To thine own self be true. This is an important principle of my program. As a Jew and non-believer, I avoided AA for two years. I hadn’t met my bottom yet, but I knew I was powerless over alcohol. When alcohol-induced depression led to a drunken-induced suicide attempt, my lowest point had arrived. Something had to change. I wanted to get better. Fortunately, I knew about an agnostic AA approved meeting not far from where I live. No doubt, this group of drunks saved my life. Coming out as gay has been an ongoing process throughout my life. In a sense, I have always been different. It is the same with my Jewish identity, especially here in Florida. Originally from NYC, where the largest population of Jews live in this country, I have learned what it feels like to be a minority for the first time. As an atheist in AA, I have had to face yet another difference and yet another set of judgments. I have heard comments that without God one cannot stay sober. I have been sober for over two years and maintain a strong program of recovery. I regularly attend traditional meetings and like to think I offer hope to those who share my non-beliefs. Even Bill Wilson understood that he had overdone the “God bit” in the early years of AA. Two decades after the Big Book was published he wrote: “In AA’s first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking… God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging – perhaps fatally so – to numbers of non-believers.” ~ The Grapevine, April 1961, Vol. 17, No. 11 “The Dilemma of No Faith” by Bill Wilson It is my hope that I and others like me will find wider acceptance in the rooms of AA. Our getting and staying sober may depend on it.
In Unity, Jennifer B.