Quote Originally Posted by ReineD View Post
AA is not religious based. It does not push any religion down anyone's throat. But, it is a spiritual program. It's true that the term "God" is in several of the 12 steps, but by this they mean "a Power greater than ourselves" as is outlined in Step 2. Individuals are totally free to construct or use a Power of their understanding, whether it is a broomstick , the expanding universe, or the God of their religion if they are religious … just as long as they begin to see themselves as part of a whole. All kinds of people have used the 12-Steps to recover: Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc. All are welcome.

Julia Roze, if there is a 12-Step group for porn addicts in your area, you might want to go to a few meetings and check it out. You'll meet people your age who have your same struggles and it's amazing what can be accomplished when you have support from people who understand.
Ah! I'm glad you cleared that up! On some nights AA and NA have people from the community show support, so a lot of us in psych health would pop up at the meetings. The meetings I attended were at a Christian Church, and there was a lot of talk of God....but, reflecting back on it, I don't actually remember them getting into the specifics of any particular religious ideology.

Either way, I'm openly Atheist and I still found the lessons (even those in relation to "God") to be valuable, relevant, and healing. This Church also had a sex addicts class...and, unfortunately, they had already met the quota of "support students" that could show up at that meeting. (If this sounds like the nursing students were doing the equivalent of the beginning of Fight Club with the whole "that's my support group, not yours'" sort of thing...then, you're spot on).

But, with that in mind, people from the community "pop into" those meetings to "show support" all of the time. There may be different rules for different classes, but this was how it went for the classes that I attended. Many people know someone that is struggling with these issues, so they will go to learn more. HOWEVER, this is a great way to go to a class just to check it out and without any commitment to see if it is right for you. Say you want to check out the Internet Porn Addict class (which, may or may not actually fall under the Sex Addicts class), but you don't want to really have to commit or share...you just want to watch. Then, you can always attend a class on the pretense that you are there to learn more so you can support a member of your family, for example. If you decide that it is for you, show back up when they next meet and come clean. They won't hold it against you, because it happens way more often than you would think.