I have been pondering this question the last few days as I am working on my 7th step.  It seems that the further you go along in the program, the more emphasis is placed on GOD being your higher power and not your “concept of a higher power” like they tell you in the beginning.  At first it is “fake it till you make it.” Then after awhile, that mantra slips away and you seem to be backed into a corner facing the God question.

Quite frankly, I think this is the point which serves as the fork in the road to many recovering alcoholics/addicts.  I was not raised religious and certainly was not religious in my drinking career.  So now I am supposed to use my sick brain and find God?  To me, that is exactly the same proposition that AA shuns–the intellectualizing of recovery.  Religion, to me, is your mind’s way of coping with things you cannot control and relying on the strength of a belief system based on the constructs of imaginative minds.  Isn’t that the same as me believing in MYSELF and praying to my intellectual self to find the strength to overcome obstacles?

I do believe in a spiritual nature of the universe and the connectivity of living things.  I take much inspiration in the intricacy and balance of it all and I am awestruck at the complexity of everything which surrounds me.  It is for this reason I dare not try to understand it too much, or for that matter, reduce such magnificence to a particular deity who communicated through one prophet or another two thousand years ago (or if you are Mormon, a couple hundred years ago).

That said, I really struggle with the notion going around AA now that the only way to true recovery is finding your HP.  That’s like the Scientologists striving to be Thetans.  Which is why I hear in almost every conversation talk about how AA is the only way path to recovery.  There are many statistics bandied about, but most put 1 year sobriety rates between 5-10% in AA.  That’s not a lot.  Critics of those statistics say, “but you have to work the program, find your higher power, etc.”  My point is, if you spend all your time looking for the holy grail in recovery, you will find less time to drink.

While I do enjoy going to meetings and sharing my experience while listening to others, I couldn’t possibly go every day like some people do.  It can be often incredibly depressing and a constant reminder of my past shit storms, which is maybe the point.  But I feel one need to focus on the positives just as much as rehashing the negatives.

Bottom line is that AA membership has been slowing and there is increasing talk about Addiction is a malady of the spiritual condition that no pill can restore.  There is truth to this, but only partial.  The medical field can assist the brain in recovery while the addict goes on a journey to discover him or herself.  AA can be a part of this journey like it is for me.  But to hear more anxious drumbeats coming from those in AA unwilling to believe in other methods, smells of cultish behavior seeing the writing on the wall.

I will continue my various forms of therapy, including the fellowship of AA.  But I will not be bullied into a belief system in the guise that it is the only way out.  If I am to discover God, that will be on my terms.