Dudella! 
Nice to get the greetings out of the way!
The kind that cleared out all the debris in my soul, yet could not heal the wounding it bore...
I did not even think I was sinning - I was just trying to dig out a very deep something wrong in my soul... Now it happens to be true that what I did about that wound as an atheist is NOT something a Christian would do, yet I stayed on it wrecking my whole life around me to get to the bottom to find and heal its source...
And I got to the bottom... And it was not there... Nor did I find its onset... I tell ya, it was a big deal what I did, and I failed, but not before cleaning house in my soul and ridding it of all that was unhealthy... Except for the problem itself... At 34 I was prepared to depart this life without rancor... I had tried, and there was nowhere else to look... I had given it my best shot, and was content that my life was over... There are trials that come with that disposition, and after these, awaiting in the sure knowledge of the end, God came, that's all... One Christmas Eve... And I did not know Him... I thought it was a deeper level of myself... He came for the next two Christmas Eves... Finally revealing Himself AS God... And upon that day, my whole understanding went inside out, upside down, and backwards... It has been so ever since... And I live in, what I could only have atheistically described as irrational, Joy... And even then, in that exceeding Joy, I KNEW for a fact that my God is NOT the Christian God... For 14 years walking with Him, never alone, in converse with Him always, knowing He is not the God of the Bible...
Problem was, He kept bugging me to read the Book of John, so when I finally did so, he then told me that the same Spirit that caused this Book to be written is the One Who brought me out of the realm of darkness... I called BS on Him on automatic thought - It went "Well that's crap!" to the thought, then "Wait a minute, That was God!" Then "But that would mean that I am a Christian!" dismissing the idea... And then "Oh no... You mean I am a CHRISTIAN???" I was scandalized utterly... If I were to write an autobiography, it would be titled "Scandalized by God!" But that bio would scandalize most, so it will never be written...
I do not know anyone who has overcome the deep seated issues I overcame - People with my issues end up in back wards of psychiatric institutions, in prisons, or in cemetaries... It was a staggering walk...
What I did as an atheist to overcome my soul's weaknesses and pathologies was in fact real repentance, and God in His infinite Mercy, when I reached the end of that path in failure, did not despise me or my works to become a decent and good and clean and whole person despite being smothered in issues... I know God in a way that very few people I know actually do know Him... The EO Saints know Him as I do and way more than I... And every so often I bump into someone who does so know Him... He has hidden Saints in the world who are unaware of their functional role in God's ekonomia of Salvation for man... And some who are, but not so many...
First monastery I went to, I told the monk there that I did not come via the "inside passage" which the Church affords, but instead came through the storms at sea that kill most... He walked away, came back 15 minutes later, and we went to work... The Saints are my friends...
Arsenios