I’ve often found myself describing my religious affiliation to others as “recovering fundamentalist.” In the liberal circles I travel in, this is usually met by laughter, smirks, and nods of appreciation.

Yet in every group there seem to be a few who have left their previous fundamentalist beliefs behind but are hostile to that personal history—sometimes ancient history—in a way that is virulently anti-fundamentalist. They hate fundamentalism and fundamentalists. And they always have an argument on hand to “prove” they are better than their ideological foe.

Off hand this is certainly understandable. I have been at pains to describe exactly what it is that I find so wrong about this stance. I too hate fundamentalism. (And certain fundamentalists, when I’m not pretending to be nice.) I too am quite certain that I’ve moved beyond that stage in my life. How are we different?

It may be difficult for those who have not lived in fundamentalist circles to understand the uniqueness of that experience. It is not merely a matter of changing beliefs, as though you have gone from being a conservative Republican to a moderate Democrat. It does not resemble the brainwashing of cult groups, which are much more isolated and controlling than a fundamentalist church.

The model I have found most helpful is addiction. It’s not completely adequate, but it helps more than others. For the religious addict, a normal human need (such as in the cases of anorexia and bulimia) becomes such an all-consuming obsession that it begins to choke and strangle other, valid, parts of the religious addict’s life. Unlike anorexia and bulimia, religious addiction is not an isolated affair; communities and even media-savvy subcultures exist to support it. Unlike drug addictions, there are no malignant, unaddicted pushers who prey on the addicted; in religious addiction, only the addicted are pushers, and all pushers are addicts.

Leaving a fundamentalist community is much more painful than leaving the Young Democrats or the Kiwanis Club (although I suppose you could get addicted to them too). Leaving fundamentalism means abandoning the community and subculture you’ve been striving to live your entire life within. All other relationships have become purely instrumental as you’ve avoided being “unequally yoked.” You’ve done everything in your power to live your life under the fundamentalist umbrella. Anything else would be sinful.

You’ve likely made important family and career decisions that only make sense under a fundamentalist canopy. Now those decisions to limit yourself have dire personal consequences, consequences the fundamentalist community would have protected you from. In fact, the more severe your decisions, the more you had been applauded. Now, you might not even be able to make a living. Now, you might end up divorced.

Leaving religious addiction is traumatic, whether the process is gradual or sudden. Dealing with that loss of meaning and support is no mean thing. Now you have to learn life skills that the fundamentalist community didn’t require, that it maybe said were sinful even. Dating? Your bible study leader was against it. Financial planning? Just make sure you tithe. Career planning? Just trust god. And the rapture is coming soon, after all.

And always the self doubt: have you made the right decision? Hellfire awaits if you didn’t.

I’m not sure how far I’d go with the 12-step model, but there is something of a process of dealing with religious addiction and finding some healing. You have to confront the consequences of your addiction, dig out its roots, and acknowledge that it will always be a part of you. It’s not something you can just cut off and throw into the fire.

The “dry fundamentalist”—like the “dry drunk” (pdf)—refuses to go through the painful process of healing. He still craves the certainty fix and the safety of an in-group of those also in the know. His likely landing place is scientism. He delights in deflating his old belief by force of his new, equally rigid, belief. And his new community, though far less organized, supports him in this. The poster of John Hagee or Francis Schaeffer is replaced with one of Carl Sagan or Steven Jay Gould. The subscription to Christianity Today replaced with Skeptic.

There may not be a one to one correlation between the dry drunk and the dry fundamentalist. But look at some of the symptoms of the dry drunk:

• acting self-important, either by having “all the answers,” or by playing “poor me”
• blaming others for shortcomings one sees in oneself
• being impatient or persuing whims
• nostalgia for the drinking life

There are ways out. But absent the structure of meaning you interpreted your entire life through, you flounder a bit trying to make do on your own without your old religious safety net. The trick is not to replace one inadequate safety net with another. The trick is learning to live with ambiguity while you find your feet.