[fragmede]

That's a question for a priest or philosophy professor, and won't be solved in the HN comments section. The underlying principle is that it's a disease that overrides your conscious brain, and you have to give in that fact before you can make progress curing the disease. Like, your brain can be absolutely screaming don't go in that bar, don't go in that bar, and where do you end up? Puking your guts out in that bar's bathroom.

That's hugely shameful when that's the third time that week, and it's only Wednesday. Processing that internally, without coming to grips that it really isn't you doing that seems impossible without "turning your will over" to the god of burritos or whatever else you want as your higher power. That doesn't absolve you of the harm you've caused yourself and others, but it does help you move on to the next step, one of which is up make amends (if it won't cause more harm).

Look, I'm not saying AA is the be-all-end-all of addiction treatment. It isn't. One of the AA things is they say there's no medication for when we're on a thread discussing medication for addiction! But the very first meeting I went to, there was a young woman who was militantly atheist but was years sober and had really turned her life around. If being in the same room as people reciting the Lords prayer will throw you into apoplectic fits, don't go. If you're suffering and need help, and are able to be in the same room though, I do honestly and fervently believe it's worth trying, if only because ozemoic isn't cheap while AA meetings are free to attend.

[giraffe_lady]

I thought it was pretty clear reading my comment but let me be explicit: I didn't go to thousands of AA meetings out of anthropological curiosity. I know what addiction is like and what AA has to offer.

My point was that AA is religious, and so is not an appropriate activity for the state to compel participation in. You were saying it's not religious, and now you're saying well, it doesn't matter that it is. I think it does.

I'm a (more or less) lifelong christian fwiw. I'm not speaking about my own discomfort but I have observed that people without a preexisting religious practice, or a desire to acquire one, do not have high success rates in AA.

[fragmede]

Apologies, I wasn't trying to have you feel like you needed to state that explicitly.

My personal opinion is still that there exist meetings and chapters that aren't religious. There are also some that absolutely are. You're free to disagree that non-religious ones don't exist. More to the point though, I don't think ratholing on an HN comment thread on the exact degree of the religioslity of "turning your will over to" the god of "really neat looking leaves" vs "it's spiritual, not religious", vs no, it's actually religious, even if we were able to reach some common ground; I don't think that's going to change underlying psychology or nature of addiction.

If all someone ever gets from going to meetings is how much they hate Christianity, yeah, they're not going to get relief and aren't likely to succeed. But if someone's able to get over that hump and find the right meetings where it's not too overbearing for them, I know it's possible for people to succeed.