Overview
“Higher Power” refers to a religious deity, spiritual force, or other entity that has a role or power over one’s life.
The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) explicitly call on individuals to submit to or engage with some kind of Higher Power in Steps Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, and Eleven.
History and Context
The language of “Higher Power” was used in the place of “God” in AA in an attempt to make the program more accessible to those of all faiths or no faith at all. I would argue this attempt has failed for the most part, and that the steps are straightforwardly religious in a way that is difficult to adhere to faithfully without accepting something of a personal, interventionist deity that’s rooted in Protestant moral-psychology.
A 2020 survey published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse found that 98% of participants in Narcotics Anonymous (BA) explicitly believe in God or another higher power, which is 9% higher than the baseline American population. 67% believe that God plays a direct role in shaping the events of their life, and 78% report hearing God talk to them in their minds. AA does help people stay sober, but it seems that it does so by bringing people into a religious fellowship that provides a sober network of resources to increase individual and community recovery capital. 1