17 years ago I was going thru HARD withdrawals and almost ended up in hospital. I picked up the phone after a few days of suffering with the shakes, cold sweats and my skin crawling, and called AA. It was not my first time in and there was a slogan on the wall that said, "FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT". I tried. I was in the first time for three years and had to fake having a higher power *THEY* called god. I tried to stay sober and after three years I picked up a drink and said I was not an alcoholic. Some of the things I was told was, "if you don't believe in god, just use your chair as your higher power. It's holding you up!" or, "Say that GOD is GOOD ORDERLY DIRECTION." I hated those.
So I was able to get to one year. Then it was 5 years. This whole time I had people willing to take me to meetings all over the place. I was in a large city at the time and I was able to get to any meeting near a bus stop.
Then I bought a house in the middle of no where.
I didn't have a car, my husband wasn't going to waste the gas to take me to a meeting and then come back out to get me. One person would take me to meetings and back home, but he stopped. I ended up not going to meetings, not even the one down the street from me. We had the same group of people and I noticed that going to hear the same story every 4 to 6 weeks was boring the hell out of me. Also there was a bit of a problem with the lip service. There were posters and signs and even in the speech at the closing of the meeting that said, "If you have a problem, share it with someone." I would share the problem and get no feedback. Or I would be told to ask someone at the meeting for something, because my father in law knew them, and when I asked, they would just walk away. I knew I didn't want to be there anymore.
I stopped going to meetings after 10 years. I think it was just before 10 years, because I don't have a 10 year chip. I now have 17 years behind me and I did it without the help of AA.
I'm glad I left when I did. If you were not a god loving/fearing christian, they wouldn't talk to you at all. I was feeling all snubbed and unwanted, and when I left, I didn't look back. I don't want to believe in something I don't feel in my heart. Telling them that I didn't believe in god made them all question me and how could I be sober without a god in my life.
I was tired of people in that religious cult (yes I called AA a religious cult) trying to sell me on god. I don't need any of that. I don't need to tell god or any other person what or why I did something wrong. When I talk to someone about how many years I have in, they ask me how I did it. I tell them that I did it on my own and I don't need AA or the 12 steps.
I was watching the tv show Mom the other day and when the drug addicts or alcoholics were trying to make amends, they couldn't see that the other person was being harmed again by them bringing up something from the past. I don't do that. If I harmed anyone in my past, they would see that I have already made amends by not putting them thru whatever hell I put them thru the first time.
I'm good without god.
I moved from a big city (Toronto) to a smaller city (Oshawa) and I loved that no one knew anything about me. My family were a combination of christian and catholic. I saw the bible get tossed around like a football every day. My grandmother went to Newfoundland and found Jesus. Didn't know he was hiding out in Millertown. She forced all of us kids (my three cousins and I lived the closest to her) and she wanted to save us. Three of us managed to get out of going to church. It took me having to question the guy in Sunday school enough with things he couldn't answer for him to talk to my grandmother to never making me go back to Sunday school. I had also been kicked out of church for snoring just a few weeks later. When I got into high school, I had read everything there was on the shelves and the only section I didn't read was in religion. They had everything in there except Satanic books. I don't know if 1984 sucked for Satanists, but they had more books on witchcraft than ALL other religions combined. I started to read them and understood them more than all the other religions. I bought into the whole "Satanists kill animals" thing so it wasn't on my radar. One of my cousins read everything he could get his hands on about Satanism and I started to read the books he was reading. I started to get a better understanding about ti and realized that I was lied to by all the Christians I met. I came out of the broom closet to everyone in my family (with Facebook) and after moving to a tiny village of a town east of Peterborough, a town that has more churches than any city I have ever lived in, I slowly started to bring out the pentacles. No one screamed and ran away. One of my best friends is Pentecostal and she stands up for me. I started telling people (mostly Christians and missionaries who bang on my door) that I was a Satanist. It was more for shock value, but as I read more and more about it, I realized I really was one. I hate religion and all the pain it causes.
