I decided to check out your profile after reading your very vulnerably and honestly written suicide awareness/prevention piece this morning https://medium.com/the-memoirist/the-night-i-failed-to-end-it-all-9c91a15e243a. Your essay on God and AA to which I now respond caught my attention as I wondered what you have to say on the subject. I am publishing this response to my profile and I hope that any of my subscribers that find the topics interesting or important will read your essays.

In many ways, our experiences are aligned. I wrote this essay about a year and a half ago: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/12-step-programs-god-problem-dea17a6e0536 subtitled These spiritual programs need to stop proselytizing religious principles and groupthink mentalities and promote the vital and authentic uniqueness of each individual. I ended that essay with this: "People walk into the rooms of 12-Step programs stigmatized and ashamed. Any program that implies the imperative of finding a belief in a metaphysical higher power, while well-intentioned, adds too much and an unnecessary burden on the non-believer. If one seeks a higher power of their understanding, they shall find it in due time. While it makes it easier, breaking free from the attachment of addiction does not require it. The path to God cannot be taught. It must be experienced."

I did walk into rehab in 2012 seeking an understanding of "God" that meshed with my beliefs because I did recognize that it might make recovery more attainable. As synchronicity would have it, this rehab, in addition to priests and ministers, had a member of their clergy staff who was not at all religious but very spiritual. I dubbed her Mystical Meredith and she gave me my first introduction to the concepts of soul contracts (https://medium.com/illumination-curated/life-is-school-for-the-soul-9b081dbe8453) and suggested that I read Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God, An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1. My conversation with Meredith and reading that book were very early and important paving stones in my yellow brick road to spiritual awakening https://medium.com/illumination-curated/100s-of-stories-about-spiritual-awakening-no-one-seems-to-discuss-the-difficult-and-crucial-e896617b5082 and finding a "God" of my understanding. https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/how-do-you-define-god-9898492eae9 and https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/the-human-spirit-duality-e456c0729e99

You may find my essay, https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/spirituality-redefined-ff45cb53eaf2 interesting. It distinguishes spirituality from religion and then goes on to detail why I think every human could benefit from Steps 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12.

This year, I took on AA more directly because, and I'm glad this was not your experience, many groups do actually contribute to the cycles of shame and relapse. See my https://marcus17043.medium.com/efficacy-of-12-step-programs-for-addiction-treatment-c111fbffc10a subtitled Groups and treatment centers must alter their “sit down, shut up, and listen” approach and remove the absolute abstinence requirement that is not found in the Big Book or the 12 and 12. I am not against abstinence. I do not mean that one should not seek to reach abstinence. That’s up to the individual. I mean the insistence that members must immediately practice abstinence in order to fully avail themselves of the program leads to the cycles of endless relapses or giving up entirely. We love you now shut up, sit down, count days like a newcomer, and start working the steps again from the beginning and all your sponsees must now be sponsored by others until you earn that right again, as my Medium friend and AA historian Holly Kellums points out (cited frequently in my essays on AA), is deeply shaming and often only serves the egos of the group leaders.