On April 13, 2023, after a nine year absence from peer-supported recovery, I walked through the doors of a secular Twelve Step group and once again admitted I’m an alcoholic.

I’d already been ‘dry’ for almost two years, but here’s the thing: not drinking (or using anything) is a necessary but insufficient condition for sobriety. I had to admit I had a problem in order to get sober again. I had to admit that once I took away the substance, and for me it was booze, what remained was a person who couldn’t deal with life on life’s terms. A person who had no idea who he was, how to live, or what really mattered. I had to face the fact that my way doesn’t work. Sobriety is the slow and steady process of honestly addressing these shortcomings and cultivating a way of living life on life’s terms.

I do believe that addiction is, among others things, a spiritual affliction. What could be more spiritual than an overwhelming existential crisis involving questions of ‘How did I become this person?’, ‘How did I fall so far?’, ‘How did my life get this way?’, and so on. Questions concerning the meaning of life are philosophical and psychological (and sometimes humourous!), but a gut-wrenching crisis involving the meaning of my life is spiritual. With each breath, I question where I fit into the world, and often if I fit in the world. Am I real? Was it a dream that turned into a nightmare? Why does the boundary between life and death attract me so? These realities for the sufferer are not mere abstractions—they strike right down to the core of one’s being until the core is numb of feeling.

Why secular, though? I’m a “spiritual agnostic”. I believe there could be some sort of ultimate reality beyond the world our physical senses can perceive. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a God. I’m very sure there’s no such thing as a God that intervenes in the lives of people. So, when it comes to the Twelve Step program of recovery, any “God of our understanding” is not something over to the care of which I can “turn my will and my life”.

A Twelve Step program of recovery without God has all the spiritual tools I need to recover. Instead of “Trust God”, I trust the process, the collective wisdom and experience of my recovery peer-group. Actively working a recovery program can cultivate inner wisdom, and that I am learning to trust. The rest of the secular Steps are not really much different: clean house and help others.

I am so grateful to Secular AA for what these two years have given me.

The freedom I know today is not only a freedom from the suffering I experienced that drove me into reaching out for help again, but also a freedom to be useful to others and to experience an easy contentment when things are good, and a freedom to reach out for help when times are rough.

I no longer carry the burden of remorse for what I’ve done. My past is instead like an archaeological dig site which reveals treasures that help me to grow and to be helpful to others.

I understand serenity as not being in some sort of meditative state but rather how well I trust my ship to withstand the storms that inevitably come in life. Knowing how I’m able to bend but not break brings assurance during those crazy times.

My relapse is no longer a source of shame but instead a valuable story to help others. I can say for certain that I am very, very fortunate to be alive and well today.

I struggle big time with ‘adulting’ and my mental health isn’t great, but I no longer wallow in the “poor me’s”. Being able to be useful to others saves me from that cycle of self-centred sadness.

My long-term self-sufficiency is precarious, my savings are running low, I’ve been out of work for a very long time, and might even be unemployable. I am indeed afraid, but my fear isn’t paralyzing me. I am making small steps in the right direction.

Recovery that seems to be a process that is ‘working upon me’. I do the work, and what comes out the other end is greater than the simple result of my own effort. Maybe there’s a kind of power that comes from within a community that works to recover together—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts kind of power.

I know that so long as I don’t stray away from this community of agnostics, atheists, freethinkers, pagans, nonbelievers, ex-believers, and generally too-smart-for-our-own-good bunch of crazy bananas, I’ll be okay. That’s really all I need: to be okay.