Help can sometimes come from aboveflickr: jackpeasephotography

This is my last column and the subject matter seems fitting. Over the past two weeks I have really struggled with sobriety. Too few meetings, too much stress and the dark, cold weather have led me to a place where I am fearing relapse. I am not trying to turn you into my confessor; I say this because the only thing that has got me through these last weeks is God.

This is a dangerous statement. But it is a concept that lies at the heart of recovery. I have written about putting the drink down and trying to find a new medicine. Meetings, fellowship, and service all help, but at the end of the day developing a relationship with a power greater than yourself is what gets you through the winter. The idea of God as a power greater than yourself is not an exclusivist concept. I know many atheist recovering addicts whose God is meetings and the bond between alcoholics, Group Of Drunks is a favoured acronym, as is Good Orderly Direction. The point is not what your higher power is; there is no test, it is an individual decision, the point is surrendering to something greater than ourselves and looking to this something for direction in our lives. I know, it still sounds trite. Another acronym used for God is Gift Of Desperation, the idea that when you are so beaten you will do or believe in anything so long as things will get better. This was the case for many of us.

But faith is not necessarily hokey; I have already said that I was raised by evangelical Christians. I went to Christian camps all my childhood and as a teen believed God was speaking to me; I know how manipulative organised religion can be, especially with children. And yet this does not disqualify all forms of faith, Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists highlights that there are positive sides to belief. This can be seen in the prominence of Secular Church movements, too. Indeed, aren’t rationality, helping others, beauty, calm, serenity and the spirit of the universe all different expressions of faith? Aren’t they all just examples of powers greater than ourselves? That for me is what faith within recovery is about. It is not a set of rules – I have never understood the notion of a prescriptive faith. It’s about calmness, a reassurance and a belief that you no longer have to be running the show trying to get life to turn out exactly as you want it. A knowledge that everything will be ok and that sometimes all you need to do is just be. This is what God is to me and it has given me a calm that I never had before.

It has also helped me better empathise with religion and my parents. My dad now runs a prophecy group and actually in a round about way we have come to understand each other more than ever. Because even though God means a totally different thing to us on the one hand, on the other it is exactly the same; A power greater than ourselves that we look to for direction in our lives By direction I don’t really know what I mean, but Justice Potter Stewart’s famous line in identifying pornography, "I know it when I see it," comes to mind. I no longer believe that God speaks to me, at least in the way I used to, and yet I think there is certainly a clarity that comes from meditation, silence or doing the next right thing.

This is why God is important for us, for me. Because when I get back from a meeting and put my clothes on the bed there is nothing stopping me from walking to the kitchen picking up my friends bottle of wine and locking myself in my room with it. Sometimes it is only the belief that I am okay, that everything will be okay, and that I am looked after that keeps me from making that walk. And so if you have been reading these columns over the past eight weeks trying to rack up the courage to come to a meeting, or if later in your life you step through the doorway and ask for help, don’t be alarmed if you see the word God. It’s okay, it really is.