To kind of keep the ball rolling, or get the ball rolling, I will add a step 3 synopsis I did for a secular forum a few months ago:

Hello, My name is Andrew and I am an Alcoholic

I hope this is appropriate, and I am sorry I repeat myself a few times, I am only hoping to show how I was able to work the twelve steps as an atheist/agnostic.

I use the word "God" in this post a number of times, it's not to "convert" anyone, but to tell you I was able to work the twelve steps of AA as an Agnostic/Atheist. I HAVE to use the WORD God a few times, because there is NO other word that will work, please understand I am NOT referring to a deity, but to EVERYTHING, not an "Otherness' or a "Guiding Intelligence" but simply EVERYTHING.

It's my experience the Twelve Steps work to bring about recovery from Alcoholism, and I believe you needn't have a deity for this to work, and it's my experience that I was able to do this without changing one word in The Big Book, I just changed my own definition of a few words. I have brought maybe thirty Agnostic/Atheists men (sponsees) through the steps using what I learned.

First, I believe the twelve steps are a mathematical equation that when worked bring about a personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism.

There is only one hang up, The word "God" in those steps. This post is how to get around that without needing a deity.

This is going to be a LONG post, if you suffer (like I do from a short attention span, look ahead to the Bolded parts for step by step instructions for what I did to work the steps in AA without a Deity.)

A thread I participated in recently in The AA forum made me feel the need for this post, as what follows literally saved my life. When I got sober I was rabidly anti-Christian, anti-religion and anti-religious.

I see Christians in meetings and online that think there is no "Christian Dogma" in the BB, and the attitudes of some AA's made me realize the need for this Post, the quote in particular that inspired me to write this was:
If I would have been presented with this attitude or been told this when I was new I would be a dead man.

Literally, If I was told to get God or get out and go drink like I actually have heard in some meetings, I would be dead today. Me learning how to work the steps and get around the vast Christianity in the Book saved my life, I was, as I mentioned, rabidly anti-Christian and anti-religious when I got sober in 1992. If I hadn't figured how to remove the Christianity from the message I would never had been able to stay long enough to get sober.

Today I am ambivalent, which means I have strong feelings on both sides of the issue, or in other words, I don't care. I can read Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Wiccan, Old Druidic Lore, -some- Christianity, and find wisdom anywhere without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Technically, I guess closer to anything I am a Taoist, which is simply "Sh1t Happens", literally translated The "Tao Te Ching" just means The Book of the virtue of how things are. There is no deity in Taoism, basically the premise is sh1t rolls downhill, and if you have a problem with that it's your problem, and if you stand downhill from said sh1t, your gonna get a mouthful. The "Acceptance speech' in the BB is taoism at it's finest.

You could "label" me an Atheist and an Agnostic, because technically I am, but I feel I am "Gnostic" which comes from the Greek word "Gnosis' which means "knowledge" a Gnostic, or my version thereof believes I can "evolve" as it were and that any "bit" of "God" I ever will be found will be in my own heart, When I see the word "God" I use the dictionary definition "The Great Reality"

If you don't believe in Reality get a staple gun, put about fifteen staples in your body, maybe one or two in your eyeball, then get back to me. That's what I mean by "reality". "The Great Reality" to me just means everything and everything in it, so I can "see" the word "God" and not be bothered by it, I don't believe in a deity, I don't believe in an "Otherness". More on this later, sorry to use that word so early.

The First Chapter in The Tao Te Ching says, That which can be explained is not the way things are, and the way things are can't be explained.

I can build a house, paint it, furnish it, and describe it to the best of my ability, I can describe the walls, the windows, the floor etc, but what I can NEVER explain is "the space" inside the house and that is what I actually live in. All I can ever convey to you is what color the walls are and what it looks like, I can never give you the experience of being inside my house unless you do the work and come and visit me.

That is the problem in a nutshell with spirituality and the Big Book, all the words, the mention of the word God, the HE, and FATHER, and GUIDING INTELLIGENCE, is just what color the walls are "painted" by the men who "painted" in the only colors they knew, which was the language of Christianity. I will call this language baby poop green. I had to get past the fact I hated baby poop green and actually read what these men were saying while tossing the Christian language out.

OK, on to business, The Big Book, TO ME is a Christian Based Text written by Christians, for Christians, and in order for me to work those steps, I had to remove all the "Christian Dogma" and figure out how to get past the word "God" and what I viewed as all the Christian Blather and "God talk" I saw and heard in the "rooms" of Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA is a "spiritual" program, so it uses "spiritual" language, for me I had to let go of my previous concepts and definitions and make new ones. The Dictionary actually was helpful for this.

First: I was told don't worry about the word "God" until you are on your third step

This proved to be one of the most important things ever told to me in AA, it literally saved my life, by the time I was working the third step with a sponsor, I no longer had a problem with "The Word" God

As I stated earlier I believe to me the twelve steps are a mathematical equation where if you strip away the "Christian dogma*" and when you see the "integer" "God" you plug in your own "value" for a "power greater then yourself" then work steps one through twelve, arriving at "having HAD a spiritual awakening as THE result of these steps"

where spiritual awakening = personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism (our more religious members call it God consciousness) that means our "non" or "less" religious members call it a "personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism"

Each step has conditions and promises, ie; If you do this like this you get this, which to me have never failed, when I do this like this I get this, the most famous of which are the ninth step promises, "If we are painstaking about this phase of our recovery we will know a new freedom and a new happiness etc. etc."

To me these (the steps) have proven to be as unfailing as a math equation, yes, a lot of people in Calc or algebra don't end up with the same answers as me, is math or the professor to blame or is it the result of people plugging the wrong value into an integer or getting part of the process wrong which results in an incorrect answer?

There are a LOT of ways to write A + B = C, and a LOT of ways to "arrive" at "C" as "The Conclusion", C being abstinence from alcohol, AA is by no means the only way, but, in my experience I have NEVER seen it "fail" anyone who THOROUGHLY followed it's path as is suggested.

Math isn't for everyone, and neither is AA, it's just an answer that worked "for us", but the end result for both is the same, if you do this like this, you get this.

It almost doesn't matter what that "Power" is, as long as it's "not me". Women can use the actual fact of "giving birth" or creating life" as a "higher power" as far as I am concerned, and Men can use their knocker, hell, it's been leading you around for years already, might as well admit it's a power greater then yourself and put it to good use, although you may want to choose a different concept because if you are anything like me the damn thing is nothing but trouble and doesn't always act in my best interests.

If you ask a physicist to explain something in laymans terms they will have a number of 'false starts" then finally explain they use the language they use that we as laymen find incomprehensible because thats the only way to explain it.

Unfortunately or fortunately, the language of recovery in AA is spiritual, which is slippery at best, and arouses instant "brain shut down" at worst. I watch people argue about AA simply because in many cases people don't understand the concept of their OWN concept of God, they see the word God and they lose their F'ing mind because it conjures up someone ELSE'S concept of God.

To me it's simple as hell, see the stars? see everything? see all those galaxies? see birth? see love? the curve of a perfect breast? see a puppy? a kitten? see a mothers love for her child? a sunrise?

Package all that up, call it God, no deity needed, plug it into the steps, work them and you will have a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.

Ok, onto Nuts and Bolts.

Here is one method (the one I start with) I have used with sponsees.


I use electricity as a "power greater then yourself" concept, it starts with electricity then "evolves" to include every single thing in The Universe.

First I tell them if you don't believe in a power greater then yourself I'd like you to stick your tongue in that electrical outlet over there, get back to me when you are done to tell me how it went.

Then I use my paramedic training to tell about the heart, how it has electricity in it, how in the absence of electricity the person dies, and how there is also electrical activity in the brain, and if the electrical activity in the Brain stops they either go "brain dead" or will actually die if the damage is sever enough. Without electricity you wouldn't be alive.

Every living thing in the world has electrical activity, there is even electricity in trees and plants (very very small amounts but it's there)

I explain how it fits the greeting "Namaste" which means:

# "I respect divinity within you that is also within me." (Here, "that" refers to divinity, or that which is divine.)
# "The light within me honors the light within you." (in yoga)

and how it fits with all of the interconnectedness and spiritual theories, as in there is divine in all of us, and the "oneness theories" but all animals, trees, everything has electricity in it in some form or fashion but by using a basic principle such as electricity you can use that to build to a Power greater then yourself that is personal to you.

I also bust out with "A new Pair of Glasses" and show many passages that confused me greatly for over a decade about his description of God, and how he states he is not a christian then uses many sayings attributed to Jesus to show many things, but how spirituality can "fit" in with Christianity. (many are pretty anti-christian when they get to me, so by using we agnostics, Glasses, and the electricity analogy by the time they walk away they are open minded and realize they have been displaying the very character defects they claimed not to like in Christianity)

I talk about how it's actually the ego that is trying to kill us, that voice in our head, and we need to learn how to start listening to that voice in our hearts which takes place from working the steps.

I talk about him finding "God" in the last place we ever thought to look, inside our own heart, how we (as a species) go "looking for God" when it's inside of us all the time. I tell the story of the three fish, swimming in the Ocean, and the big fish that swims by and says "Hello boys, nice day, waters great today huh?" one fish looks at another and asks, "what is water" and the three fish spend the rest of their life swimming around the Pacific Ocean, looking for water, in which they live and breathe and have their very existence.

Anyway, yes, I start with Electricity, from there it moves to spiritual principals, I show that reliance on a deity made in a human image need not concern them, but how once they have their own concept of God, they can plug that value into anywhere the word God is written (in the big book) and have it work.

For the purposes of this discussion, and for the program, I refer to everything that is "not me" as "God", and what I mean by "not me" I mean the little voice in my head, my Ego, like if I cut myself, what heals the cut, the little voice in my head doesn't heal that cut, it's a power greater then myself that I don't wholly understand, so it's "not me", ergo it's "God". For me humility means being "right sized" knowing where I end and "God" begins, that's easy, the little voice in my head has absolutely no power except the power I give it, so all other "power" is "God". (this is just for the sake of this discussion you understand, it all sounds very religious, but it's not, still no deity involved)

So turning my life and will over to everything but the little voice in my head is easy. Keeping it that way is hard. That little voice in my head is just not very powerful, frequently wrong, and it also happens to be where my alcoholism is seated, so I turn my will and my life over to everything that is NOT that voice in my head, which for the purposes of this discussion and AA I call "God".

an example or colloquialism about it would be "I am in charge of flinging sh1t against the wall, but I am not in charge of what sticks" ergo, I am not in charge of adhesion, so what is in "charge of adhesion", would not be the little voice in my head or "not me", so that would be "God".

I am in charge of the effort and the footwork, but not the results.

The little voice in my head talks big but the truth of the matter is it has f*ck-all to do with what actually takes place in the world. I mean it has gotten me laid a few times, but it's also gotten me tossed in the can, it's "decision making" capabilities are spotty at best (If I actually look at the results of my decisions, not the the thinking if that makes sense) but there I am, thinking about me again, an egomaniac with an inferiority complex thinking I am the piece of sh1t that the world revolves around.

That voice is literally actively trying to get me to drink, it will try every trick it knows, it will try and make me so happy I drink, or it will try to put me in so much pain that taking a drink is a good idea, the little voice in my head is not to be trusted and is actively literally trying to kill me.

So turning my will and life over to the care of anything but the little voice in my head that is actively trying to kill me suddenly makes good sense and is practical. It's also learning how to live in "the now" and not that fantasy world we call 'reality'. Anything that takes me away from that part of my mind and thinking that little voice in my head that says it knows best but on a second look is actively trying to kill me is turning my will and my life over.

Taoism, as I understand it, is pretty simple and a good summation is this:

Because it IS a "spiritual program" with a "spiritual solution" I do find myself frequently using the word God, but I just mean everything that is "not me" or not the little voice in my head, to me the word God is an "integer" who's value is "X" if that makes sense.

I didn't "change" anything or even do any "broadening" of the program, I am quite literally following Bill's instructions when he says "why don't you choose your own concept of God"

Bill was extremely clear and emphatic about everything I explained, I only reword it, I am not re-inventing the wheel here, just putting it in language I understand.

It's just the language used is so ...loaded.....no pun intended

After some years my math "equation" looks more like this

(Everything + Everything that is + Everything that ever was + Everything that ever will be) - ( The little voice in my head that tells me what to do and lies to me all the time) = X

For the purposes of AA

God = X

Plug the value of X into whenever I see the word God in the Big Book or on the wall or whenever I hear the word in a meeting and I'm golden, if *you need a "God" with a willy, or a beard, or a wrathful God or whatever floats your boat, more power to you, I don't need to make my value of X anthropomorphic personally, nor am I threatened by anyone's use of the word any more quite frankly, I just plug my own value in it when I hear or read it.

It's as simple as "Sh1t Happens" and if you are downhill from it you get a mouthful and if you sit in it you get cranky, because it's almost always your own, and I notice after I had been sober for awhile and started feeling better about myself I didn't have to take anyone else's, nor for the most part did people want to give me nearly as much quite frankly for some strange reason.

*you = people in meetings

I have found these to be effective building blocks that have led many even claiming to be atheist/agnostics to reach step 12

I am an Atheist/Agnostic that has a God that is personal to him Today.

Please feel free to ask any questions, I don't mean to offend anyone, just tell my experience with getting through the twelve steps.