Mark Twain once wrote that "faith" is "believing what you know ain't so." Active addicts most often have little use for Higher Powers, faith, and prayer except when the police start closing in, the job depends on a clean urine test, or an angry armed dealer wants his money.
In rehab, for the first time, I read the Twelve Steps of recovery, and there was a great deal of god, prayer, meditation, and such in there. Since as a small child I had vowed to kill God by refusing to believe in gods, I was in a bad place. I had a disease that wanted to kill me, the only path to recovery that anyone knew of involved a "spiritual awakening," and that was something I believed I couldn't do.
It took time, staying clean, listening to other addicts in recovery about their Higher Powers, and experiencing a lot of pain and loneliness, but I at last tried out a Higher Power, found that it worked, and then came to believe. It helped me to stay in recovery.
My faith in my HP was shaken when some really terrible health issues came up, friends in the program I cared about died, and difficulties with my work came up. So, what was going on? I'm clean, being good, praying to my HP, so why was all this crap hitting me at the same time?
Then I heard at a meeting that until it's tested and withstands the test, faith isn't faith; It's only a theory.
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