{"id":13798,"date":"2023-01-23T06:49:56","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T06:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/?p=13798"},"modified":"2023-02-05T04:46:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T04:46:43","slug":"2023-01-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/2023-01-29\/","title":{"rendered":"From Junkie to Judge: Recovery without God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Retired judge Mary Beth O’Connor<\/h3>\n

11 a.m., January 29, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Join the Humanist Forum, in person OR on Zoom.<\/p>\n

This Sunday we welcome retired judge Mary Beth O’Connor as she joins us in the Mountain View Community Center.<\/p>\n

Mary Beth will describe her long history of injecting methamphetamine. She will describe how she responded when her rehab ordered her to comply with the God-based approach of Alcoholics Anonymous and how she built a secular recovery program. Mary Beth then will provide an overview of substance use disorder and treatment options. This will include six peer support groups and a study comparing the efficacy of several of them. She will explain the benefits of building a personalized recovery program and the obstacles to doing so. Mary Beth will provide recovery resources and take questions.<\/p>\n

Bio: In her memoir, From Junkie to Judge: One Woman\u2019s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction, Mary Beth shares her three-phase journey. The abuse and trauma that drove her to shoot methamphetamine at 17, the chaos from her addiction, and how she developed a personalized recovery plan, without a higher power, that led to twenty-nine years of sobriety thus far.<\/p>\n

Mary Beth is a Board Member for She Recovers Foundation and a Director for LifeRing Secular Recovery. She regularly speaks on behalf of these organizations and about multiple and secular paths to recovery. She had an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, “I Beat Addiction without God,” and one in Recovery Today, “How I Attained 28 Years Sobriety by Rejecting my Rehab’s Submit to AA Order.”<\/p>\n

Professionally, 6 years into recovery, Mary Beth attended Berkeley Law. She worked at a large firm, then litigated class actions for the federal government. In 2014 she was appointed a federal Administrative Law Judge from which position she retired in 2020.<\/p>\n

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