TWH – Modern Pagans have no immunity to alcohol, drugs, and other addictions. Like others in the recovery communities, some modern Pagans see those addictions as calls to grow spiritually. In response, the Pagan community has developed Pagan-friendly resources to answer those calls. This article focuses on two of those resources, a website, and a book.
The website, Pagans in Recovery, provides links to Pagan and Pagan-friendly meetings. All meetings follow the 12-step model that Alcoholics Anonymous developed. Like all 12-step groups, these meetings are free. Each meeting is autonomous. Meetings set criteria to address their known needs. Certain meetings may require sign-ins. Members of Pagans-in-Recovery groups come from all over the world.
[Photo Credit: S. Ciotti
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) approaches recovery as a general spiritual process. The AA timeline provides a summary of AA’s history. In the early 1930s, one of AA’s founders met with Carl Jung. Jung diagnosed him as medically hopeless, but spiritually in need. That encounter with Carl Jung led that soon-to-be founder to join the Oxford Group. A few years later, AA would grow out of the Oxford Group. AA developed the 12-step model to grow spiritually.
From its start in 1935, AA focused on developing a deeper relationship with a Higher Power. AA left the definition of a Higher Power vague. Each member of AA can understand the concept of Higher Power in a way that works for them. AA emerged, however, in a culture with a deep cultural bias in favor of Christian monotheism. That bias became embedded in a few 12-step concepts and language. Non-Christians may find that to be a barrier. For example, the official AA 12-Steps, uses terms like “Him” and “God” for the higher power.
At first, AA had a mono-focus on alcoholism. Addictions, however, can take different forms. Over time, people in recovery adapted the 12-Step process to recover from other addictions. Those adaptations now provide a pathway to spiritually emerge from other addictions.
Trusted Servants
By definition, 12-step programs rely on anonymity. People with responsibility are called “trusted servants” and not identified by name. Recently, The Wild Hunt interviewed via e-mail trusted servants from Pagans-in-Recovery. Those trusted servants are the source of All quoted material in this section comes from those trusted servants. They stressed that they did not speak for everyone in Pagans-in-Recovery. The Pagan-in-Recovery communities are “large and diverse due to spiritual practices, lived experiences, and geography.” They are open to Pagans from all traditions who are seeking recovery.
All Pagans-in-Recovery online meetings “are accessible to anyone with an internet signal that can log into a zoom-room.” At present, all meetings are in spoken English. No meeting uses American Sign Language. The webconferencing application, however, has a Closed Caption option. That option “allows participants to choose the language they would like their captions in.” Besides online meetings, Pagans-in-Recovery has contact information for face-to-face Pagan 12-step programs.
Joining Pagans-in-Recovery
People have joined Pagans-Recovery for a variety of reasons, positive and negative. A trusted servant said, “There is a common universal human need to connect with like-minded individuals. … Some say that we are drawn to each other by our spirit guides to help further our individual recovery.”
No trusted servant reported firsthand experiences of anti-Pagan attitudes in recovery. One did report hearing about others experiencing anti-Pagan attitudes in recovery.
One trusted servant said “All of our meetings are based on 12-Step meetings. We have NA [Narcotics Anonymous], AA [Alcoholics Anonymous], Al-Anon [family members of alcoholics or other addicts], ACA [Adult Children of Alcoholics], and other twelve-step meetings that have been modified for the Pagan perspective. Various meetings have re-worded the 12 steps to be inclusive to Pagans.” Some meetings have adopted a “Pagan Perspective.” That perspective changed “the meeting’s opening reading, which sets them apart from the ‘traditional structure.’ This [change] includes meetings that use divination tools as prompts for meeting topics such as tarot or oracle cards.”
[Photo Credit: S. Ciotti]
The Book “Pagans-in-Recovery”
The website provides a link to order Deirdre Hebert’s book “The Pagan in Recovery.” A free e-book version of that book is available. The website provides a link to secular 12-step literature. In this section, all quotes come from that e-book.
Hebert’s book has a two-fold generalist 12-step perspective. It does not focus on any one addiction. Nor does it focus on any one Pagan tradition. She wrote for Pagans of all traditions. This perspective allows any Pagan with any addiction to find Pagan ways to work the 12 steps.
Herbert organized the book using the 12 steps as an organizing framework. She wrote a chapter about each step. First, she discussed the practical application of each step. Next, she described a ritual linked to that step.
Each step marks the completion of another milestone in the recovery journey. Completion of the Fourth Step involves having “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” When Hebert examined this step, she contrasted the Christian and Pagan worldviews. Traditional Christians tend to see the world through a rules-based, moral lens. The related concepts of forgiveness, God-given grace, and sin dominate. In contrast, Pagans tend to view the world in a more relativistic and relational manner. Pagans tend to stress human agency rather than God-given grace.
Hebert described a Pagan ethical perspective as follows “Consider the potential harm to every individual who may be impacted by your actions; if there is no foreseeable harm, you are free to act with liberty. If, however, there is any potential harm, then you must weigh that harm against the good that will result from your actions; then act with that knowledge and be prepared to accept the consequences (foreseen or unforeseen) from your action or inaction.”
Hebert further argued that a Pagan moral inventory should include achievements as well as failures. She wrote, “Integrity is complete honesty about who we are and what we’ve done – good or bad, right or wrong.” Harmful actions done in the past can haunt our present unless acknowledged. This “fearless moral inventory” should be more of a factual audit than a punitive judgment. A moral inventory becomes complete “when we are able to be completely honest to ourselves.”
Finally, she described a ritual to work the fourth step. It starts with working with body shame and ends with ritual cleansing.
People have found many paths to recovery. The more available paths, the more people can find their way to recovery much like the many Paganisms in our community.
Full disclosure shared by the author: The author of this article has been clean and sober since 1982. The available 12-step programs felt too monotheistic and Christian for him. Instead, he found a group of Pagans who were also facing addictions, chemical and behavioral. They used trance work, meditation, and ritual to work through the issues of early recovery.
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