When I was first being dragged into my first 12 Step program by circumstances, the one huge roadblock for me was what I called “The ‘G’ Word” – God.

While still in my “auditing” phase, I found myself putting away chairs after a meeting, telling the person who was to become my first sponsor that I couldn’t be part of a religious program.

“It’s not a religious program, it’s a spiritual program,” he responded.

I continued to argue with him, pointing to all of the places in the Steps where it said “God” or “Him.” He stood there for a moment with a wry smile and then said “Okay, leave it out.”

I stared at him like a robot that had been put into some kind of a loop. What the heck did he mean “leave it out?”

“Right now, your disease is looking for any reason to head out that door,” he said to me. “What could be better than the excuse that this program is going to push some religion on you? So just leave it out. You can live sober working the 12 Steps for the rest of your life and nobody will ever tell you what to believe or that you have to believe.”

This made all the difference in my life. I desperately needed what a 12 Step program had to offer, but if it meant becoming what I vehemently detested (dogmatic religious people), I wanted to no part of it. If, however, I could find a way to work the program without signing up for that, I was willing to give it a try.

I’m a firm believer that moving on with the Steps does NOT require a belief in any kind of formal Higher Power. It simply requires that I see myself as a lesser power – at least in terms of recovering from compulsive overeating.

The key to recovery, I believe, is in the 12 Step process as outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s not a matter of a conscious contact with a Higher Power. Not that having that contact doesn’t help, but it’s not required.

No matter what you believe or don’t believe about a Higher Power, you probably think it has been around since before 1935. Yet people were dying without hope of alcoholism until then. And people were dying of compulsive overeating without hope until 1960.

Some of those people who died were members of the clergy. In my 35+ years in program, I have known priests, ministers, rabbis, nuns, cantors – all of whom I’m sure had a wonderful conscious contact with a Higher Power – and yet could not recover. They needed the Steps and the program of recovery outlined in the pages of the Big Book.

I believe that this program, the Steps and the Big Book was my Higher Power’s gift to the 20th Century. It is the rowboat that was sent for us to help us get to the shore of recovery. All we have to do is get in and row. That’s what all those priests, ministers and rabbis had to do – and have done – get in the rowboat and row.

So if you’re an atheist, agnostic, or a “I don’t know what the heck to believe about this thing you guys call ‘God’ and a ‘Higher Power’…” person – no problem. You don't have to share my belief in a link from a Higher Power to the rowboat – you just need to believe in the rowboat! The only faith you need is faith in this process of recovery.

Finding faith in the recovery process is easy for most of us, because we can look around the rooms and see the proof that the process works. We then simply need to contrast that against our lifelong inability to achieve the same results.

There were two important things that I needed to start on the road to recovery: to realize that there was a power greater than me that could help me with my problem, and that power was the program itself – at the very least. It’s fine if a person believes in a more defined idea of a Higher Power – but it’s not necessary to get better. A more important thing for me was the realization that – at least when it comes to my addiction – I was, and will always be, insane.

The biggest problem is that this insanity is subtle and very specific. If I were really nuts, I would have understood that I couldn’t trust my decision making abilities. But I – like so many of us – had used my brain to accomplish so many marvelous things. So, in terms of this one specific area – putting down my substance and keeping it down – I was insane by one dictionary definition: a state of mind that prevents normal perception.

For my whole life, I had always said, “I know what’s best for me.” But did I really? How about with the food?

So the real key to recovery is this: surrender. I had to be willing to throw out my old ideas as to what was “best for me” and trust someone else. This is also part of the surrender process. I wanted recovery on the cafeteria plan. I latched onto the program phrase “take what you want and leave the rest” as something I could use in guiding my recovery. It didn’t work. As much as I liked cafeterias, a cafeteria plan in this program is destined to failure. Why? Because the cafeteria plan is not surrender, it’s negotiation. As an oldtimer in Los Angeles says, “You cannot negotiate with your disease. It will always win – and you will lose.”

The key to getting better in program is still the same for atheists, agnostics, and believers alike: the Steps and the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the first three Steps – when one is first getting abstinent are the same for everyone:

1. Realize your lifetime efforts at controlling your food and eating have never produced more than limited and/or temporary results.

2. Realize that the problem is you – more specifically your brain. Once admitting this fact, come to believe that there is a program that can help. Within that program are people in that program who are doing what you cannot do: conquering their disease by admitting defeat.

3. Once realizing this, find a sponsor as soon as possible and then take direction. A sponsor has the objective view of your disease that you do not. You, on the other hand, have a disease that affects your decision making process around food and will try to get you to negotiate instead of fully surrendering. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t work. As it often said: “You can’t fix a broken brain with a broken brain.”

What do you have to lose? We will gladly refund your pain if you decide to leave. As someone once said “surrender is just joining the winning side.” Why not join those who have succeeded?