Mary Beth O'Connor: From Junkie to Judge... Without God

Our Program: Mary Beth O’Connor will describe her history of methamphetamine use. She will describe how she responded when her rehab insisted she comply with the God-based approach of Alcoholics Anonymous and how she built a secular recovery program. She 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 secular recovery program and the obstacles to doing so. Mary Beth will provide recovery resources and take questions.

Our Speaker: In her award-winning memoir, From Junkie to Judge: One Woman’s 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 resulting chaos from her addiction, and how she developed a personalized recovery plan, without a higher power, that led to twenty-nine years of sobriety so far.

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 published 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.

Professionally, 6 years into recovery, Mary Beth attended Berkeley Law School. She worked at a large firm, then litigated class actions for the federal government. In 2014 she was appointed a federal Administrative Law Judge and retired in 2020.