[secularaa.org]

This site has a list of over 500 irreligious AA meetings. I go to one or two in Toronto Canada. Every two years they put on the International Secular AA Conference - Santa Monica in 2014, Austin in 2016, Toronto in 2018 and Oct 30-Nov1 2020 it's in Washington. I've been to all of them. It's a great, sober place to hang out with like-minded folks. I've also been to LifeRing and I know some people who really like SMART or Refuge Recovery. SMART is more accommodating to harm reduction for people who don't thrive on abstinence.

Yes I'm an alcoholic, always had a big fear of GOD but recently partly due to this site, realised that I'm sitting on the fence(hedging my bets as they say).

I went to my first AA meeting in over two decades last night. I haven't picked up, but the things that have kept me from drinking, I am eliminating from my life for the sake of my physical and mental well being.
I'm withdrawing from a very low dose of tramadol. There was an evening meeting at the church I used to attend that's six blocks from my house, so I walked there.
I met the other "newbie" because he was looking for the back entrance. He was a regular type. Inside, it was as if I could divide these people into the same categories you would in a church. I got the impression that half the people there were attending because it was mandated. There were the true believers, the new believers, and the ones who go because it's a habit. Good thing I still remember the Lord's Prayer which was recited at the meetings close. (Jew that I am, all my partners were Christians.) Downstate, it was always the Serenity prayer, which is what I was expecting. There's a daytime group that meets in a secular location in the next town over on Sunday. I think I need to get used to the demographic here. I'm not judging, but I'm gray haired and a woman who doesn't look like hell.

Hi, my name is Marcie and I'm an alcoholic

I saw the ravages it did to everyone around me and stopped. The problem now is I'm alone and want to join them. Bo, my partner, passed away in 2006, he had throat cancer but was cancer free, he stroked out from the morphine and beer he was pouring into his g-tube.
I couldn't bring myself to be open in front of a group of men in a room that smelled like my last (still living) boyfriend"s house. He was a drinker too. I broke that off in November.
I know I isolate. I know the depression and suicidal thoughts are from the withdrawal. Organizing my thoughts and putting them into words isn't easy for me if I'm stressed. I still expect too much from myself and too little from everyone else. I admitted I was vulnerable and scared to my first husband and he made my life hell for eighteen years until he died. He was a user par excellence, and rarely drank. Eighteen years of being isolated and indoctrinated into "not putting your business in the street", made it impossible for me to open up without alcohol or weed or better yet, both. The problems that created, my eldest child and I are still talking about, though to be honest, we're only really talking since she's back in the same area as I and her circumstance has changed. As my son says: "It's all good."
By the time I found my alcoholic soul mate, my eldest was living with friends and I thought things were pretty good until he got sick and couldn't work. I donned my superhero cape, neglected my two younger children, and by the time I lost him, I was literally homeless because we were living in his SSI check and my disability application had been filed in Florida and got lost. It got delayed a second time when I moved out of the county I filed in in NY.
I ended up where I am today because I spent seven months dealing with my own mental and physical illnesses and carrying my father in his home with it anything more than a roof and insurance on my car and a phone for dial up internet. I was back to being free labor for my father at 49. (Cooking, cleaning, shopping, driving seven days a week.) His house was in the middle of a forest on a mountain. It would have been perfect without him. Mom was recently placed in a nursing home, the neighbor has been helping out.

A friend I met online drove fifty miles with a bottle of rye whiskey and we had a backwoods "date" parked on the side of the dead end road I was living on. (Literally) I'm sure he was hoping to get lucky. What he got was me in a blackout telling him I loved him (obviously talking to a ghost back then) and I was passed out when he tried to get me out of the car back up at the house. All I know is I woke up on the floor of my father's living room. My date is putting a set of dry pajamas on me. I became conscious enough to understand what had happened, but only crawled to the stairs and up to bed.

My first alcoholic boyfriend would drink himself into blackouts and use it as an excuse for all kinds of rotten behavior. I had promised myself if I ever blacked out, I would stop drinking, I have to the extent that one measured drink is my absolute limit. Honestly, it's like poking the bear. All the misery of feeling "off" the next day without ever really being good and drunk. It used to be two when I was smoking weed because more would make me vomit.
A few months after this, I had four major health problems that landed me in a doctors office. Grave's disease, strep throat, lower back pain from keeping Dad from falling, and the ever-present fibromyalgia. Ultram was new back then. Doc gave me a half dozen sample bottles, a script for Z-pac and told me to take it easy for a week.
Twelve years later, I am pissing in a cup twice a year and signing promises that my health care coverage can be withdrawn if I use street drugs in order to continue getting one pill a day filled once a month from the VA. I'm done with that. I have other reasons well, the biggest being the drug is the cause of the neuropathy in my feet! I made this discovery on my own. I'll spare you the details. I'm pretty sure the other drug I am taking for the same problem is also part of the problem, however, I know that withdrawal from this one, while not a narcotic, may be trickier.

Once all the pharmaceutical drugs are off the table, I know myself well enough to know what's likely to happen. This time I'm going to try to have a support network before life's next big disaster or more likely, miracle, makes me pick up. Thanks for listening.

Well, I was a true gutter drunk... I remember my introduction California being that I died on State Street in Santa Barbara, and the EMTs had to resuscitate me and stick a breathing tube down my throat. Later on, when I came too and they had pulled the breathing tube out, I ran out of the hospital and went straight to a grocery store where I stole some cooking wine just to increase my alcohol content and get drunk again. Yeah, I was THAT kind of active alcoholic. I've been in AA for about 10 years, but I had so many problems with it because I realized that what it really is just Buchman-ism (Frank Buchman, evangelical Christian founder of the Oxford Group). So I discovered SMART recovery

But they didn't have the fellowship of AA, and even though all those AA people say it is their higher power and working the steps that keeps them clean, it really is the fellowship! That is the most important part of anyone's recovery... So then I discovered Secular AA. And I've found that they have a lot of online meetings as well, so it is very convenient if you can find a brick-and-mortar Secular AA meeting, which are few and far in-between.

I also discovered the Sinclair method, which is basically a form of pharmacological extinction and works if your addiction is opioid-based. Apparently mine is. I also practice secular meditation, and discovered Refuge recovery recently which is Buddhist based.

So between Secular AA for fellowship, SMART recovery for my program needs, Refuge Recovery for my "spiritual" needs, and the Sinclair method/naltrexone for my chemical extinction needs, I FINALLY found something that works for me...

Congrats on the 50 years, I know that wasn't easy...

2018 is actually a great time to get sober what with all the resources available now. One thing that really chaps my ass about the "big book" is that part where they talk about how "science hasn't done this yet..." But science HAS done this and you can't change a thing in the book! What the hell man, that sounds like a religious text to me!

I drink every day and see no reason to stop. Cheers

A while back, (decades) I was drinking too much and I went to AA a couple of times. That was weird. This is where they replace one addiction for another. "Rely on god-dude; don't practice self control." When a person walked out the door there was so much cigarette smoke it was hard to see.

I still have one or two beers---- the idea of having so many beers that I could swim in it is rather moronic.

Hi! I’m Sydney and I’m an alcoholic!
I’m also AMGT’s daughter.
I got sober when I was 15, and I will have 6 years sober in March.
When I first got sober I refused to join AA because of the whole idea of a “higher power”, but when I had about 8 months sober, I got involved in Pacific Group (and quickly left), but found a connection to YPAA (young people in AA). There I found the fellowship, and that is what has helped me most in my sobriety. Being able to connect with other people.
I still go to meetings, I have a sponsor and I’ve worked the steps, (my sponsor knows I’m an atheist) and I just dig the experience and getting to know other people and their experiences.
Congrats on 50 years! That’s so inspirational.

I am an Alcoholic in recovery, I will be clean and sober 18 years as of Nov 6th.I spent more than 40 years under the influence of alcohol and other mind altering substances.

I am doing an alcohol

9 years sober here, never went to AA, and I'm pretty sure I will always be a alcoholic. because i will always need a drink, especially on stressful days. the reason i started drinking was mostly an act of rebellion against my parents, and a hell of a self destructive streak.

I love to party and it can annoy the people around you but being happy helps

I have never been interested in alcohol and actually have never been drunk in my life, not once. I know recovering alcoholics. Some are addicted to AA and others are able to live their lives without it, and do not seem dependent on a group. It is different for everyone, but I do not support the higher power bullshit. I know they like to say that you can make it something else besides a god, but that is nonsense.

Huge congratulations on being sober for 50 years. That is a heck of a milestone to reach in AA. My father who helped set up AA in Hong Kong has been sober for 48 years so we were trying to think of a way to help him celebrate his 50 years of sobriety.

AA is interesting from an atheist perspective due to the 12 step program originally having faith in God as an important step, and then faith in a 'higher power'. I'm don't know enough about addiction to have an educated opinion, but I would think that giving away responsibility and authority to something else that isn't even real, should be a problem. As an atheist I take personal responsibility seriously and if I need to make changes in my life, "I" make those changes, perhaps with help from others, but never from my imaginary friend in the sky.