Andrew Lloyd Webber Reveals He Is a Recovering Alcoholic, Says He 'Secretly' Drank for Years After Telling People He Had Quit

Agreed. As someone who is not at all trusting of religious groups, I reluctantly went to a couples therapy thing through a church. It was actually very good. There was some prayer but it wasn't like anyone gave a shit that I just sat their quietly during the several minutes out of the 90 minutes. This was some kind of program that cost something and then you've got the concept of leading and facilitating things. At first I was down on it, like these Jesus freaks don't have anyone here leading this with a therapy background. But all the concepts in the program tied back to sound psychological concepts. It was not rooted in scripture. And the way the whole thing was facilitated, it was great. You don't hear other people's stories. When you're going through things it can be very isolating. If you've got the opportunity to be a part of a safe environment with sound practices that can help people. One that also offers you community, you should at least try it.

That’s not what they meant. The group *itself* is a f****** cult, separate from any “higher power” or religious views.

The second and third steps, and you have to do the first 9 in order, are “Came to believe that a Power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity” and “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care and direction of God as we understood Him”. I capitalized as they do. Power, God, and Him. Each meeting begins and ends with a prayer. Religion is the basis, the foundation, the core of the program. And that’s fine. I mentioned above it helps and has helped a LOT of people and I’m glad it exists. But the frank truth is this: if you do get sober, god is not responsible for that unless he is also responsible for you becoming a drunk. More likely you were responsible for both of those things happening. The irritating thing about AA is (to me) that they squarely put responsibility for being a drunk on you and your personality defects, and god gets credit for you becoming sober. I could never get past that. They also annoyingly believe you can’t get sober without the steps. You can stop drinking but you’re just a dry drunk until you do all the god stuff and the steps. But I’ve never seen more people claiming to be sober for many many years and in the same share say they’d be drunk right now if it weren’t this meeting in their life. If you are the kind of person it works for, you should embrace it IMO. Nothing is worse than being a severe alcoholic, functional or otherwise. It’s miserable and you don’t really get that until you’ve got several months of not being that anymore.

It’s word mincing. It’s all about about letting go of self determination and putting it in the hands of your higher power. Your closet door (your example) isn’t determining shit in your life. They try to water this down to get people in, but the focus isn’t “spiritual”, the dear leader wasn’t praying to his closet door, and AA is indeed a religion based organization despite their attempts to spin it otherwise. It helps and has helped uncountable people, but it is religious, and to the point of someone above is a bit culty.

There are actually non-religious support groups that can be way more beneficial. And there are even virtual meetings and meetings based on age groups (which I enjoyed because I didn’t know any other late twenties people that were trying to stop drinking. If I tried going to AA I probably would’ve been set back in my sobriety journey because I would’ve been so turned off from support groups because AA is religious. I wouldnt be able to relate or buy into the program if religion is involved because I believe monotheism is such a cult. I would’ve thought I was being sold a bag of BS if someone tried to bring God into a meeting or hint that it’s the way to remain sober.

That's a great reason to go to AA decades ago. Now there are other much better options.

Yoga is not prayer whatsoever. It is physical discipline which along with meditation (mental discipline) aims to keep your body in the best shape. The fact that is arose from India doesn’t tie it to the rituals that became part of various forms Hinduism. Hinduism itself - before the Brahmans and priests made it a business and defined the self-serving caste system - was a philosophy of achieving resonance with your surroundings.