Switching from Addiction to God is Not a Solution
Why God beliefs, prayer, and forgiveness are
not a solution to addiction—they make it worse.
By Richard Clark
Very few people accept that addiction is a mental illness. Addiction has predictable symptoms, both mental and social, and is about neglect and self-harm. One serious problem is addicts have been indoctrinated into believing they are defective people with bad characters. In my forty years of practise, it’s been consistent that during addiction-related therapy it is particularly difficult for an addict to sincerely change their self-perception from ‘I’m a bad person’ to having a legitimate illness.
I ask you to take two things at face value. The first is that addiction is rooted in dysfunctional (broken) relationships. The second is to understand that there are two classes of symptoms: there’s psychological symptoms and social symptoms. To understand that god-based recovery is less than spiritual I will focus on broken relationships and the social symptoms.
First: For addicts, broken or dysfunctional relationships exist at three levels: (i) a broken relationship in the addict’s mind—the relationship within themselves towards themselves, (ii) broken relationships with people, and (iii) broken relationships with things: distractions, rituals or substances.
Second: Addicts display five social symptoms. 1 – negligent self-harm and harm to others, 2 – dishonesty and evasiveness, 3 – arrogance that conceals a deeper insecurity, 4 – selfishness and neglect of other people’s rights or entitlements, 5 – irresponsible and defiant. Addicts live with these life conditions: broken relationships and harmful social symptoms.
The 1939 AA book Alcoholics Anonymous and its twelve-step solution revolved around a sinner’s character defects and God. Bill Wilson’s conviction that alcoholics are sinners and religion’s interference in mental health is plainly evident. His presentation of illness gets two very brief references, and the religious views of sinner, flawed character, and weak faith are consistently prominent throughout the book and stories. Mr. Wilson’s solution is indoctrination into Christianity
My view is any indoctrination into ‘God-faith-prayer-forgiveness’ or compliance with religious dogma is not a solution, it’s a new problem. The only reliable solution is to ignore religion and, with guidance, voluntarily achieve a psychology of compassionate harmony. This is often glibly referred to as a spiritual lifestyle, but religion does not allow for a ‘spiritual’ lifestyle. The AA steps do not address illness, they address character defects and a faithless personality, which makes us sinners. The Christian view of ‘recovery’ is we need faith, redemption, and God’s forgiveness.
Addicts live with broken relationships on three levels and have five general social symptoms. Granted, this is an over-simplified description of addiction, but it is accurate. For more information:
There exists a few basic claims and obvious beliefs within religious dogma. These are outlined in the right column in the chart that follows. Religions promote these beliefs (the right column) as true and are adamant their unproven speculations about God and sin and faith are true, sacred, and never to be questioned. Religion protects itself by insisting that anything bad said about religion is irreverent and in poor taste.
Here is a chart comparing active addiction (left) and religion (right).
| The five social symptoms of addiction… | The five beliefs and related behaviours of religion. |
| 1. Self-harm and harm to others — the addict’s determined commitment to self-destructive behavior and negligence towards others. This is harm, sometimes hate, or degradation towards oneself or others seen in the illness of addiction. | 1. Self-harm and harm to others — repression and self-shame of sexuality; women believing they are spiritually less than men; promoting gender inequality; harshly judging oneself as a sinner, inadequate to meet God’s laws, seeing oneself as a morally corrupt and doomed sinner. This is self-harm, repression, self-hate, or self-degradation. |
| 2. Dishonesty, lying, and manipulation of others are in the character of an addict from aspects of self-doubt, shame, guilt, cognitive dissonance, repetitive inadequacy. These internal mental symptoms require dishonesty or concealment. | 2. Dishonesty, lying — strenuously denying that religion is speculation; presenting hell, heaven, God, or miracles as facts. This is dishonest. Manipulating interpretations to maintain control; dishonestly claiming to ‘know’ God’s preferences; insisting that God exists. To insist that speculation and opinion are facts is dishonest and abusive to manipulate insecure people to claim these speculations are truths. |
| 3. Arrogance and hiding insecurity and anxiety. Arrogance is a concealment strategy addicts use to protect themselves from examination. Most often, in the face of ‘demanding’ and perceptive questions from others the addict has no reply to give so they resort to #5, defiance. | 3. Arrogance and hiding insecurity: Righteously believing all other faiths or atheists and agnostics are wrong or weak: Arrogance. Never admitting the possibility of error or wrongdoing and ignoring transgressions and abuses: Righteousness. In the face of perceptive questions about truth, religious people resort to convoluted double talk that makes no sense and blame the questioners for having no faith. |
| 4. Selfishness and callousness in the way addicts avoid admitting past transgressions. They are evasive and indifferent to responsibility and the painful emotional experience of others—the avoidance of responsibility and compassion. Addiction justifies neglect. | 4. Selfishness that their faith is the best belief system and that all other beliefs are deficient. It’s calloused to insult others and insist any different opinion is by its very existence inferior. Righteousness. It’s selfish and callous to insist their own brand of speculation is the superlative opinion and degrade, punish, or kill anyone who disagrees. |
| 5. Addicts are irresponsible and defiant and complain (a lot) which are variations and shades of blaming. There’s no accountability for lies, concealment or abuse. Addiction is a carefully orchestrated evasion of responsibility. | 5. Religion’s irresponsibility is evasion and defiance to intelligent inquiry when we examine the long, confirmed history of abuse, torture, molestations, rape, persecution, violence and degradation citing that ‘Our opinion of the one true God is the only real one.’ This is religion’s extreme evasion of responsibility and defiant callousness. |
| The three levels of relationship conflict in addiction: | The three levels of relationship conflict in religion: |
| Relationship Conflict – Internal — secretly believing they are defective or incompetent. Generally, addicts look down upon themselves and at some level believe they are bad and unworthy, a burden, and they “should know better.” | Relationship Conflict – Internal — Believing they are failures in the sight of God and inadequate sinners needing salvation and/or forgiveness from priests and God. Believers never measure up to some (vague) unattainable standard of faith; look down upon themselves and at some level believe they are bad. |
| External Relationships with other people—there is relationship conflict that cannot be resolved or that the addict cannot protect themselves from. Other people are out to get them or are untrustworthy. Anger against self and others is common. | External Relationships with other people. Everyone is a sinner. Atheists, agnostics, and those of other faiths are perverted and misdirected. Everyone else is misguided when compared to their own beliefs and their own projections of their God. Conflict and judgement exist between faiths (Jews vs. Christians vs. Muslims) and between different sects of any one faith. |
| Broken Relationships in Rituals or behaviours. Self-degradation and harm within the addiction of choice: alcohol, drugs, sex, hunting for relationships, romance (ritual), shopping, spending, internet, work (distractions). All addicts have broken relationships with rituals, substances, or distractions. | Broken and abusive rituals: harm, degradation and conflict in rituals of prayer and worship, subservience, sinning, bad faith, being inadequate. There’s intellectual conflict and doubt about theories like transubstantiation, chaos about tithing, sacrifice, myths about elaborate costumes, getting ‘all dressed up’ for worship (impression management), stentorian opinions expressed as fact are dishonest; expectations of rapture and reward in rituals and dogma, often leading to self-criticism about poor faith, and being a corrupt human—degrading and broken relationships with rituals, substances, or distractions. |
Left Column: Addiction requires delusions about life, blaming, neurotic mental structures, dishonesty, destructive self-harm, irresponsibility, perpetual relationship conflict, dishonesty, criticizing and judging others, and harmful rituals. Right Colum: Religion requires speculation about God, faith, beliefs about miracles, the power of prayer, and self-deprecation to be accepted as facts. It fosters dishonesty and claims that everyone is inherently a sinner and must pray to they God they created for rescue from the problems created by the religion. Religion requires judging and condemning of others, obsessive rituals, being dishonest and arrogant, and demands God and ‘the church’ be more sacred than compassion or equality.
Be mindful of the few truths for atheists and agnostics from Bill Wilson’s book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of what’s in the book is decidedly religious and of no real merit in addressing addiction. Here are four truths that should be relied upon. 1 – Sobriety or legitimate abstinence is essential for recovery. 2 – Rigorous honesty is never an option. It’s so significant he explained its importance before he discussed God or the steps. 3 – Addicts must let go of old ideas, rationalizations and justifications. 4 – Criticizing and blaming (often concealed in complaining) is to be eliminated from speech and thought.
Upon reflection, religion encourages participation in self-deprecating rituals. Religion is dishonest when it insists that probable fictions and miracles are facts. It clings to old ideas from the dark ages, and religion criticizes and persecutes people of different beliefs. All rather unspiritual.
Browbeating anyone who is desperate, scared, confused, full of shame and guilt (meaning addicts) into committing to God, faith, prayer, and forgiveness, is a lateral switch from the left to the right column. Traditional AA thinks religion is better just because society thinks it’s better. Society also thinks that shopping and spending addictions, severe credit card debt, and obsessions with body image are acceptable.
In a seminar I once described religion as trying to force obedience by instilling guilt, making empty promises to its parishioners (the hostages), and threatening blackmail. Religion insists people are sinners from birth—everyone’s a hostage. The ransom demands are prayer, obedience to priests and dogma, submission, self-hate, faith, tithing. Meet religion’s ransom demands and religion will set you free, God will save you, help you get sober, grant you relief from suffering, and maybe even let you into heaven. But if you don’t agree to religion’s demands, you’ll remain a flawed sinner, God will be displeased, you’ll continue to act out in torment and probably go to hell. That’s blackmail.
Switching from addiction to religion is substituting the harmful and self-deprecating issues of addiction for the similar views of religion. But… if a person switches to religion society approves of that. A society that approves of religion gives us permission to be unspiritual.
A ‘spiritual lifestyle’ of self-respect, honesty, equality, compassion, responsibility is not available in addiction or religion. Recovery from addiction requires, at the very minimum, two things. The first is a divorce from the arrogance, conflict, self-deprecation, and authorized abuse that is religion. The second is attaining a responsible psychology specific to the illness of addiction that takes you into compassionate harmony. That’s when life gets reliably interesting.
Kind regards
Richard Clark
Richard Clark has been clean and sober since September 1980 and has always been open about his atheism. He is now sober 44 years with no relapses, active in his weekly agnostic meeting, and never concealed his atheism. Professionally, Richard has been a therapist in addictions work since 1985. For several decades he’s been committed to the ancient Buddhist stream of Arhat consciousness and been recognized as a Pratyeka-buddha, pre-Theravada practise (and still working at it). He offers on-line private counselling sessions with clients from across Canada. Richard has written three books and is presently writing a fourth book detailing the psychology of Buddhism, the healthy psychology of atheism, and therapy for counsellors and addicts. There is more information about him at Green Room Lectures.
For a PDF of today’s article, click here: Switching from Addiction to God is not a Solution.
To learn more about his book, click here: The Addiction Recovery Handbook.
Just what I needed this Sunday morning. I’ve written the four truths in the front of my Big Book.
Hello Tommy
Thanks for letting me know you wrote the truths in your book. For me, many years ago, I had to sort through Mr. Wilson’s book to find kernels of psychological truth buried underneath religious propaganda. These were the four prominent ones. Thanks for posting a comment. Kind regards…
Really like article. Idea of Jesus as a role model for spiritual values of love and service, and helping people in need that if emulated between alcoholics in Groups sharing their stories helping each other…makes sense. Sponsor and/Group give role model or unhealthy alcoholic/addict to get “unstuck” and practice behaviorial modification with other alcoholics in a Group.
Why it requires Jesus to be God that you pray to for miracles, perhaps gives hope, and need to be “born again” through conversion just makes it mystical, but basically its practising unlearning alcoholism in same way we learned it. If using alcoholic as bad medicine to treat mental conditions and stress, those need to be treated too.
Behaviorial science Book “Chatter” talks about ompositive coach’s voice in your head (we all hear voices in one form or another). Saints and God’s, and positive coaches as voices in your head to be managed, a psychological spiritual thing to me, not a religious God thing.
It’s nice you liked the article, George. Kind regards…
A clear explanation of the real problem I faced and a better wording of the solution I found by hook or crook. I started reading thinking it was too complicated to present to the people at this morning’s Beyond Belief meeting, but again and again the truth of what the author said so clearly struck me.
Anyway, I like it and probably want another book. Thanks.
Hello Lance
My experience, both personal in my own therapy years ago, and in my work, is that “addiction” has been so over-simplified and addicts ignored, it’s hard to make any progress in resolving it. My own view of society and addiction and religion was summed up in 1920: “The hubbub of a marching band going nowhere. The drum is beaten but the procession does not advance.” T.S. Eliot, ‘The Sacred Wood’. Understanding how complicated addiction is is necessary to get out of it. Thank you for your comment.
Thanks so much, Richard. I have The Addiction Recovery Handbook in my e-shopping Cart, and I’m looking forward to reading more.
Everything here tracks with my experience. Popularly referred to as a “biopsychosocial” disorder, my addiction is very much associated with disconnection and recovery started with connection, first with a healing recovery community but also finding my authentic self and integrating healthily with the larger community.
I am at home in 12-step communities and feel a part of the larger recovery community, which includes other peer-to-peer communities based on CBT, the 8-fold path, positive psychology, etc.
I recently read Gabor Mate’s reference to the need for “response-ability,” a play on (personal) responsibility that speaks to the human need for both connection and authenticity. The community and our self-advocacy need the “ability” to “respond” with unabashed candour.
This is vital for atheists (as you articulate), or, more broadly, people who don’t connect with the idea of the Big Book, a higher power that a) has a plan, b) answers prayers, and c) intervenes in the lives of addicts needing to recover or find parking, or choosing this job over another job. Many subscribe to such a worldview, and recovery works. That’s good for them (as far as I can see). You challenge this belief; I’ll look forward to reading more. I observe believers and befriend them–I can’t speak to their experience.
For the rest of us, certainly for me, connection (with a self and community) can’t be at the expense of authenticity. I need to candidly speak my truth, hopefully with no fear of ridicule, hostility or dissuasion. This is a prerequisite to thriving in recovery from addiction.
Thanks again, Richard, Roger, et al.
Hello Joe
So much to agree on… Atheist or atheist-agnostics being more outspoken and assertive is slowly happening. As you might imagine, I am outspoken about it and this is not well received by religious types. I am planning two future articles for posting — one on the abuses inherent in forgiveness (forgiveness is a bad deal for compassionate harmony) and the other on the importance of learning how to talk about atheist recovery with conviction. I sometimes remind myself of the words of Ngawang Zangpo (Tibetan Buddhist). “Even if we identify out inner state as that of a beginner, we can still console ourselves with the knowledge of the path and the result ahead of us are well known, well mapped, and well trod. After reading this book, enlightenment may seem just as distant, but it will feel less vague and mysterious.” Thanks for your observations and comments. Kind regards…
Excellent, Richard! A very methodical presentation of insights and observations you have obviously spent a great deal of time and effort mulling over.
I’ll be sure to keep in mind for future reference your handy chart comparing active addiction and religion — well laid out!
I noticed a sentence in the article that triggered my alarm bells, as it’s rarely discussed in addiction circles for various reasons, primarily because it’s considered an “outside issue” for us, in AA.
You write, “Society also thinks that shopping and spending addictions, severe credit card debt, and obsessions with body image are acceptable.” This gestures toward a “wider” social and political issue that at least you and some other critics mention as problematic — if not society at large.
Yet, who today wants to acknowledge and discuss our contemporary addiction to fetishized commodity production and distribution, as well as our blindness to current enchanted market forces and relationships — the “invisible hand” of trickle down neo-liberal economics — that bear striking similarities to religious practices?
Ah, but that conversation is for another day and perhaps another article.
Hello John
A significant part of my book (The Addiction Recovery Handbook) is devoted to explaining as best I can in 400 pages both society’s and religion’s disapproval of the gruesome four addictions (morbid alcohol consumption, street drugs, sex, and gambling) and the myriad socially-approved addictions like spending, romance, shopping, exercise, travel, cosmetic surgery both doctors and patients, celebrity worship, religion (a nasty addiction in itself) and several more. The general defiance to responsibility and truth in society are actually a neurosis inherent to the illness. Society reflects a larger and complex version of an individual addict’s self-protection. As you mention — blindness. Oh well,,, much more to be said in my next book. Thank you for your considered and thoughtful reply. R.
This is one of the most helpful articles I have read from AA agnostica. Nothing entirely new to my previous or current understanding but it pulls so much together in a very insightful and clear way. Just what I needed to bolster my strength and create greater ease in my non belief and personal tolerance ( much needed at the moment) towards the intolerant believers in AA.
Hello Brendan
I hear so often that the intolerant believers in AA are not willing to mind their own business and are determined to “convert” everyone to their brand of religion. This is a common thing among most religious believers which is both insulting to atheist/agnostic types and very tiresome. There is actually a psychology of insecurity behind this and I’m considering an article to explain why this happens sometime in the next few months. Me, personally, I no longer attend regular or traditional AA meetings, they are too dysfunctional for me to sit through. Thank you for taking the time to reply. Kind regards, R.