AA is Religious and That’s Okay

Seriously, this isn’t bashing A.A. I think religious programs are a valid option and even an optimal one depending on the person. I think Buddhists would have a great time at Recovery Dharma meetings, and I think Christians would have a great time at A.A. meetings. I come from a Hindu background, which is kind of like saying “I come from a Western background” in terms of how little it conveys if we don’t default to common stereotypes. At different times for different reasons, A.A., Recovery Dharma, and SMART meetings all resonated in different ways.

But A.A. does rise to the level of religious content, not just an endorsement of spirituality. Much like fish in water, it can be difficult to see the distinctive qualities of something you take for granted as a structural aspect of reality. I will come across as snarky and biased on the arguments that it’s not religious beyond non-denominational, because I think it’s a matter of rigorous honesty.

Before I go into my own thoughts, I’m going to bring up the findings and analysis from actual court cases that made it through the American legal system. That way, you can rest assured that this perspective has been argued by more credible sources than me.

Warner v. Orange County (1996)

In Warner v. Orange County (1996), the 2nd Circuit Court ruled that even if it was possible for every person to substitute God with a Higher Power consistent with their own beliefs, holding hands in a prayer circle to recite a passage from the New Testament attributed to Jesus Christ unquestionably made it a Christian program. Standing silently in the circle is still considered a form of coercion into a fellowship that does not align with someone’s sincerely held beliefs, even if they’re an atheist who considers the prayer inconsequential. That sounds silly until we remember similar arguments being made against school prayer because everyone notices the person who doesn’t participate, and it’s human nature to think of them as fundamentally outsiders.

Interestingly, there was a dissent in a remand in 1999 that claimed attendance of a few meetings waives one’s right to object to it. If it was truly religious, then a genuine objector would refuse to participate until they were just emotionally dissatisfied. The majority disagreed that AA was forthcoming enough about its religious nature for someone to provide informed consent that quickly.

Griffin v. Coughlin (1999)

In Griffin v. Coughlin (1999), the specific argument about replacing God with a Higher Power, or that AA is spiritual but not religious, is addressed:

Pointing to A.A. literature, respondents averred that the references to God actually mean some “higher power as the individual may understand such higher power,” not as the concept would be known by “organized religions.” Thus, respondents claimed that the A.A. component of the ASAT Program “does not make specific references to God as an institutional religion would wherein the individual is required to worship, praise, give thanks or petition to a Creator” (Affidavit of Lorraine Cohen, Senior Correctional Counselor for ASAT, N.Y. St. Dept. of Correctional Servs).

The argument being made by those who say AA is not religious is that references to God should be seen as a personal Higher Power or personal Creator, not a reference to a concept from an organized religion. I would argue that almost no one uses “religion” just to mean an organized method of worship associated with particular institutions.

As previously noted, the Appellate Division relied upon the A.A. Big Book and the A.A. Twelve Steps/Twelve Traditions texts to find that, despite the repeated references to “God” in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, A.A. does not ” ‘demand’ ” adherence to any particular faith but to ” ‘spirituality’ ” and ” ‘open mindedness’ ” (id., at 190, 626 N.Y.S.2d 1011 [quoting the A.A. Big Book and A.A. Twelve Steps/Twelve Traditions] ). The Court also found quite significant that A.A. allows participants to select their own conception of God, as shown by the reference in Step 3 to “God as we understood Him.”

This is something you will still hear in recovery circles, but it’s really not malicious. There is a genuine belief that the concept of a Higher Power in the program is neutral or universal, and that submitting to one is a critical humbling of the self before recovery can fully happen in order to leave some egoistic past version of oneself behind. You will be told that you can use anything as a Higher Power, but I really doubt you can do the Steps in a meaningful way if you’re asking your pet rock to cure you of your “character defects.” If you understand God to be an impersonal substrate for existence, you might be able to treat your pet rock as an emergent part of that substrate, but you would still be unable to meaningfully engage with it in the way the Steps ask. If you have to communicate with the Higher Power, you’re implicitly being asked to pick a real entity with agency outside of yourself that you can have dialogue with to ask for things you cannot achieve on your own, otherwise you’re kind of playing pretend.

In our view, the Appellate Division erred in rejecting the petition in this case by applying too narrow a concept of religion or religious activity for Establishment Clause analysis and disregarding the compulsion used to induce petitioner to attend and participate in A.A. meetings heavily laced with at least general religious content.

As pointed out above, to many, “religion” refers to organized methodologies surrounding an institutionalized canon of works and “spirituality” refers to the parts concerning physical, emotional, and/or mental regulation for an individual or a group. This isn’t wrong per se; this distinction can be very functional for everyday life to signal that you’re not trying to invoke an established denomination with its own authorities and canons to explain a ritual or practice. A spiritual practice can seem like a supplement to a religious practice rather than a replacement, which means programs like AA can claim they’re a spiritual wrapper for any religion. However, separating religion from spirituality and philosophy is not as easily done as you might think.

In America, the First Amendment means defining Religion is necessary to enforce protections of civil rights, Philosophy is a department at universities experimenting with technical approaches to niche abstract problems, and Spirituality can be a catch-all for anything mystical, exotic, immaterial, and/or esoteric without a hierarchical social organization. These categories can feel natural if you’ve grown up with them, but it’s not a distinction that universally makes much sense. Many belief systems begin with a metaphysical framework.

Certain Shaivist sects argue that all of reality and existence is of one infinite consciousness that we are born out of. Buddhists argue that all things are impermanent, so an infinite consciousness that exists in some permanent sense outside of reality isn’t possible. That might influence whether your practice includes developing an awareness of nothingness, purifying yourself of pollutants, exploring yourself without inhibitions to see what comes out, performing rituals to work with forces outside yourself, inquiry and contemplation of the relation between things, praying, studying texts, making a pilgrimage, or sitting in a group where you feel good vibes whether it’s a place of worship or not. How do we decide which of these is religious and which of these is spiritual in a way that would have consensus among the practitioners?

The court here is aware of this subjectivity around the interpretation of “religion” but concludes that the version being used was far too narrow. The phrase “at least general religious content” helps to clarify that things can be considered religious without referring to a specific belief system. Simply, non-denominational is different than non-religious.

Moreover, even if we were to agree with the Appellate Division’s holding that the governing principles and practices of A.A., as incorporated in the ASAT Program, do not necessarily require an atheist participant to accept the existence of God in the religious sense, or to engage in religious activity, we would, nonetheless, find that the mandatory and exclusive incorporation of A.A. doctrine and practices in the ASAT program violates Establishment Clause principles requiring governmental neutrality with respect to religion.

The Court mentions that even if they bought into the argument that no one is required to accept the existence of God to participate in AA, the requirement to attend without alternatives still represents an institutional bias towards general religious programming.

Concededly, there are passages in A.A. literature, relied upon heavily by respondents, the Appellate Division and the dissent here, which, in stressing the openness and inclusiveness of the A.A. movement, eschew any intent to impose a particular sectarian set of beliefs or a particular concept of God upon participants.

However, a fair reading of the fundamental A.A. doctrinal writings discloses that their dominant theme is unequivocally religious, certainly in the broad definitional sense as “manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity” (Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary 995 [9th ed 1990]). Indeed, the A.A. basic literature most reasonably would be characterized as reflecting the traditional elements common to most theistic religions.

The Court doesn’t seem to think that the AA passages about neutrality check out with the “unequivocally religious” nature of the rest of the literature. There is nothing that really stops someone from saying “I believe in a personal God but I am not a religious Christian, even though I attend a Christian Church where we read the Bible, recite prayers in circles, proclaim our love for Jesus Christ, and confess sins as determined by Biblical morality and ethics.” The Oxford Group’s literature actually does do that, as we’ll see later.

To do a CTRL+F and replace “God” with “Higher Power” while throwing in some disclaimers doesn’t really make it neutral. A well-meaning person once suggested to me that the meetings taking place in Christian churches was just because the churches were friendly to the AA community and had long-lasting relationships from its inception. I wasn’t quite sure how to say this, but it seemed to me that is exactly the point. If a particular type of religious institution is consistently finding that a certain program is worth hosting within their halls, that may be because they find their religion to be very compatible with that belief system. If other religious institutions aren’t as open, that may suggest less compatibility.

Thus, God is named or referred to in five of the 12 steps. “Working” the 12 steps includes confessing to God the “nature of our wrongs” (Step 5), appealing to God “to remove our shortcomings” (Step 7) and seeking “through prayer and meditation” to make “contact” with God and achieve “knowledge of His Will” (Step 11 [emphasis supplied]). The 12 Traditions include a profession of belief that “there is one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.”

In my opinion, you could go further and say The Big Book is an analogy to the Bible (which is itself a term for books from an Ancient Greek root), and the 12 steps and traditions arguably seem inspired by the 10 commandments and 12 apostles. I dislike this pattern of argumentation though. I feel too much like a conspiracy theorist throwing numbers into a calculator until 9.11 pops out.

the writings demonstrably express an aspiration that each member of the 682 682 movement will ultimately commit to a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being of independent higher reality than humankind. Thus, in the A.A. Big Book — the basic text of A.A. — chapter l, “Bill’s Story,” describes the spiritual transformation of one of the cofounders of A.A., in which he finally achieved salvation from his alcoholism: by “enter[ing] upon a new relationship with my Creator * * * [i]t meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all” (A.A. Big Book, at 13-14).

Creator, Father of Light, salvation, “spiritual transformation”, “presiding over”, and Supreme Being are all loaded with implications related to religious discourse. But the phrase that actually cements this as a very particular type of religious and spiritual framework is “independent higher reality than humankind.” This is explicitly asserting dualism which numerous religious belief systems explicitly reject . Many religions argue that there is only one infinite reality that we observe with our finite measurements, and there is no external entity who resides in another reality.

In chapter 4, entitled “We Agnostics” the theme is unambiguously proselytizing: “As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a Creative Intelligence, a Spirit of the Universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps. We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him” (id., at 46). “Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God’s ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn’t it? “We, who have traveled this dubious path, beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions. People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about” (id., at 49).

A passage about how it is vain to not seek God in a chapter about agnostic perspectives really strains the “spiritual, not religious” label. You cannot say you are neutral in spirituality while characterizing those who aren’t part of the dominant interpretation as having moralized “character defects.”

The foregoing demonstrates beyond peradventure that doctrinally and as actually practiced in the 12 step methodology, adherence to the A.A. fellowship entails engagement in religious activity and religious proselytization. Followers are urged to accept the existence of God as a Supreme Being, Creator, Father of Light and Spirit of the Universe. In “working” the 12 steps, participants become actively involved in seeking such a God through prayer, confessing wrongs and asking for removal of shortcomings. These expressions and practices constitute, as a matter of law, religious exercise for Establishment Clause purposes, no less than the nondenominational prayer in Engel v Vitale (370 US 421), that is, “a solemn avowal of divine faith and supplication for the blessings of the Almighty. The nature of such a prayer has always been religious” (id., at 424-425 [emphasis supplied]; see also, Lee v Weisman, 505 US 577, 603-604 [Blackmun, J., concurring]).

The “God as we understand Him” part becomes a lot narrower when the Higher Power is likened to a Supreme Being, Creator, Father of Light, and Spirit of the Universe. You are not just being asked to agree to God, you’re being asked to participate in dialogue with a personal God.

The dissent’s thesis that there was an historical evolution of A.A. doctrine and therapeutic/rehabilitative methodology from the initial, more religious A.A. Big Book to the later, essentially secular, Twelve Traditions (see, dissenting opn, at 699-700, 702-703), is refuted by the writings themselves. Thus, the 1952 A.A. Twelve Steps/Twelve Traditions volume itself states unequivocally in its Foreword that “[t]he book `Alcoholics Anonymous’ [the 1939 A.A. Big Book] became the basic text of the Fellowship, and it still is” (A.A. Twelve Steps/Twelve Traditions, at 17 [emphasis supplied]). The Foreword to the 685 685 1952 volume also explains the differing roles of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions. “A.A.’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole” (A.A. Twelve Steps/Twelve Traditions, at 15 [emphasis supplied]). “[T]he spiritual ideas of the Society were codified for the first time in the Twelve Steps” (id., at 17 [emphasis supplied]).

And this should answer those who say AA used to be religious but secularized as it spread.

You can read the whole case here: https://aaagnostica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Griffin-v.-Coughlin-1996.pdf. It’s very thorough in examining the evidence from AA literature.

Now let’s take a look at excerpts from the dissent:

Many people may believe that A.A. is an entity of spiritual essence or experience. Referenced incorporation of its literature into ASAT to forge a religious alchemy that implicates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by some foreboding compulsion feature, however, is not justified or proven. Greater quantum and quality should be required to cross that constitutionally blurred barrier. Indeed, the repeated evocation of a generalized deity figure and symbol or some nondenominational, secular alternative “Higher Power” fails to support this profound absorption of A.A. and ASAT into the territory of a compulsory, constitutionally forbidden religious encounter. We reiterate, in summary, the cogent resolution of this case by the unanimous Appellate Division:

So the problem is fundamentally one of ignorance, willful or not. “Generalized deity figure” and “alternative ‘Higher Power’” are obviously religious concepts. I cannot imagine anyone could say this if they were aware of non-Abrahamic religions, particularly from non-Westernized cultures.

“[I]t is our conclusion that petitioner has failed to 715 715 make an adequate record to state a claim for an Establishment Clause violation. The petition cites nothing of a religious nature about this particular ASAT program or its practices other than the fact that it is modeled after the principles of AA which make references to ‘God’ and a ‘Higher Power’.

Kerr v. Farrey (1996)

We can hop over to Kerr v. Farrey (1996) from the 7th Circuit Court for some explicit discussion about theological premises:

When Kerr first attended the NA meeting, he objected to dragging God’s name into “this messy business of addictions,” and he expressed his disagreement with the view of God that was propounded at the meeting.   Kerr regarded NA’s deterministic view of God to be in conflict with his own belief about free will;  more generally, he found it offensive to his personal religious beliefs.

Note that here, we don’t have an atheist or an agnostic or someone from a non-monotheistic belief system, but someone who believes in God but from a different monotheistic perspective. If we accept that addiction is a disease, then bringing religious engagement into a treatment protocol is not necessarily an obvious step.

Warden Farrey confirmed in her affidavit that inmates were required to “observe” the NA meetings, although she stated that they were not required to “participate.”   She also conceded that “Narcotics Anonymous does use the concept of a ‘higher being’ in their treatment approach.”   This concept, she went on to say, was viewed as a very personal matter and could range from a religious concept of God to the non-religious concept of individual willpower.

One of the most commonly noted frustrations with attempting to generalize the concepts from AA is the way specific rituals are required but the justification to do them is left for you to fill in. You’ll be told that the Higher Power can be an inanimate object, but when it turns out your pet rock isn’t granting you the wisdom to know the difference between things you can and can’t change, you’re just going to have to find a new Higher Power. But you know, God is a very convenient one that will always be there for you if you tire of praying to your pet rock:

The district court thought that the NA program escaped the “religious” label because the twelve steps used phrases like “God, as we understood Him,” and because the warden indicated that the concept of God could include the non-religious idea of willpower within the individual.   We are unable to agree with this interpretation.   A straightforward reading of the twelve steps shows clearly that the steps are based on the monotheistic idea of a single God or Supreme Being.

I like to imagine there’s a bit of exasperation behind “We are unable to agree with this” followed by “A straightforward reading… show clearly that the steps are based on the monotheistic idea of a single God or Supreme Being.”  

True, that God might be known as Allah to some, or YHWH to others, or the Holy Trinity to still others, but the twelve steps consistently refer to “God, as we understood Him.” Even if we expanded the steps to include polytheistic ideals, or animistic philosophies, they are still fundamentally based on a religious concept of a Higher Power. Kerr alleged, furthermore, that the meetings were permeated with explicit religious content. This was therefore not a case (again, on the present record) where the only religious note was struck by the insertion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, or other incidental references that the courts have upheld.   See, e.g., Sherman v. Wheeling School District, 980 F.2d 437 (7th Cir.1992).

The very concept of a Higher Power is fundamentally religious. You just can’t do a program based on the premise of having a theistic idea of a Higher Power in a dualistic reality without that theistic premise being part of the bottom line. The 12 steps run through a cycle of sin, confession, repentance, divine grace, spiritual awakening, and proselytization. That’s a feature of the program and why it can work for those who follow certain faiths, and also why it can be deeply alienating to others. Kerr didn’t really develop the free will argument much further, but we can at least see that there are reasons even those following a monotheistic faith might feel alienated by the premises of AA.

Keswick Tent Revivalism

I was being a little generous by leading with court case excerpts that examined the literature and practices at face value. If we look at the history, it’s very hard to figure out when exactly in the development of this program it became spiritual rather than religious.

Jessie Penn-Lewis was born in 1861 South Wales to a Calvinist Methodist family. Her grandfather was a minister, and her mother worked in the temperance movement. At 19, she married William Penn-Lewis, who claimed a lineage to the William Penn who founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker. She had a leadership position in a temperance movement chapter and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Richmond through the Holy Trinity Church.

That’s where she was exposed to vicar Evan H. Hopkins of the Keswick tent revival movement, also referred to as the Higher Life movement after a book called Higher Christian Life. The movement’s core premise is that there are actually two categories of Christians: those who accept Christ on Earth and count as carnal Christians, and then those who have surrendered to a second conversion that elevates them into spiritual Christians. The phrase “Let Go and Let God” was about this notion of surrendering so that Christ can work through you rather than pursuing spirituality with your own will.

Frank Buchman and The Oxford Group

In 1908, following a surge of depression after a financial dispute over a hospice for young men that led to his resignation, the Lutheran minister Frank Buchman traveled to the Keswick convention in the hopes of discussing his problems with a Quaker-influenced Baptist pastor named Frederick Brotherton Meyer. Meyer wasn’t there, so Buchman listened to Penn-Lewis preaching to a small group of less than two dozen people instead. Without getting into the specifics of Penn-Lewis’ theological propositions just yet, we can see that her warning about centering one’s own righteousness rather than the Cross or Holy Spirit would be a thread in the inspired groups going forward. Buchman began to feel that his hatred and rage towards the board over the hospice was actually egoistic pride that his way was righteous because his cause was helping children:

I sat there and realized how my sin, my pride, my selfishness, and my ill-will had eclipsed me from God… I was the center of my own life. Not Him. That big ‘I’ had to be crossed out. I saw my resentments against those men standing out like tombstones in my heart.

He took a moral inventory, confessed his sins, and tried to make amends. So began Buchman’s explicit journey to replace his ego with Spirit. When he finally met Meyer later, Meyer asked him: “Do you let the Holy Spirit guide you in all that you are doing… Do you give God enough uninterrupted time really to tell you what to do?” From here comes the notion of meditation to improve conscious contact with God. As Buchman grew a following through the YMCA at Pennsylvania State University, and eventually a global reputation, he settled into a practice based around personal evangelism in intimate circles. A harsh analysis of Buchman might conclude that he grew very skeptical of institutions despite his external emphasis on forgiveness, humility, and avoiding self-righteousness.

He first had a nervous breakdown after his quarrel over funding with the board members of his hospice. At Hartford, he began holding private personal evangelism groups in parallel to the academic theology of the university, and he refused to comply with university demands to actually adhere to a schedule and curriculum instead of traveling whenever God’s will told him to leave. He eventually wrote “The seminary today is an expensive luxury for propagating theology which is oftentimes wholly divorced from life.” In 1920, John D. Rockefeller was impressed by Buchman and offered to finance a global evangelist movement based on his works. Buchman rejected the offer with skepticism towards developing an administrative apparatus run by a corporation that would prioritize its own survival as an institution. The Ministerium of Pennsylvania that served as Buchman’s Lutheran synod was routinely upset that he ignored financial reporting requirements, geographical boundaries, and theological guidelines. Large anonymous donors tend to raise concerns. A few years later at Princeton, followers of Buchman penetrated the Philadelphian Society to practice “soul surgery,” which really meant forming small groups to confess their sexual activities and anxieties. The Princeton president John Grier ordered an investigation after numerous complaints which led to Buchman and his followers being banned from campus. At one point, he had traveled to China as a missionary, but was asked to leave the country after complaints about his attitude towards other missionaries created conflict. Among these was the claim that too much homosexuality was making the missionaries ineffective.

Trying his luck with poaching students of elite universities like Ivy Leagues and Oxford University, Buchman finally kicked off the Oxford Group as a lasting movement. It helped that he rented out entire hotels and hosted house parties on wealthy estates to lure in the students of wealthy families looking to network and fraternize. I think it’s worth flagging this pattern of recruiting students and academics into fledgling movements through lavish parties in proximity to campuses; it certainly will come up again, and it certainly hasn’t stopped being a method to recruit young people today.

The literature from those who participated in the Oxford Group is very revealing:

The Oxford Group is not a religion; it has no hierarchy, no temples, no endowments; its workers have no salaries, no plans but God’s Plan; every country is their country, every man their brother. They are Holy Crusaders in modern dress, wearing spiritual armour. Their aim is A New World Order for Christ, the King.

The Oxford Group is often confused in the minds of strangers with the Oxford Movement. The former which, by accident rather than by design, uses Oxford as the nominal centre for its activities in England, is a campaign for the renaissance of the practice among men of the truths of simple Christianity; the latter is a Catholic renaissance within the Church of England.

The Oxford Group works within churches of all denominations, planning to bring those outside back into their folds and to re-awaken those within to their responsibilities as Christians. It advocates nothing that is not the fundamental basis of all Christian Faith, and takes no side in sectarian disputes. This means living as near as we can, by God’s help, to the life He has mapped out for us. When we diverge from His plan for us we can, by surrendering our lives to Him, get back to that plan again, and by our Christian endeavours to live as parallel as we can to Christ’s life here on earth and, with God’s Guidance to show us how we can best do that, we can continue on that plan and bring it to fruition.

The aims of the Oxford Group are to bring into the world the realization of the power of the Holy Spirit as a force for spiritual and material stability and betterment of the world

We can see that “religion” already had a narrow interpretation for the convenience of the Oxford Group. Here, “religion” is a shorthand for organized belief systems that might come with hierarchies, sacred places, scriptural canons, and dedicated capital for expansion. “Spiritual” seems to be euphemistic to mean “non-denominational” rather than “indifferent to religions.” In other words, the Oxford Group would not agree that a practice involving faith in Christ or the Christian God on its own forms a religion or religious belief. But in no way does that temper the ambition for world domination through new Holy Crusades.

There is no reason why this giving of our lives to God should mean our being pious or religious bores. Neither should it mean that we have to give up our ordinary obligations or duties. It means we surrender to God everything that stands between Him and us

They give a bit of their reasoning for avoiding a claim to religion here: there’s an effort to separate their group’s marketing from the rigorous study required of “religious bores.” If the program is only a spiritual supplement to your existing religion, then it promises a social network of support without requiring you to make specific sacrifices or adhere to specific guidelines. You can have multiple spiritual practices, but you generally run into issues if you try to maintain multiple religions. You’re less likely to upset your religious family or home church for visiting a spiritual network that claims to encourage the virtues those institutions like rather than replace them.

We also see that the concept of “surrender” comes directly out of the idea of surrendering in order to allow space for the Holy Spirit to fill you with God’s will, but this “surrender” does not necessarily involve renouncing materialism and worldly attachments. It asks you to “Let Go and Let God” guide you through your life of worldly attachments. This is another reason that “God as we understand him” and “Higher Power” don’t remove the religious character of AA or 12 step programs: the concept of “surrender” retains its original meaning about supplanting your ego with that of something outside of yourself, and you’re going to struggle a lot to make sense of it in a way that doesn’t involve specific conceptions of God. Your pet rock as a Higher Power will not be giving you guidance after you surrender to it.

Maybe you think I just have an axe to grind with monotheistic belief systems or get a kick out of kicking mainstream ideas as a contrarian. I wouldn’t blame you. Allow me to share the views of a Christian contemporary of Buchman who is highly quoted by both the AA community and secular academic institutions.

Niebuhr and Buchman

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen

You might recognize the beginning of this poem by Reinhold Niebuhr as the Serenity Prayer, which is recited very often in recovery circles as ways to close out meetings. But that’s not the version Niebuhr wrote at first.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Notice the us, which is a recurring pattern in Niebuhr’s works:

O God, the sovereign of nations, teach us how we may build a common life in which the nations of the world may find peace and justice. Show us what we ought to do. Show us also what are the limits of our power and what we cannot do. Recall us to our dignity as co-workers with You now and evermore.

O God, who has bound us together in this bundle of life, give us the grace to understand how our lives depend upon one another and our responsibilities to You.

Niebuhr was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America. Much of his work was used his faith about Christianity and Christ as a premise for advocacy and community. He was a pacifist prior to WWII, but he eventually adopted the position that justice must be a priority over love since pacifism could not prevent sin from forces like the Axis Powers:

“No nation can ever be good enough to save another nation purely by the power of love…justice is probably the highest ideal to which human groups can aspire. And justice…inevitably involves the assertion of right against right and interest against interest until some kind of harmony is achieved… As long as the world of man remains a place where nature and God, the real and the ideal, meet, human progress will depend upon the judicious use of the forces of nature in the service of the ideal… We must try to dissuade Japan from her military venture, but must use coercion to frustrate her designs if necessary.”

So much for not changing people, places, or things, huh?

As the Cold War began, he separated himself from organizations with communist ties in opposition to Soviet Russia, as he had never been a fan of Marxist groups that created a quasi-religious belief system in his opinion. He spoke out against the rise of the KKK in response to a diversifying America, though he maintained a conservative position on segregation. Martin Luther King Jr. and Niebuhr had quoted and supported each other at times. King credits Niebuhr more than Gandhi for the inspiration for nonviolent protest. They both opposed the Vietnam War with a sophisticated analysis of applying Christian virtues to international relations and distributive social justice.

This matters because it contextualizes the Serenity Prayer not as a personal philosophy, but a collective call to action. It doesn’t matter if you as an individual cannot completely change society; you have an obligation to try changing some of it as part of a collective that experiences the justices and injustices of society together. In fact, you are obligated to resist the oppression of institutions through force if necessary; Niebuhr argued that dominant classes in power never cede power voluntarily because they’re subject to temptations and sins like any individual. But if you read the Serenity Prayer as is popularly quoted out of context, you might think you’re just facing a fated challenge that you have to develop the coping skills to endure until it passes. Niebuhr’s understanding of Serenity seems to be that it’s a psychological tool you could use to strengthen yourself when engaging in justice campaigns without burning out.

So when Niebuhr criticizes Buchman, it’s not just a theological disagreement. While Buchman was hosting high society house parties around Ivy League campuses and Oxford, Niebuhr was in Detroit and observed the brutal labor conditions of workers without unions. The two had remarkably different motivations from the start. Buchman was motivated by changing the world by converting its most powerful authoritarians under a unified agenda, while Niebuhr was concerned with empowering and uplifting communities through collective action. Niebuhr expressed his disgust at Buchman’s worldview very openly:

We can see how unbelievably naïve this movement is in its efforts to save the world. If it would content itself with preaching repentance to drunkards and adulterers one might be willing to respect it as a religious revival method which knows how to confront the sinner with God… But when it runs to… Hitler, or to any seat of power, always with the idea that it is on the verge of saving the world by bringing the people who control the world under God-control, it is difficult to restrain the contempt which one feels for this dangerous childishness.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Buchman tried to convert Hitler to Christianity:

I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defence against the anti-Christ of Communism

“Think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to God… Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last bewildering problem.”

Anti-semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew.

Socialists want to change society, and they fail because they don’t change the individual. I want to change the individual, but I want to change the individuals who matter. If I can change Mussolini, I can change Italy. If I can change Hitler, I can change Germany.

Buchman never got a face-to-face meeting with Hitler, but he did attend the Nuremburg Rallies and Berlin Olympics as a guest of associates of Himmler. That was the extent of his penetration of Nazi leadership. To be perfectly fair here, Buchman was not a Nazi and opposed the violence the Nazis systematically rolled out with industrial scale. He truly believed a Christian dictatorship could emerge to solve society’s problems. In general, he was sympathetic to the authoritarian model and sought to convert heads of corporations those like Henry Ford. One of the most common explanations for his behavior was that he was just naive and utopic to a fault with an incredibly oversimplified model of reality. He was never really seen as having a good grasp on reality anyways. By 1939, the Oxford Group was banned from Germany and considered a subversive tactic from the Allied powers. Niebuhr’s response:

The social philosophy of the Oxford group, long implicit in its strategy, is made explicit, and revealed in all its childishness and viciousness

The Oxford Group Movement… imagines it possible to clear up the social injustices of our era by a series of personal conversions… It is a religion which satisfies the desires of the privileged classes for a faith which will not disturb their social security.

Note that he explicitly calls the Oxford Group Movement a religion, and he explicitly links the spread of it to institutions of power and families of privilege. So not only does he consider it a religion, he thinks it relies on misinterpretation and defiance of Christian literature for the convenience of institutional managers. If we were to give the religion a name, Niebuhr would suggest Buchmanism.

You don’t have to agree with anything Niebuhr says, but you do have to admit that Niebuhr and Buchman’s disputes were unquestionably rooted in how they interpreted and applied Christian theological principles towards social issues. It was a religious disagreement, because Buchmanism really is closer to religion than a spiritual program.

Bill Wilson and the Oxford Group

So after reading all this, we arrive at a kind of awkward position because Bill Wilson said:

AA’s first step was derived largely from my own physician, Dr. Silkworth, and my sponsor Ebby and his Oxford Group friend, Rowland Hazard. I refer to the medical hopelessness of alcoholism - our ‘powerlessness’ over alcohol. The rest of the Twelve Steps stem directly from those Oxford Group teachings that applied specifically to us… I should acknowledge our great debt to the Oxford Group people. It was fortunate that they laid particular emphasis on spiritual principles that we needed.

So it’s really hard to avoid connecting AA to Buchmanism when Wilson is so vocal about their teachings coming directly from the Oxford Group.

Wilson was born in Vermont in 1895 to a tragic early childhood. He was raised by his grandparents after his parents divorce was followed by abandonment, and his first love died in surgery in 1912. He attended Norwich University and married Louis Burnham in 1918. After a promising military career, he moved to Brookyln and worked on Wall Street through the 1929 crash. At this point, he reports a deep collapse into depression which led to lots of binge drinking and stints in hospitals for detoxing.

During his fourth detox, he was visited by a previous drinking buddy named Ebby Thacher who credited the Oxford Group for helping him achieve sobriety. He was undergoing the Towns-Lambert regimen which involved a fusion of Atropa belladonna and Hyoscyamus niger, both being hallucinogens known to cause extreme delirium separate from the delirium tremens of withdrawal. In this time, he claims to have experienced a White Light that felt like a spiritual awakening and lost his obsession for drinking, although his fears of a relapse led him to seek another alcoholic to talk to from a church directory: Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio. They seem to have hit it off, and Smith took his final drink on June 10, 1935 which marks the official founding date of AA. By 1937, after claiming to have helped 40 men through an obsession with drinking, Wilson and Smith approached Rockefeller (well, his spiritual advisor who recognized them as affiliated with the Oxford Group) to ask for funding for hospitals and full-time salaries to be missionaries.

Supposedly, Rockefeller gave $5000asapersonaldonationbutrefusedthe$50,000 seed funding for the hospitals and missionary crew, stating “money would ruin this thing.” A quick comparison between Buchman’s project and Wilson’s project might suggest that one was more aligned with Rockefeller’s personal interests. Buchman’s top-down approach targeted industry and world leaders whose participation in a general spiritual program could provide an extremely valuable network for both opportunities and information. Wilson had an unappealing track record of business and financial dealings since his Wall Street days, and he was trying to help those on the margins of society with little left to lose. The former seemed like an investment in a spiritual movement, the latter seemed like philanthropy for a desperately sick population.

Before Rockefeller made his decision, he sent out Frank Amos to report on what early AA seemed like, which gives us some idea of what AA was like before The Big Book was consolidated for mass publication. Based on secondhand sources (I’m lazy and will attach a link to the report here once I find it), Amos seems to have observed the following about AA from shadowing the leaders, attending meetings, and interviewing alcoholics and their loved ones.

1. An alcoholic must realize that he is an alcoholic, incurable from a medical viewpoint, and that he must never again drink anything with alcohol in it.

2. He must surrender himself absolutely to God, realizing that in himself there is no hope.

3. Not only must he want to stop drinking permanently, he must remove from his life other sins such as hatred, adultery, and others which frequently accompany alcoholism. Unless he will do this absolutely, Smith and his associates refuse to work with him.

4. He must have devotions every morning — a “quiet time” of prayer and some reading from the Bible and other religious literature. Unless this is faithfully followed, there is grave danger of backsliding.

5. He must be willing to help other alcoholics get straightened out. This throws up a protective barrier and strengthens his own willpower and convictions.

6. It is important, but not vital, that he meet frequently with other reformed alcoholics and form both a social and a religious comradeship.

7. Important, but not vital, that he attend some religious service at least once weekly.

Unquestionably, you can see AA was originally run as a religious and moralistic Bible-based program, even if you don’t want to call it Christian or reference any particular denomination. In fact personal prayer based on the Bible was considered non-negotiable compared to meetings with other alcoholics, as well as identifying “sins” in your life and working to purge them. Note that I’m not attacking the efficacy of it. There’s plenty of statements about how hopeless some alcoholics and their families felt before attempting to build a recovery program with the AA fellowship. The term “miracle” or “miraculous” seems to come up often.

As for the mention of a Dr. Silkworth: Benjamin Rush was among the first to characterize alcoholism to an “odious disease” back in 1784, but it took the failures of temperance movements, policymakers, and eugenicists alike for institutions to begin shifting towards a disease model in the 20th century. Rush is remarkably compassionate and insightful about alcoholism; he truly intends to treat it as a disease with a spiritual component where moral failings are a symptom, and he invokes his Christian faith to argue for treating them with compassion even if they have done immoral things. He’s fascinating to me, and I’m writing more on him. Throughout the 1800s, the disease model was steadily maintained and developed through clinical movements while temperance movements embraced social, moral, legal, political, and spiritual considerations.

In 1937, Dr. William D. Silkworth iterated on the disease model, which had never enjoyed mainstream consensus up to that point, to propose two parts: a physical allergy and a mental obsession. The allergy comparison hasn’t literally held up, but tracing alcoholism to a physiological problem on top of a mental one helped it to seem like a legitimate medical issue rather than a pure willpower and moral failing. “Powerlessness” was a reference to this allergy-like reaction where after one drink, an alcoholic can feel uncontrollable urges to have more. During periods of sobriety, there come strong thoughts that one can return to drinking safely, which is termed as obsession. The term “powerlessness” wasn’t about literally surrendering power or agency in your life or recovery. That seems like a novel interpretation in order to match the “surrender” to a Higher Power which will fill you with its own will or power instead.

Silkworth wrote The Doctor’s Opinion, which, as a complete section, is one of the more outdated parts of the AA book. He says one thing that is completely outside of any medical advice or expertise: “You may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves.” This has never been true in the history of the world for any human being.

So to summarize the history: the root of AA’s spiritual principles lies in Buchman’s non-denominational interpretation of Higher Life theology which arose from Protestant tent rival movements in Keswick, England and spread to elite colleges as an individualistic spiritual network for the wealthy and powerful. At minimum, AA started as an explicitly Bible-based religious program that took Oxford Group methods and teachings for an addiction-specific fellowship. Like Niebuhr, Wilson noted that the utopian ambition of saving the world was a bit much, especially for alcoholics who aren’t sure if they can even save themselves. He also noted that the Oxford Group was taking a top-down approach towards influence that would consistently exclude the addicts who hit rock-bottom and live on the margins of society. Also, they were stepping out of the spiritual emphasis and into specific religious instructions so much that the Catholic Church eventually condemned them.

I would argue Wilson did not ultimately succeed in producing a secular spiritual program. He did succeed in taking the Oxford Group’s ideological project into a different political direction that aimed at grassroots organization instead of controversial hierarchies. That organization has definitely helped millions of people in recovery, but it does so through religious means that speak to people of particular belief systems.

An Easier, Softer Way

Another way to look at the religiosity of AA is in their subsequent attempts to be inclusive after the original leaders and generation phased out. It’s not too fair to judge a group in 2026 by the literature from almost a century ago, but let’s look at how AA has reacted to other recovery options emerging since its own inception.

Too often, we don’t mention that people have a lot of options when it comes to mutual aid and peer networks in recovery. I do try and look at this charitably.

When people say you can’t get sober without AA or a Higher Power, I’ll initially treat it as them saying you can’t get sober without supportive people and a purpose. That’s not so different than what George Carlin said about maintaining edgy promise without flying off the rails like many young artists who face a tragic early death: people around you who care and something to look forward to. Both are not things you can generate from within yourself. You have to seek something external that’s both meaningful beyond the material and engages other human beings for support and validation. There’s nothing about that I object to.

A really common phrase you’ll hear is “if AA doesn’t feel good to you after a year, we can always refund you your misery.” When I first heard it, it was from a really wise AA attendee who had said specifically phrased it as “if sobriety doesn’t feel good to you after a year, you can always have your misery back.” The second version was removed from an AA context, and this person went above-and-beyond with inclusivity in the local recovery community. I try to grant that perspective to the first phrase and assume by AA, they mean “meetings” or “sobriety program” of any kind.

But there’s one hitch in all this, and that’s the beginning of every AA meeting when we read out the How It Works portion of The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it - then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol - cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power - that One is God. May you find Him now!”

Okay, this is more assertive, but let’s read it charitably. We see that the two paths laid out here is doing the 12 steps and an “easier, softer way” that won’t work, but it’s an old book driven by someone who crashed out of Wall Street preceding the Great Depression. This was before we banned icepick lobotomies. It’s fair to expect that they might be referring to moderation or one of the snake oil products marketing themselves as miracle cures, not necessarily ruling out other programs that exist now, right?

[T]he alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid.

The idea of decreasing self-will to increase awareness of the world outside ourselves isn’t objectionable to me either. Much of it is in line with Buddhist and Hindu sects that call for us to realize the impermanence of our ego so we can let go of its worldly attachments that lead to avoidable suffering. The part where it begins to create friction is “God makes that possible” and “there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid.” That has the feeling of nuance to it. There might be some way aside from surrendering oneself entirely to a monotheistic all-powerful God.

[W]e decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children… Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well… we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him… We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role He assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity. We never apologize to anyone for depending upon our Creator… We never apologize for God. Instead we let Him demonstrate, through us, what He can do… We asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them… In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter… We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him… That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.

That’s a little harder to swallow as a merely spiritual or existentialist framework for deriving purpose and community. I can definitely see this as non-denominational, but that’s not the same as inclusive. Yes, this is an old book that existed before other meetings came up… but you can change the book. It’s not the Bible or the Talmud or the Rigveda. It’s a manmade collection of symbols that was made in the last century. You can manmake another. In fact, we’re on the Fourth Edition of the book, so clearly the funds and logistical capital to make new editions exist, and there is an acknowledgement that certain things should be updated over time, but somehow not this part.

Once again, let’s be charitable. The updated editions state that there’s popular demand for the early parts of the book to remain unchanged for consistency. After all, the program is explicit about the importance of prioritizing the common welfare and unity of the group. Perhaps adding a section about alternative pathways would be too controversial given that a debate would ensue over which to include in order to offer a balanced set of alternatives. Besides, the organizations that promote AA have responded to some of these concerns with separate literature. Here’s from the page AA presents to professionals:

“[m]embers recognize that their program is not always effective with all alcoholics. Some may also require professional counseling or medical treatment… A.A. has adopted a policy of cooperation but not affiliation with other organizations concerned with the problem of alcoholism… Local A.A. offices often know where hospital treatment of alcoholism is available”

Do members recognize that? Recall the beginning of the How It Works section:

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

These are rather different tones, though not entirely contradictory in substance. When preparing materials for professionals, it seems that A.A. is far more conservative in its moral judgments. The word “honest” (or “honesty”) doesn’t appear once on the A.A for Professionals page or the pamphlet. At the same time, medication, professional counseling, social agencies, and hospitalizations aren’t mentioned as a resource within the portion of How It Works that’s read at meetings.

Something something charitable. At least the A.A. community is able to acknowledge that there’s a role for professional intervention in alcoholism in some fashion even if it isn’t part of the core literature that the program or meetings rely on. In fact there are a bunch of pamphlets that have come out since the publication of The Big Book, and one of them describes exactly the concerns I highlighted at the top. Let’s do a deep dive into one.

Many Paths to Spirituality

From Many Paths to Spirituality:

“A misconception about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it is a religious organization. Since A.A. groups often rent space in churches, attending an A.A. meeting in a church basement can reinforce that impression, and the possibility of hearing a prayer at the end of a meeting can further cement the idea for some.”

This is almost exactly how I first expressed the feeling A.A. was religious. I was struggling to find the words to explain how I felt (clearly, I have no shortage of words now), but I remember gesturing to the phrase “God, as we understand Him” and the fact all our meetings were at churches and that we literally form a prayer circle to talk to God together while one of the traditions talks about a group conscience. I remember being told that AA and churches have had a long relationship, which is why so many meetings were held there. I remember being confused about how that didn’t further my point. Upon further research, I found out that I was far from alone in feeling that way. From Griffin v. Coughlin (1999):

The foregoing demonstrates beyond peradventure that doctrinally and as actually practiced in the 12 step methodology, adherence to the A.A. fellowship entails engagement in religious activity and religious proselytization. Followers are urged to accept the existence of God as a Supreme Being, Creator, Father of Light and Spirit of the Universe. In “working” the 12 steps, participants become actively involved in seeking such a God through prayer, confessing wrongs and asking for removal of shortcomings. These expressions and practices constitute, as a matter of law, religious exercise for Establishment Clause purposes, no less than the nondenominational prayer in Engel v Vitale (370 US 421), that is, “a solemn avowal of divine faith and supplication for the blessings of the Almighty. The nature of such a prayer has always been religious” (id., at 424-425 [emphasis supplied]; see also, Lee v Weisman, 505 US 577, 603-604 [Blackmun, J., concurring]).

We’ve actually already gone through these arguments in the 1990s in courts of law. So when this pamphlet says there’s a misconception about A.A. being religious, it seems to be including Circuit courts.

Honestly, based. The white man’s rules mean nothing to the spiritual warrior who will not apologize for God. I’m not feigning charitability here, I genuinely admire an organization that claims to have no opinion on outside issues deciding to ignore legal precedent.

On the other hand, from A.A. Conduct and Safety:

Alcoholics Anonymous is a microcosm of the larger society within which we live… As individuals, A.A. members are also accountable to the laws of the land. Neither our traditions nor concepts offer any A.A. member special exemption from the law, which all of us as members of society ought to adhere to.

So maybe the organization is a bit selective about how it approaches social and legal conventions. A couple Circuit courts weighing in on the definitions of religion and spirituality isn’t exactly federally settled law, and legal definitions aren’t the same as the vernacular of everyday life. Substantive due process and procedural due process are arguably meaningfully different, and the former might be a more principled place to make objections through silence than the latter. It would be nice to have more clarity, but maybe the rest of the Many Paths to Spirituality pamphlet will show that.

In our meetings, people from all walks of life come together with a common purpose. Some members return to their religious roots, others find different spiritual paths. Some may find this “God of their understanding,” yet never become involved with organized religion. Still others make the A.A. group itself their higher power.

So far, so good. They acknowledge that some members do find a higher power that isn’t the monotheistic all-powerful God even if the example they use is the group that predominantly believes in the monotheistic all-powerful God. They acknowledge “different spiritual paths” exist outside of “organized religion.”

But some of us soon encountered some questions about spirituality that seemed to present obstacles to our full acceptance of the A.A. program. Based on our prior beliefs - or the lack thereof - we felt at odds with what we perceived to be a religious approach to A.A. or pressure to adopt certain religious or spiritual concepts in order to remain in A.A.

Yes, some of us did. I can understand the phrase “perceived to be a religious approach” if they’re contesting the “religion” label based on non-denominational monotheism, but “perceived to be… pressure to adopt religious or spiritual concepts” is an entirely different concept being smushed together with the first. There is unquestionably, at minimum, a spiritual framework being proposed that narrows the approaches you can take. You literally cannot do the steps without adopting the concept of a “Higher Power” from a “higher independent reality” capable of removing “character defects” if “surrendering” “self-will” to make room for the “Spirit” to tell you what your role is in “His work.” These are spiritual concepts at minimum from a pre-MRI era, not empirically-validated objective psychological constructs.

Recognizing, first of all, that we needed to stay sober, many of us began to discover that we could utilize the A.A. program without conforming to religious or spiritual concepts we either disagreed with or didn’t have.

It’s subtle, but this is another version of a common pattern in conversations about A.A.’s concepts. You will hear “this disease wants you dead” often when having doubts about A.A. on any level, as if the problem is in not taking the disease seriously enough rather than wondering if this protocol addresses it in your case. Also, I guess I’m not in the many of us camp, because I truly don’t know how to do the Steps in a rigorously honest way without adopting the concepts I mentioned above.

Another thing you’ll hear is that you don’t have to understand it to do it, just rely on the testimony of those who have been in the program. That misses the point, because I’m not doubting the program works for people. I’m asking how it works for me, and if you don’t have someone who has anything in common with me except a substance abuse disorder in the program, I’m not going to really have testimony to lean on.

If you tell me “everyone is the same deep down” or something equivalent, I’m going to point out that the separation of Men’s and Women’s meetings is already a concession that different meetings should exist for different identities. If you qualify it as “the part about being a true alcoholic is shared”, I’m going to start to cite studies from Jellinek and his collaboration with Marty Mann, the first woman who claimed successful sustained abstinence through A.A., where Jellinek tries to break down types of alcoholics into 5 subcategories based on their usage patterns.

Then I’m going to make things really uncomfortable by pointing out that 1 out of 5 people diagnosed with a substance use disorder actually go back to drinking in ways that no longer meet the criteria for the disorder, and that a lot of modern researchers are trying to burst the notion that diseases and diagnoses are just one discrete thing to be addressed with highly manualized approaches. I think it’s dangerous for people with a substance abuse disorder to assume they’re in that category and attempt to moderate when they’ve historically struggled with that, but you can’t really say that those 1 in 5 weren’t “true alcoholics” if they’ve met the criteria for a disorder and sought treatment.

As we became more familiar with A.A., we began to realize the deep significance in the phrasing of A.A.’s Twelve Steps, which emphasize “a Power greater than ourselves,” and “God, as we understood Him.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it many times again: you can’t just CTRL+F and replace “God” with “Higher Power” or “God, as we understood Him” and call it spiritual instead of religious now. Imagine doing this to the Bible and then claiming it isn’t religious anymore, just spiritual.

In trying to find something to believe in, I read books about philosophy, spirituality and eastern religions. I listened to people share in meetings and tried to believe in their higher power. I even tried prayer and going back to church. But, in spite of my efforts to ‘educate myself’ into a higher power, I didn’t know what I believed. But I knew that the days I prayed seemed to go better than the days I didn’t, even when I thought I was praying to my bedspread.”

It’s not that this can’t be someone’s experience. I’m confident many people will relate to this description. The problem I have is that the mechanism for which life gets better after prayer is left ambiguous. There’s a very clear implication that emerges about that mechanism if someone says “I’m not saying I have proof of God, but praying to God made my life better.”

My sponsor encouraged me to choose my own conception of a higher power. It didn’t need a gender, or a name, or any human attributes — it just had to be ‘a power greater than myself.’ It was then that I realized that the Fellowship, though comprised of human beings, represented a power greater than anything human. Even more surprisingly, by taking the Steps in my own clumsy way, supported by the unconditional love of my fellow alcoholics, I had discovered a quiet, inner voice — a God within.

So this story does end with discovering a personal God who provides guidance, even if you start with another Higher Power. Note that this is a similar point echoed in literature about agnostic or atheist A.A. members. In fact it rather condescendingly at times calls them vain for thinking they were the end all and be all rather than God.

“By incorporating basic Buddhist practices with my A.A. practices — regular meetings, doing service, working with newcomers, living the Steps and reading A.A. literature — I have discovered an awesome way to improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding and live life on life’s terms in relative serenity. I still have anxieties, anger and all the rest of the emotions that come with life, but, bit by bit, I am able to manage them.”

I would not blame Buddhists for being offended by this. Set aside that you could replace “Buddhist” with any other affiliation and the rest excerpt would flow exactly the same like a generic template. Buddhism very famously rejects the idea of a primordial Creator God who must be worshipped in order to alleviate suffering or understand the right path forward. There are definitely Buddhists who reconcile Buddhist practices with another religion, especially some traditions that have polytheistic pantheons where deities are subject to impermanence as well, but it is completely counterintuitive to use Buddhist beliefs or practices to improve conscious contact with God. Even replacing “God” with “Dharma” doesn’t make it much more coherent.

To be clear, I’m not saying Buddhism can’t help you reduce anxiety or anger, or that you can’t borrow something from Buddhist practices to improve your conscious connection to a personal God or Higher Power. Remember, this is from a pamphlet claiming that people of all religious faiths can participate in the program, so having someone apply Buddhist practices isn’t the same as being a Buddhist. I can apply Christian practices by reciting a petitionary prayer referencing the Lord, but if it was to improve conscious contact with Satan as a Higher Power, you might rightfully say that I haven’t show how praying to Satan is at all coherent to a Christian.

“I am a Sioux/Blackfoot woman. I have been sober in A.A. for many years. Many of us believe in the Great Spirit, and it was a great relief to find out I could believe in a higher power of my choice. I didn’t have to give up any part of my beliefs when I joined A.A. I could live in the white man’s world, but also retain all of my people’s Native traditions, customs and ceremonies. In fact, A.A. made my beliefs stronger. My joining A.A. didn’t restrict me, it gave me more freedom.”

Disclaimer: I’m the other kind of Indian, so I don’t speak from any base of personal credibility here, but these are anonymous anecdotes in a country where people will claim indigenous heritage because they might be 1/16th related to a tribe, so they seem fair game to critically examine.

The Sioux and the Blackfoot Confederacy are distinct groups. The Sioux consists of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota nations while the Blackfoot Confederacy consists of the Niitsitapi and the Siksikaitsitapi peoples. They have different languages, ceremonies, and religious concepts. Inheriting the culture of both nations is certainly possible, but the “Great Spirit” is not some uniform concept across indigenous nations. The first clue is that “Great Spirit” is an English phrase, so it’s necessarily a catch-all term imposed on other belief systems, although indigenous interpreters do use the term now too.

For instance, the Lakota had the concept of Wakhan Thanka, which meant something closer to the total reality being produced from mysterious sacred power. That’s not the same as God according to the Christian missionaries working in America. The Niitsitapi’s concept of Ihtsipatapiyopa comes closer to “source of life” than God, and the distinction matters because “source of life” implies a first cause without omnipotence or personal intervention instead of a foundation for a highly relational lifestyle.

Consider what it would sound like if someone said “I am a Scottish-Turkish woman. Many of us believe in God.” Scotland has had Presybterians, Catholics, Episcopalians, Quakers, Baptists, Gaelic traditions, etc. Turkey has had Sunni Islam, Alevi Islam, Sufi communities, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish communities. Also, Scotland and Turkey are very different countries with different languages, backgrounds, and sociopolitical regimes. Who exactly is “us”? You could ostensibly cast the word “God” out and each faith’s members could use the term, but it would seem very difficult to imagine they actually agree on how the God of their understanding can be mapped to the Higher Power described by the 12 Steps and surrounding A.A. literature.

“I’m a devout, lifelong Catholic. That is an integral part of my experience, strength and hope. I call my higher power God and do not feel I should have to qualify that every time I speak at a meeting. I’m perfectly okay with others referring to Buddha, Mohammed, Yahweh, or whatever name they call their higher power. “I’m uncomfortable, though, with anyone citing the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, or any non-A.A. literature as the truth in an A.A. meeting. But I certainly give them the right to refer to or even quote (briefly) from any of these texts if it’s part of their A.A. experience.

Calling the Buddha a Higher Power on the same shelf as Yahweh or God is actually one of the quickest ways to confirm you don’t know much about Buddhism. The Buddha is not a prophet or a deity with powers from a higher independent reality. He was a human named Siddhartha Gautama who was awakened to the nature of reality through human actions and sought to teach others to pursue those actions while also questioning his every step. He is valued for his teachings, not as an entity unto himself.

The impermanence of all things means that the Buddha too is impermanent. Or, bluntly, he has died as a matter of having been a human born over a couple centuries ago, and he is not a permanent soul looking down on us from the heavens or another higher independent reality. I genuinely wonder if they consulted a Buddhist of any stripe before writing this, because there are Buddhists who do devotional worship to entities that can be construed as prayer to a personal deity for intervention, but even they would have clarified that the Buddha himself doesn’t make much sense as a Higher Power.

The Buddha more or less regarded questioning the existence of God as an intellectual exercise compared to the practical problem of resolving human suffering, and he was pretty negative on the concept of a Supreme Creator in making humans complacent with both their own actions and those of others:

“So, then, owing to the creation of a supreme deity men will become murderers, thieves, unchaste, liars, slanderers, abusive babblers, covetous, malicious, and perverse in view. Thus for those who fall back on the creation of a god as the essential reason, there is neither desire nor effort nor necessity to do this deed or abstain from that deed”

Would you quote this in the same meeting as the Serenity Prayer, where God is asked for serenity to accept the things you cannot change? Could you use someone as a Higher Power if they are depicted questioning gods who claim to be higher powers?

In my personal experience, I have yet to hear anyone quote the Koran, Talmud, or Buddha at an A.A. meeting, but I’ve heard many times that you cannot get sober without accepting God from someone who cites the Bible. The lack of consistency is part of the problem with decentralized anonymous peer-facilitated mutual-aid organizations. This testimony could be absolutely true while also not being an experience many of us can relate to in recovery. The same applies to every other type of meeting too.

I’ve been in Recovery Dharma meetings that got quite uncomfortable as some people called out systemic biases they observed in Buddhist institutions or threw some fuel on the flaming schism between RD and Refuge Recovery (I’ll dig into that elsewhere). The notable difference is that SMART, Recovery Dharma, and Refuge Recovery explicitly mention you can do A.A. and the Steps alongside their program and that many members successfully do. A.A. literature tends to put things in more binary terms: you’re doing the Steps or you’re heading for relapse.

From the next testimony:

I’m still an agnostic. But I have discovered that the program will work for anyone who will let it. I didn’t have to find a way to make it work. It will work perfectly well on its own, provided I’m willing to do some work myself.

I genuinely am not sure what this means, but I feel a lot of whiplash.

I saw that whatever else spirituality might consist of, it had to include being of maximum service to my fellow alcoholics, whether or not they were still suffering

When I first came to A.A., I thought that religion and spirituality were the same thing. But I’ve come to realize that religion means being committed to a practice of belief, and being spiritual means actively living life through a life-giving force. I believe this is any power greater than myself, whether I choose to call it God, Allah, Higher Power, Creative Intelligence, or the Power of Good.

This is one of the rare instances I’ve seen of A.A. literature delineating religion from spirituality with definitions. It also gives away how particularly religious their perspective is: the emphasis on belief before understanding, personal awakenings, and Creator worship over ritual schedules, kinship networks, and communal resources.

Also, where does a “practice of belief” end and “actively living life” begin? Do we not practice our beliefs actively while living life? If not then they aren’t really beliefs, they’re partially-internalized aspirations. Someone tried to explain this difference to me as “religion is something you study, spirituality is for your soul.”

That confused me a lot more, because you can absolutely find thousands of texts throughout history attempting to study human psychology and identity through the concept of a soul. Some cultures frame trauma and its aftermath in terms of a disturbed soul that cannot maintain functional harmony within a body and its mind after some kind of event, and they address it with community rituals that use interconnectedness as a premise in healing rituals. I have no clue how you could separate that into religion and spirituality, or “practicing beliefs” and “actively living life.” A.A. itself says to practice its principles “in all our affairs.”

From Nancy Ammerman, a 2013 abstract I found useful:

“Spirituality” often has been framed in social science research as an alternative to organized “religion,” implicitly or explicitly extending theoretical arguments about the privatization of religion. This article uses in-depth qualitative data from a religiously diverse U.S. sample to argue that this either/or distinction not only fails to capture the empirical reality of American religion, it does no justice to the complexity of spirituality. An inductive discursive analysis reveals four primary cultural “packages,” or ways in which people construct the meaning of spirituality in conversation: a Theistic Package tying spirituality to personal deities, an Extra-Theistic Package locating spirituality in various naturalistic forms of transcendence, an Ethical Spirituality focusing on everyday compassion, and a contested Belief and Belonging Spirituality tied to cultural notions of religiosity. Spirituality, then, is neither a diffuse individualized phenomenon nor a single cultural alternative to “religion.” Analysis of the contested evaluations of Belief and Belonging Spirituality allows a window on the “moral boundary work” being done through identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” The empirical boundary between spirituality and religion is far more orous than is the moral and political one.

From Linda Mercadante’s 2014 book Belief without Borders:

The dramatic rise in the number of religiously unaffiliated, who nevertheless claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” suggests the need to rethink the categories of spirituality and religion. Although more a rhetorical device than true divorce, this important shift demands the study of the beliefs of “nones.” The “why” of this and the interview process are explained. The book asks whether this is a spiritual crisis or revolution, and whether the situation is really spirituality versus religion. It also explains why the study of belief, although often neglected by the social sciences, is critical. The interview process and the interviewees are discussed, showing that qualitative research is an appropriate method to elicit SBNR beliefs. A main contention is that SBNRs need to be heard in their own voices.

I would have a hard time disagreeing with the bold part. I agree that it means something that we have people identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” I do think they’re sincerely conveying a real pattern we can identify and study in people who are unhappy with dissociating from life through radical materialism and hyperindividualism, and they’re seeking a real aspect of human experience that our modern social institutions systematically denigrate.

But I also remember the Oxford Group literature. The community called themselves “not a religion” while also calling themselves Holy Crusaders bringing about a New World Order for Jesus Christ the King. They wanted to separate themselves from “religious bores” or those who emphasize practice and study in ways that can come across as boring and disciplined. Remember that the Oxford Group was trying to spread by appealing to wealthy elite students and inviting them to lavish parties at hotels and estates. I would argue that there’s definitely a rhetorical angle at work here, even if completely sincere or unplanned, that moves religious beliefs under the aesthetics of general spirituality.

When I finally admitted I was an alcoholic and came into the program four years ago, I thought, ‘Oh God, why me?’ We Jews were supposed to be immune to alcoholism, we were the ‘Chosen Ones’ — or so my denial told me. Yet today I am doubly blessed; I am a grateful, recovering, Jewish alcoholic.

“It took me a long time to separate Judaism from alcoholism, to accept that spirituality did not affect or change my religious beliefs, but enhanced them, that my higher power was not the same as yours, that praying and the posture I use to pray does not alter my Jewishness but is necessary for my recovery.

I asked a couple Jewish friends about this part. They’ve said that there is really something comparable to the “model minority” concept for Asians where holding oneself to higher standards is both an internally generated and externally imposed expectation of their identity. Throughout American history, certain European groups like the Irish, German, and Eastern European peoples were stereotyped as having a heavy “working-class” drinking culture, so it became socially advantageous for Jewish communities to separate themselves by downplaying their own. It’s in the same vein of saying “we’re Asians: we don’t get divorced, we’re good at school, and we get ahead by following rules.” It’s also very real for denial to use this identity as an excuse to ignore real problems.

My friends also said that the “Chosen Ones” reference was weird though because they’ve heard it in the context of an association with struggle, as in being chosen by God through a covenant to fulfill obligations that involve trials and tribulations. Between this and the earlier reference to “white man’s world” from the Sioux/Blackfoot woman, I’m getting a vibe. I’m not saying the testimony is made up, but I am saying that it feels this testimony was chosen in an attempt to be culturally sensitive only to end up projecting stereotypes. I say this as someone who has met many kind and genuine people in non-recovery spaces who have done exactly that to my face with the best possible intentions, often to my benefit by assuming better things about me than I would have said. Still, it’s going to come across as stereotypical and throw readers off.

Today I can even recite the Lord’s Prayer without feeling guilty since it was pointed out to me in ‘How it Works’ that I have to go to any length to get and stay sober.

This is one of those things you can’t help but notice once it’s been pointed out to you, as it was to me. Notice how the spiritual and religious compatibility discussion is being sidestepped into a discussion about desperation, as if trying to brute force past a complex discussion that requires time and energy.

More than once, the response to my hesitance or questions about the Higher Power has been some variation of “this disease wants you dead” (I’m aware, which is why I’m asking how this program works to prevent that outcome) or “can you really say you’re willing to go to any lengths to stay sober if you won’t even try this free step” (nothing is free, I have finite time and resources, so I would like to know if another program might be more compatible for me).

This is one of the practical ways in which the strong claims in How It Works can manifest as an obstacle. If you accept that only dishonesty or ego keeps people from working the “simple” program and that God is the only one capable of curing you of the defects of your “self-will run riot”, then it makes sense that you would want to apply some type of “tough love” or “reality check” to deflate that ego.

My sponsor was well versed in A.A.’s Twelve Steps, Traditions and Concepts. He had a substantial service history and talked to me about the 36 principles upon which A.A. was founded. It is these principles that I would ultimately turn my life and my will over to. “This God — ‘good orderly direction’ — as represented by the two million or so alcoholics who are members of this global Fellowship, is what I have accepted.

“In reading Appendix II in the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, I have come to understand the profound changes that come from spirituality. The appendix says, ‘With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness… is the essence of spiritual experience.

We’re rapidly reapproaching something like the Oxford Group’s claims of not being religious while also claiming monotheism, dualism, and personal awakenings characteristic of certain religions and not others. Kind of like how being a Holy Crusader spreading the word of Jesus Christ is characteristic of certain religions and not others, even if you say you’re not aiming to be a religion.

I am proof that it is possible to be an atheist on matters of the supernatural but still have a spiritual awakening and reap the rewards of the A.A. program of recovery.”

This is, again, a stereotype but of atheists. Atheism is not a belief system. Atheists are not materialists who deny the immaterial world. Atheism doesn’t even have a consistent meaning, because those who advocate for radical materialism, those who don’t have any specific belief in a God, and those who think theism is an irrelevant question are all lumped together as “atheists.” Many argue a distinction must be drawn between non-theists and atheists, between the indifferent and the actively opposed. The mainstream Buddhist perspective is arguably non-theistic, as are many Hindu perspectives. There are atheist Hindus. Atheism in Hinduism is as old and respectable as any other tradition, not a modern trend as the result of living in a post-Enlightenment industrialized age of radical materialism and hyperindividualism.

The Rig Veda doesn’t actually command any kind of belief in an ultimate Creator to be worshipped. Almost the opposite, in fact. Lots of Hindu texts explicitly engage with skepticism and the value of realizing the divinity of your true self in the face of gods who selfishly seek worship for their intrinsic divinity. Some schools go further and say gods only have power through the mantras that name them and the concepts they invoke within ourselves, so to separate oneself from divinity is to attempt to surrender to the concepts within yourself. It’s shying away from your own autonomy. None of this rules out the ideas of karma and dharma as principles of the universe, which you might very well call supernatural. A lack of theism doesn’t mean disorder.

Links

• https://www.aa.org/aa-for-professionals
• https://aaws.widen.net/content/muxgbjsqa1/pdf/p-84_many_paths_to_spirituality_online.pdf?v=66f3fbef-a91c-4fde-84e1-98d10ac0e539
• https://www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/AA_conduct_and_safety_V032026.pdf
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jssr.12024
• https://academic.oup.com/book/8734/chapter-abstract/154780910

Personal Experiences

I hate bringing up unverifiable personal experiences, but when they form a pattern and they’ve been validated by someone else, I feel compelled to share them tentatively as a warning.

A lot of people in AA frown upon having an understanding of religion and spirituality that doesn’t work with the 12 steps. Sometimes it’s as explicit as “if God scares you out of these rooms, your addiction will bring you back” or “I don’t know how anyone can do this without praying for strength from God” or “I don’t care if it offends you, God is the reason I’m here today.” This can be framed as “tough love” but I would say it’s closer to bordering on “proselytizing.”

The organizations around AA will tell you that there’s no central authoritative governing body that can vet safety or quality of meetings. By design, they are not intended to be institutional or professional, which is fine. When you roll the dice, you might have some truly great inclusive groups, and you might have some that make you feel a little on edge for not sharing in their zeal. Each meeting ends up having regulars that form a subculture out of the lives they inhabit outside of the meeting.

Don’t get me wrong though, there are plenty of excellent mentors and peers you can find in AA. It remains an accessible way to meet others struggling with substance abuse, and there are plenty who just use it to have a place to share in a group that feels safe rather than work any of the Steps. If you have trouble at one, any town or city that has one group will almost certainly have another, or another that will pop up soon.

Really good AA groups will also provide access to all kinds of recovery capital, including employment opportunities dedicated for those in recovery, rental assistance to secure safe and stable housing, transportation for meetings and sober outings, directories of local nonprofits, clothes, meals, help navigating the medical system, and just some swell friends you can talk about deep traumas with. Even if you don’t work a single step, those resources alone can dramatically increase your quality of life and sustained abstinence.

I just think people should know that it’s a religious program. I wouldn’t say you should stop going to gurudwaras for free meals, but I’d definitely let you know it’s a sacred place of worship for Sikhs. I wouldn’t tell you to skip Diwali celebrations, but I would let you know it’s a festival that’s part of a religious calendar rooted in Hindu cosmology and epics. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone that they should never try AA and 12 step programs, but I would say it’s religious and not everyone’s Higher Power, if they have one, will be compatible with it.

Some Nuances

These are less direct points, but they’re worth mentioning.

Creator Worship is Not Universal

Not every religion follows the idea that the Creator figure, if they even have one, is an ultimate authority. In fact, not every Christian sect even believes that praying to God would lead to any kind of intervention, that the universe was set in motion a long time ago and the laws of physics and logic are God’s laws. There are really cool arguments made by religious scientists positing exactly that throughout history.

Many Hindu belief systems see the Creator as the least significant part of their pantheons or trinities. I mean, you’ve already been created through no volition of your own, for better or for worse. Venerating the Creator is often seen as an act of looking to the past rather than the future before you in which you have a purpose to fulfill. Krishna, Shiva, and Vishnu are all actively worshipped while worshipping or building temples for Brahma is discouraged.

Buddhists often dispense with the idea of gods altogether. Although there are branches that maintain theistic or supernatural beliefs, deities are not assumed to be a primordial Creator or avatars of a single universal consciousness. They’re understood to be sentient beings bound by the laws of reincarnation, karma, and dharma like humans. The concept of dependent origination for all things makes an absolute uncaused first cause represented by a Creator God virtually impossible.

God is not necessarily a Him or a Father

To many, God sits above human constructs like gender roles or sex as determined by physical genitalia. To others, God can manifest in any gender or sex if so desired. In some Hindu traditions, the personification of the trinity of male deities can be a supreme female deity like Durga. Framing a Higher Power as a necessarily masculine Father can be an intersection of Creator worship and particular gender dynamics, which is very far from neutral or universally applicable. I’ve read arguments claiming that it’s proper to refer to God as masculine because God plays the active role in creation just as a man does. I imagine that will resonate with some and definitely not resonate with others.

It Really is Okay to Be Religious

Seriously, I’m not complaining about the efficacy of AA in this page. It clearly does work to keep lots of people sober. What motivates me to spend this much time establishing the religiosity of AA is that it doesn’t work for everyone, and AA principles can set up a framework to blame you for that. From How It Works:

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it — then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

Remember that we deal with alcohol — cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power — that One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.

Taken in sum, you are to blame if you have not chosen to surrender to a benevolent and omnipotent God as the sole Power to solve the Powerlessness you have to admit to in Step 1. You have been born in a way that has left you “constitutionally incapable of being honest” enough to address your health and well-being. If you don’t pray for God and His protection (capital G, capital H) “with complete abandon,” you’re seeking a softer and easier way than the difficulty of a spiritual awakening through a conversion from the 12 Steps. You are one of the “unfortunates.”

I’m not going to say this is right or wrong as theology or metaphysics or ethics. I’ll reiterate this constantly just as I did at the top: if this program works for you, great. If this method works for you and you want to share it with people, that’s fine. It’s free and anonymous, you never have to come back if you hate it. You don’t need to sign a waiver or join an email list or anything. No blood pacts with demons or timeshare salesmen. Others have called it a cult, and if so, it’s the easiest cult to walk away from if you decide it’s not for you. They don’t take your keys or back account information or the deed to your house.

The method might be great for the ones it works for, just like medications can be great, but you would never blame someone if the medication didn’t work. If they stopped taking it because it wasn’t working and produced unwelcome side effects, we would think it rational to see a professional to chart a new course of action for your unique self.

So my problem is when A.A. is presented as the baseline default option everyone should start at without any mention of alternatives, because the program’s literature will blame you and most members are told to remind each other of their desperation to power through a lack of understanding. I am as green as they come in recovery communities, but I’ve had doctors ask me to explain Recovery Dharma to them because they didn’t know A.A. wasn’t the only support group for recovery. I’ve had over a dozen people thank me for introducing them to it, even devout Christians who said they felt more comfortable sharing in RD meetings than A.A. meetings- people who have battled substance abuse longer than I’ve been alive.

I can’t ignore that just to avoid ruffling feathers. I think someone should tell you that the problem isn’t you. You are not an “unfortunate.” You are not “constitutionally incapable of being honest” or having the self-awareness to make meaningful progress in your life. You are not “born that way” or in any way that makes your doom inevitable as a fact of your birth. You do not have to surrender yourself into Powerlessness and seek a Higher Power in order to make progress on your recovery. Seeking self-empowerment is a completely valid approach to regaining control of your life as an alternative to surrendering to something you don’t understand. There are multiple ways to tackle this “self-will run riot” or “misidentification with an impermanent ego.”

Everyone’s body, mind, and soul are different, so everyone’s recovery is going to be different in spite of the similarities. That has to be acknowledged if we want to really be inclusive about recovery. Chances are you’ll probably still end up going to an AA meeting since that’s the default option people are aware of, but know that you have other recovery options too that don’t reflect poorly on you if you choose to try them. Take what works, leave what doesn’t.