Welcome. I'm wondering what it was about Douglas Adams that was so helpful. If you'd like to expand, please do.
That’s a bit of a story, but since you asked…
A bit of background:
I came for a fairly religious (Roman Catholic) family and attended Catholic school through high school and I bought into that religion hard.
I don’t wish to turn this into an anti-religious thread, but it’s an important part of my particular story. My religion greatly warped my thinking and made me think that blind belief was far more important than logic. I nearly joined the seminary at one point. This got me into all sorts of other magical thinking, ghosts, demons, extraterrestrials, etc. because my religion said that essentially all sorts of the unprovable was unquestionably REAL, and that my belief in these things was good. I nearly left home in high school to try to focus on a sort of odd (to me now) mix of Catholic ideas and the kabbalah (which is a form of Jewish mysticism).
I was, and still am, an avid reader and one of my favorite authors is Douglas Adams (he of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame). I knew him to be both funny and quite erudite. Shortly after his death, I picked up a lot of his lesser-know writings and read them voraciously. What I didn’t know at the time is that Mr. Adams was an atheist. I’ve since learned that he thought of himself as a “radical atheist” just so people would understand he thought a lot about it and really was an atheist and not an agnostic.
I picked up the text of several speeches he gave and in them he pointed out many of the key tenets of religions and pointed out how ridiculous and contradictory they are to what we now know of the real world. He also pointed out how harmful blind belief can be. This really hurt me. I stopped reading mid-way through those speeches and didn’t return to them for about a month. It felt like my whole life was a lie. However, too much of what he said answered a lot of the questions I had about the inconsistency in my own faith. I finishing reading and from that point on I’ve been an atheist and secular humanist.
This got me to re-examine all of the other bunk I had bought into over my life and I went looking for reputable sources to see what science said about those things and none of them have any evidence, either.
I still enjoy a good ghost story, but now I just enjoy it for entertainment and don’t think it is based on anything real.
This is the first time I’ve told the story of my deconversion to anyone. My family is still religious, so I’ve never said anything to them.
Anyway, for those interested, you can read The Salmon of Doubt and catch several other speeches he gave on religion on YouTube and other locations.
I’m happy to help others out of the rabbit hole, because it’s a better place to be, but I know you can’t get anyone out who isn’t ready.