is great. I do think sobriety is achievable without the higher power whatever that may be.

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#5

I feel this completely. I respect other peoples beliefs and in no way try to force what I believe on them. I have met a lot of people who disregard me being atheist and still push the whole religious thing on and it’s very disrespectful and distasteful. I’m glad I’m seeing more atheist sober people coming up on my thread :black_heart:

Also, I have a lot of religious trauma and having people still push the religious take on me is really triggering.

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#6

I think the word god or as we understand him deprives many people of the many positive things we can get from 12 step meetings. I have my problems as well, was struggling with it a long time. I found somehow a believe in something bigger than me. Which is a relieve. It made things easier. Where I live we basically have only 12 step meetings, catholic based meetings or evangelical meetings depending on where you are. I don’t follow the 12 steps and didn’t go through them all. The differences and my inner conflicts were too big. Yet, I appreciate the program a lot. It’s not black and white for me anymore.

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#7

I think there are a lot of other ways to get educated on being sober and how alcohol has such a big impact on your mind and body without AA. Like I said before I respect who it has helped and that is wonderful but I think to still try to have atheists change their view on it is just unnecessary in my opinion.

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#8

I don’t try to change ppl mind. Not my intention at all. My experience and that is changing everyday.

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#9

And for that I know that a lot of atheist will appreciate that, myself included. I think the biggest thing is just having what we believe respected by others.

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#10

Same here! TST Satanist. :yum::black_heart:
Was raised in Catholic/Russian Orthodox churches (literally: the local Orthodox chapter started in our living room) and have some trauma from it. My sobriety Dr actually forbade me to go to AA because of intense CPTSD concerning my parents going to AA and using it to meet fellow users of harder drugs. I was like 4 being toted to AA to be locked in a dark “kids playroom” with a window so we could watch them all smoke cigars and hang out. Yuck. AA is NOT for me, in theory or practice. Thank you for the post and sorry for my info dump lmao!

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#11

I think it’s a good thing to have this thread when there’s SO many AA centric places online and in real life.

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#12

Recovering catholic as well,

Would Love to hear more about TST/Satanist this sounds intriguing

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#13

I’ve decided in recent years that my high power is myself. A better healthier version of myself. :slight_smile: I have an altar dedicated to self love, filled with precious trinkets from family and friends, letters to myself, a photo of me as a child (that’s who I am focused on healing, after all) even candles from my Orthodox Church because I loved the people there! I decided I had to do this for ME and not to prove myself to anyone or anything, especially ones I don’t believe exist haha. :stuck_out_tongue: I’m a TsT (The Satanic Temple) Satanist - we don’t believe in magic or even Satan. It’s tenants based on just. Being. Good. And I like that. :smiley:

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#14

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For the person above who said they were curious :slight_smile:

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#15

Yes! Why can’t we be our own higher power? And to say we are powerless to alcohol is giving alcohol so much more power. We should be able to take that power back and to empower ourselves.

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#16

EXACTLY! Whew I got chills!
I am powerful enough. :black_heart:

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#17

It’s funny when people ask me “What made you wanna go sober? Find God?” haha. No, I just want my body to stop aching! :laughing:

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#18

Right? No I wanted to not be a shitty person anymore and regretting who I become while I’m drinking

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#19

And that is more than okay! We should be able to talk about our sobriety and how we view things without the religious or higher power talk. Like @emi was saying, there are so many AA threads on here that having ONE atheist thread is not going to do any harm but actually build a better support system for other atheists :relaxed:

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#20

Yes! Empowering yourself is really amazing and having other people that think the same is such a help! Let’s empower each other and ourselves and be sober! :black_heart:

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