The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking. A.A.’s Third Tradition

The Beyond Belief group of Alcoholics Anonymous is Toronto's first openly agnostic A.A. group. What does it mean to say that an A.A. group is agnostic? That is explained in a preamble we read at our meetings along with the traditional “What Is A.A.?”

Agnostic groups in A.A. attempt to maintain a tradition of free expression, and conduct a meeting where alcoholics may feel free to express any doubts or disbeliefs they may have, and to share their own personal form of spiritual experience, their search for it, or their rejection of it. We do not endorse or oppose any form of religion or atheism. Our only wish is to assure suffering alcoholics that they can find sobriety in A.A. without having to accept anyone else's beliefs or having to deny their own.A Preamble for Agnostic Meetings
-- Adapted from AgnosticAANYC.org

We welcome people of all stripes — agnostics, free-thinkers, atheists, as well as the deeply religious — anyone who has a desire to stop drinking and is willing to get on with the task. We do not require a belief in a deity, but we don't actively discourage anyone's beliefs either. We wish to invite everybody, regardless of their personal beliefs, into a life of happiness in sobriety.

Our meetings are held weekly on Thursday evenings at 6:30PM at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), located at 252 Bloor Street West, near the St. George subway station. If you are unfamiliar with the area, please refer to the map below.

We normally meet on the second floor, in room 2-198. That may be subject to change on any given Thursday subject to the needs of the school. If we are to meet in a different room, signs will be posted to inform you of the change.

Our regular meeting format is either a brief, ten-minute speaker or a reading from “Living Sober” (the chair's choice) followed by a discussion. On the second Thursday of each month, we read and discuss one of the Traditions from “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions”.

There are versions of the Twelve Steps that have been revised to the point that they have become almost meaningless. Our group conscience holds that the essence of the Steps must remain intact; that the actions they represent form the basis for an effective and proven program of recovery. We will continue to examine our experience, to re-evaluate our actions, and to restate the Steps when we can find words that more accurately express what we have done.

For agnostics who would like to work the steps, this version of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous provides slightly different wording of the six steps that make reference to God or a Higher Power. This version of the Twelve Steps, adopted by our group, was adapted from a version that seems to have originated among agnostic A.A. groups in California.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
   Came to accept and to understand that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
   Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the A.A. program.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
   Admitted to ourselves without reservation, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
   Were ready to accept help in letting go of all our defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
   Humbly sought to have our shortcomings removed.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
    Sought through mindful inquiry and meditation to improve our spiritual awareness, seeking only for knowledge of our rightful path in life and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

As a self-proclaimed agnostic group of A.A.s, we of Beyond Belief are well aware that we have some explaining to do. We hope that the following questions and answers will put worry to rest.

Can an agnostic or atheist really achieve and maintain sobriety?

Our experience tells us yes. Most of our members (and regular attendees who are not members) are measuring dry time in years, and several are counting in decades.

But how can you even get past the second step? Is this A.A. or not?

Again, our experience tells us that it can be done. What is essential is that we diligently carry out the essential personal tasks that the steps embody. Step Two, for instance, tells us that we have to believe there is a solution to a problem we have proven to ourselves we cannot solve alone. The pioneers of the Program did not have the immense body of evidence that we have at our disposal, so perhaps there was a time when putting ones faith in the success of the Program would have been, for all practical purposes, an impossibility.

The essential element of Step Two, as we have come to understand it, is that the hopeless find enough hope to carry on with the terrifying prospect of inventory, confession, restitution and a complete change of attitude and outlook. We feel that one drunk talking to another drunk, telling a story of recovery and reclamation, is at least as effective at providing that hope as trying to put blind faith into something one can't quite believe in. Step Two should be an invitation, not an obstacle. There will be plenty of time for spiritual questing, but only if the process of dying can be cut short.

Okay, but Step Eleven explicitly talks about prayer. How do you get around that?

True enough, but Step Eleven also tells us what we should be looking for. There are two essential questions we should be asking: "who am I supposed to be" and "what am I supposed to be doing". We ask the same questions, we just have either a different idea or, perhaps, no idea who or what is listening to the questions or providing the answers. It may well be that we already know, and that if we are both humble enough and honest enough we can stop fighting the truth. That, however, is only one way of looking at it, and is not a prescription or a party line. We do not prescribe any beliefs, and we count among our members people who pray to a God of their understanding. As a group, we only hold in common the humble nature of the question and the need to find a life authentic to ourselves; the source of that authenticity is for the individual to determine.

We hope to add to these questions as time goes by, but we can only answer what has been asked. We invite anyone to join us in civil conversation, with the understanding that none of us has the right to impose our beliefs on anyone else, and that contempt prior to investigation does no favor for any person.