Before Alcoholics Anonymous could even be considered a toddler, Jim Burwell joined and threw a wrench in the mix. The Christian entrenched organization didn’t know what to do. Not only was this Jim a self-proclaimed atheist, he actively fought against the fellowship’s entire religious underpinning. Why did an alcoholic need God (let alone a Christian one)? There had to be a better way. His lack of faith was so ill regarded that, at one point, members of his home group held prayer meetings to try and divine what to do with him. Some even secretly hoped he’d relapse.
Unfortunately for them, he didn’t go anywhere. He stuck around until his death nearly forty years later—completely sober.
Apparently, it can be done.
I guess that leaves the rest of us to figure out how. How do non-believers stay sober? This particular question is easy: don’t drink or do drugs. Done. Unfortunately, most people aren’t satisfied with that. They’ll immediately follow this up with another question—one that’s much more difficult to answer.
Why?
The dreaded why. A difficult question, because it touches on something much larger than sobriety. Asking yourself why you should stay sober is like strapping into a toboggan and launching yourself down a slippery slope. Instead of a fun ride down the side of a hill, it’s a heart-pumping bee-line straight into an existential crisis. Why am I here, why do I bother doing anything at all, what’s the meaning of life, and so on. Since the philosophers haven’t come to a consensus on any possible answers, it’s up to us to figure them out.
So why should a non-believer stay sober? Let’s see some of our options.
God
God is a perfectly respectable answer to the question and one that satisfies many people. That’s not to say it’s an easy choice to live with by any means. There are plenty of unique challenges that come with that sort of faith. However, I would do the entire topic a disservice by trying to enumerate them here. There are people much better equipped at doing that than I. And since this is a post on atheism, I’ll keep it simple: God works for some, but it’s foolish to assume that it’s the answer for everyone.
“Just Don’t Think About It”
As I’ve talked about previously, I’m a big fan of this option. You shouldn’t need to invoke an entire ethical framework to decide whether to make a cup of coffee or not. It’s not practical. Nothing would get done. By the time you calculate the amount of suffering that each child slave went though by grounding those beans and compare it to the pleasure and productivity you gain from drinking them, it would be too late in the day to have caffeine anyway.
The decision to stay sober is perhaps more consequential than a cup of coffee (although Camus may disagree). This is not to say that people can’t live happy, sober lives with this attitude. I’m just not one of them. If something horrible were to happen in my life, and I had no foundation to cling to after my world was rocked, there’d be little to stop me from getting high. “Just not thinking about it” is fine when you already have that foundational belief to fall back on. But if you don’t…enjoy your toboggan run.
Nihilism
Nope.
Other People
This starts to get at the heart of it, I think. Humans are, undoubtedly, social creatures. We live for others: our partners, our families, our friends. We’re people people. It’s amazing (and sometimes repulsive) what humans are capable of. We learn how to live by watching the way others live. How many times have you picked up a friend’s mannerisms or started talking like the main character of your favorite TV show? Life is the grand experiment. When we see someone’s experiment going well for them, we try it ourselves.
That’s basically the entire premise of AA (and every other fellowship). When freshly sober individuals see a happy sober person, they don’t believe them at first. Anyone with multiple years of sobriety either doesn’t really have a problem or they’re a liar. But freshly sober individuals are also desperate. They’ll try doing what the happy sober person does because they’re out of other options. Eventually, a really strange thing happens. These miserable sober people become happier. Not only that, they’ll realize that they are now being looked up to as well—a virtuous cycle.
Yourself
At the end of the day no one can make the choice for you. As Sartre was fond of saying, “we’re condemned to be free.” We have no choice but to make choices. Even if we’re not be responsible for where we find ourselves—where we’re born, who are parents are, what support we do or do not have—we’re still responsible for whatever decisions we make next. And ultimately, those are ours alone to make. Step by step, they create our life.
That’s terrifying.
Making a choice, giving meaning to something, asserting yourself in the world, it’s all incredibly scary to do. But if it wasn’t, I don’t think life would be as beautiful either. The writer doesn’t know if her novel is going to suck when she starts. Hell, she probably still doesn’t know if it’s any good by the time she’s finished. But she does it anyway. She gives it her best effort and if it does suck, she tries again—this time with better knowledge. As long as she doesn’t stop, she’ll get better. And by the end, she’ll have brought something beautiful into this world that never existed before.
But that’s the idealist in me.
A small update:
First of all, thank you to everyone who has read and subscribed. It’s great to see these weekly posts resonating with others. With that being said, don’t be alarmed when you don’t see a new one next week. I’m shifting into a lower gear. Moving forward, I plan to start posting once every two weeks give or take. Writing takes a lot of time and I’d like to dedicate that to the other meaningful areas of my life.
But don’t worry, like Jim Burwell, I’m not going anywhere.
Nice one, Matt. I love NA - I mean really love it. But only about 10% of it. I think the whole God thing is a real drag on the fellowship. The amount of times I've picked someone up who just got out of prison and on the walk to the meeting said "They're going to talk about God - and they're going to hold hands and pray at the end". It's at that point they've already made their decision to never go to another meeting. I believe addiction is a choice, not a disease. And we make bad choices when our lives are not fulfilling. Fellowships can help with such things, they can help us make better decisions. Other people can help. Historically loaded religious deities, not so much.