Russ,

Since I'm a so-called cradle Catholic who might just live long enough to turn 70 next August, maybe it's high time for me to take stock of just where I stand with the Christianity I was born and raised with. I also hope to celebrate 20 years of continuous and contented sobriety in early January, and I sometimes like to rattle a few cages both here and at AA meetings by saying that I haven't found it necessary to pick up a Bible in order to accomplish that.

Actually, I've been thinking about starting a board for recovering alcoholics who struggle with Christianity, and I promise you that I'm not trying to be mean-spirited or sarcastic when I say that. I haven't struggled with alcohol since some time in my first year, and I can no longer really say that I have faith or hope that the God of my own intuitive understanding will sustain me, because I already have a thick scrapbook of happy memories and can honestly say that I've added no new regrets to the pile for almost two decades.

But what I DID struggle with in the early years was undoing the identity based on perceptions of self, God and others and the whole pattern of co-dependent relationships that followed from those beliefs. So in my case, I've had to acknowledge that the foundation for my core beliefs had been laid in early childhood and then I had to plow back through a lot of memories to the times when these were planted and disconnect the wires one by one, asking myself each time if the symbols still had any meaning for me, and if so, exactly what that was. Only then could I sort out what to keep and what to discard, but in no case could I let people have the authoritative sway over me that they had when I was 4 or 5 and had no choice in the matter.

I think one reason I've gotten so much out of various online forums like this is that the basic Christian view of the world and the cosmos that was hardwired into my little psyche in infancy and toddlerhood wasn't something that I could just reject with the intellectual equipment I developed later on. I couldn't just wake up one day and decide that I was no longer the Catholic I was raised to be, but a Presbyterian, a Buddhist, a New Ager, an atheist or an agnostic because that made more sense to me intellectually. Trying to cope with it at that level of ideas didn't make it budge for the simple reason that I didn't get into it all with ideas in the first place.

I realized that I had outgrown that in every other facet of my life, and over time that childish piety had gotten me into enough trouble that I either had to examine it fearlessly or keep making the same mistakes in relationships over and over again by putting yet another personified deity or spokesman for same up on the same childish pedestal. The particular images and authority figures I'd been raised with weren't the problem, I eventually realized, but my own immaturity and unwillingness to admit that none of them would be there at all without my consent.

Thanks for writing, Nemorino. I understand everyone has a different life experience with faith. I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.

Russ

Well, I was kind of hoping that a group like this would come together on DS. I think there was another one but there were not enough active members. When I first started to drink heavily, I had come to a spot in my life where I thought I knew it all, therefore I ought to be able handle things and exercise freedom.

There is a loose paraphrase from Paul which states that "everything is permissible but not everthing is benificial. I must have missed that one in my 20's, because alcohol hasn't been benficial to me, and gave me no freedom- only enslavement.

It's sort of a catch 22- you drink and it causes you to lose faith, then you blame God or your church for the fact that you have no faith (I'm not pointing at anyone here). Anyway, sobriety has ignited an new interest in my Christian faith - and alcohol was a huge obstacle in the way of true faith.

I'll check out your group.

I will check out your group too.I need to be with God in a bad way.