Has anyone here ever participated in a 12 step program?

[Calliope]

I’m lucky that my sponsor is catholic but at the meetings when people share I’ve heard several people say things like “I’ve discovered I don’t need religion, I needed spirituality”

That’s where THEY are right now, that may not be true for you. The 12 steps are a spiritual program that anyone can work regardless of whether or not they also practice a religion.

Focus on your own program and recovery and allow their HP to work with them in theirs.

 

[Calliope]

Encouraging atheists to pray is unlikely to help the programme work. There are 12 step programmes for non-believers. They do not invoke a ‘higher power’.

I’m an atheist, my long time sponsor is an atheist. There are lots of atheists in the program and it works just fine for us if we work it. I pray in my own way and I’ve been clean and sober for nearly 7 years.

There are some 12 step groups that are just for atheists, but I haven’t found it necessary to separate myself from other addicts just because we have different ideas of what our Higher Power is.

Setting myself apart and insisting I was special are in a large part what led to me acting out addictively.

 

[Calliope]

Every AA meeting I’ve attended they end it with the Lord’s Prayer. I have worked the steps in several programs but NA is the one I attend the most face to face meetings. We usually open with the Serenity prayer, which does address God, but we use a version that is not specifically Christian.

 

[FiveLinden]

Setting myself apart and insisting I was special are in a large part what led to me acting out addictively.

Thanks for your response. Can you tell me more about this thought?

 

[Calliope]

Thanks for your response. Can you tell me more about this thought?

We have a reading that we read at the beginning of every NA meeting that has a line “We needed something different and we thought we had found it in drugs…through our own inability to take responsibility, we were creating our own problems”

A commonality in addicts is that we feel different. Sometimes better than, sometimes worse than, sometimes as if no one on the planet ever felt as deeply as we feel, or as if we don’t care about anything or anyone, and are incapable of feeling anything at all.

We are constantly chasing something impossible…freedom, escape, a fantasy, a high that will last forever via the things that are least likely to be able to provide that which we so desperately seek.

Many of us never learned life skills, and abandoned those that we were taught thinking that WE could conquer life differently than the methods that worked for normal people. We chased a lie, and built up more and more lies until we could no longer differentiate between reality and our skewed version of it.

One of the most important principles we learn in recovery is humility, and humility is radical honesty. We come to realize we are human, just like everyone else. Not better or worse than others, and by using a set of principles we too can live a productive life, but the first thing is to accept reality rather than fight it or try to escape it.

Feeling better than, less than and different from was our excuse to indulge in bizarre and antisocial behavior. We don’t need something different and our happiness doesn’t lie in something different, we need to follow good orderly direction (god) and realize that our own “best thinking” led us down the path of destruction. We become part of the recovery network, part of the human race and cease setting ourselves apart.

That’s the key to lasting recovery, and when I start thinking…no one understands, I’m different, feelings are too hard for me to bear, what satisfies normal people isn’t grand enough for me…I am in trouble.

 

[FiveLinden]

Thank you. Very interesting (and well-written!). ‘Good orderly direction’ = god’ I will think some more about that.

 

[njlisa]

@Daisy: Thank you for that background information about Sister Ignatia.

I’m lucky that my sponsor is catholic but at the meetings when people share I’ve heard several people say things like “I’ve discovered I don’t need religion, I needed spirituality”

@Le_Crouton: Don’t a person like this disturb you. He/she is sharing his own views. Make the program about your recovery. And you might try out another group to see whether it is a better fit.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

A commonality in addicts is that we feel different. Sometimes better than, sometimes worse than, sometimes as if no one on the planet ever felt as deeply as we feel, or as if we don’t care about anything or anyone, and are incapable of feeling anything at all.

I “liked” your comment and especially this paragraph because it also describes the children of rigid or high-conflict (also known as dysfunctional) families.

The often feel very advanced beyond their peers and very much more immature at the same time

 

[Daisy]

Yes, that feeling of separation is what feeds the emptiness… the tendency to fall into bad habits. The ability and humiliation of recognizing and sharing faults openly with the group, and to be loved and supported in spite of them is truly healing. And it is the heart of our faith. It’s quite simple, really.