Incoming!

Through heat, sand and sniper fire, their AA group kept them sober to show up and do their jobs

By Eric C.
Traverse City, Michigan, USA
Copyright © AA Grapevine (October, 2017)

Not only are there lots of atheists with decades of sobriety in AA, there have always been atheists in foxholes.

A graduate of a Christian high school, I enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 19. I had already discovered that the more I studied the scriptures and the more earnestly I prayed, the more I doubted the existence of any kind of God. I’ve rediscovered this many more times through the years.

Five years into what would become a 25-year career in the Marines, I was diagnosed by a physician as an “acute, chronic alcoholic.” A Vietnam veteran with an impeccable service record, I was hospitalized briefly and introduced to AA.

I was happy when they told me at my first meeting that AA is “spiritual, not religious,” and “not allied with any sect [or] denomination.” But my spirits fell when the meeting began with a prayer, followed by a ritual recitation that invoked the name of God no fewer than six times (“How It Works”). They then closed the meeting by saying the Lord’s Prayer.

It was instantly clear to me that AA was a religious cult in denial about being religious. So I didn’t come back to any meetings for years. In the meantime, on several occasions I almost died from my alcoholism.

My disease progressed through an additional five years in the Marines. The Commandant of the Marine Corps then ordered me to the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, for treatment of alcoholism. At least two good things happened to me the second time I was hospitalized.

First, a long-sober Marine master gunnery sergeant who was a counselor at the treatment facility helped square me away on the Higher Power question. He pointed out that all Marines have the same Higher Power – the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

In addition, the master gunny noted that he and I had both been in harm’s way earlier in our careers. We talked about a phenomenon with which we were both quite familiar, something known as “esprit de corps.”

“Esprit” is the French word for “spirit.” And “corps” refers to a body of troops, in this case, our Corps of Marines.

We knew from hard experience that when the situation is grave, Marines help each other survive by working together. In fact, another favorite term among Marines, “gung ho,” is an ancient Chinese battle cry that means “working together.”

The master gunny and I had both been in situations where we and those around us were scared out of our minds. But we knew that when Marines support each other selflessly, we can and do overcome our fear. In doing so, we gain an ability to beat seemingly insurmountable and life-threatening odds.

We knew that the bond Marines feel with each other, especially in combat, is best described as spiritual. This is clearly not a supernatural power, but a deeply human power that has been proven throughout history to play a decisive role in turning potential defeat into victory on the battlefield.

“Esprit de corps is the same kind of spiritual power that AA has,” the master gunny explained. “People in AA call this power whatever they want.”

The second good thing that happened to me in treatment was that I found my first sponsor. I noticed him at an AA meeting they drove us to in a hospital van one evening. He was the one guy in the room at the end of the meeting whose lips weren’t moving when everybody else was holding hands and reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

An atheist with 10 years of sobriety at the time, my first sponsor explained to me that even though much of the AA program borrows from religion, AA works just fine anyway, as long as you don’t drink, go to lots of meetings and take as many of AA’s suggestions as you can stomach.

Working the Twelve suggested Steps to the best of my ability wouldn’t kill me, my sponsor said. Even as an atheist, he explained, I could work the Steps exactly the same way everybody else works them – imperfectly and according to my own understanding.

Before my first year in sobriety ended, my career as a Marine rocketed into a new dimension. The Commandant ordered me back to college, where I completed my bachelor’s degree. Shortly after my second anniversary in sobriety, people were saluting me and addressing me as “sir.”

My attainment of officer rank led to a number of new and exciting assignments all over the world. Each time I moved, I found a new AA sponsor locally and tried to attend 90 meetings in 90 days. I also began sponsoring other men and got involved in AA service work.

During the Persian Gulf War in 1990, I was able to attend a few AA meetings at the Marine headquarters in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. However, I spent most of my time out in the desert on the front lines, where I enjoyed reading and re-reading letters I received from my many AA friends back in the U.S.

For the record, Marines don’t have “foxholes.” We call them “fighting holes.” While under fire during Operation Desert Storm, I observed an important difference between the atheists I knew and others who might be inclined to spend time on their knees praying for divine protection. I found that the atheists could be counted on to do things that are actually useful, like digging better fighting holes.

Some years later, I found myself in Somalia in the midst of a civil war characterized by sectarian violence, famine and human suffering on a Biblical scale. Even though we could find no sign of a “loving God” anywhere in Somalia, I and a few other military personnel formed a group conscience and decided to start holding AA meetings in beautiful downtown Mogadishu.

Our little group opted to meet outdoors in the shade of a tree because of the heat. That turned out to be a mistake. Our first meeting was broken up by sniper fire. Although the sniper was clearly a lousy shot, we decided to change locations.

Our second meeting was broken up by sniper fire too. At that point, we decided to move our meeting indoors behind concrete walls and simply ignore the heat. It was our group’s little joke that we closed our meetings “in the usual manner” by all shouting, “Incoming!”

About a year after returning to the U.S., I married a woman I’d met in AA who is also an atheist. We had two children before I retired from the Marines. Today, our kids are grown and doing well.

As of this writing I have 33 years of sobriety in AA and my wife has 26 years. Our lives are as happy, joyous and free as anyone we know in our Fellowship.

But some in AA still “feel sorry” for atheists, just as our co-founder Dr. Bob said he felt about unbelievers in the Big Book. Some too remain convinced that those who say they won’t believe are “belligerent” and have a “savage” mind, as co-founder Bill W. asserted in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

My original atheist AA sponsor, with whom I remain in touch, has 43 years of sobriety in AA and is still clearly a thorn in the side of some of the bleeding deacons in his own home group.

In recent years, I’ve a played a role in organizing a couple of secular “We Agnostics” meetings of AA in my community. I’ve also tried to be more vocal at other AA meetings about my lack of belief in any kind of God, especially the miracle-working supernatural being that Bill W. and Dr. Bob believed in.

If AA is to survive and thrive in a world where increasing numbers of people, especially young people, are leaving religious beliefs behind them, as I did, my hope is that we will open the doors of our Fellowship a little wider.

Eric is an active member of AA and has attended both secular AA international conferences (Santa Monica in 2014 and Austin in 2016). A few years ago he gave a talk about secular AA in Traverse City, Michigan. It was posted on AA Agnostica on March 18, 2015 and you can listen to it right here: Eric’s Talk – Our We Agnostics Meeting.