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.

Today was my first day of therapy with a Psychoanalyst and it was good to talk to someone other than an addict about my core issues which I covered up with alcohol through the years.  After going through my history with him and talking about the present, we spoke at length about social anxiety and how I am currently dealing with it.

I found it interesting that after describing my feelings of social awkwardness to him, he told me he had the opposite impression of me.  This got around to dealing with the Johari Window.  That is–what I think others see and what I choose others to see are vastly different.  Internally, I don’t like the spotlight because I think somehow I am making a fool of myself (or will at some point) and therefore withdrawl before I can make said fool of myself.

Externally, he said he thought I was very outgoing and seemed to have energy and confidence.  This is the disconnect I have trouble with.  I also have trouble with worrying too much about what others think to just be myself.  I hope that through talking these issues through, I can get past this “fear” and just let myself vunerable to whatever may come of my interpersonal and group communications.

After that session, my fear was put to the test when I went to a new AA meeting with someone in my house.  It ended up being this meeting called Students Of Life and was ALL kids sub-30 and many were late teens, early 20’s.  I was uncomfortable to say the least being 41, but I ground through it.  I am pretty sure it won’t be a meeting in my regular rotation, even though it ended up being fine.

To me, there is a gulf between myself and kids that age when it pertains to recovery.  In some ways they have it pretty rough with many years of temptation before them.  However in many respects, they do have many advantages that they have so many opportunities in front of them–youth being one of them.  They can more easily choose what they want to do in life than I can.  It is much harder to change course at 40, than clean up your act at 25.  I struggle with this almost daily–the remorse of opportunity lost, youth squandered.  I wish I could find a meeting with just 30-40 yr olds.  They seem to end up weighted at either end of the spectrum.