Alternatives to AA: Secular, Non-12-Step, and Other Options

If Alcoholics Anonymous did not work for you, or you already know it will not, you have options. Several established fellowships operate without a higher power, without sponsorship, and without the twelve steps, and all of them are free to attend.

Before you pick one, it helps to know exactly what you are trying to solve. People leave AA for at least four different reasons, and each one points somewhere different. One of those reasons has an answer that most guides on this topic never mention, which is that you may be able to stay in AA and skip the part you object to.

In This Article:

• Why people look for an alternative to AA
• Is AA religious?
• Secular AA: staying in AA without the God part
• Secular and science-based alternatives
• Alternatives that are not secular
• What the research says about AA and its alternatives
• Non-12-step rehab is a different thing

Why people look for an alternative to AA

People look for an alternative to AA for four distinct reasons: the higher power, the model of powerlessness and disease, the requirement to quit entirely, or the reception they get for taking prescribed addiction medication. Which one applies to you determines where to look next, because the four objections have different answers.

Searching for alternatives to AA usually turns up the same list of five organizations with no explanation of which one addresses which problem. That is not much use if you do not already know what you are looking for. So start with the objection.

The higher power

The God language is a wall. This is the most common objection and it has more than one solution.

The model

You do not accept powerlessness, the disease framing, or a permanent label. Secular programs are built differently.

The goal

You are not trying to stop completely. Some groups work with that.

The reception

You take medication for addiction and got a bad response in the room.

The third and fourth objections are covered in full on our main support groups page, so this page focuses on the first two. If your objection is the goal or the reception, follow those links, because the answers there are more specific than anything on this page.

One thing worth settling before you read further. Leaving a group that does not fit is not a failure and it is not a relapse. It is ordinary. Most people who use peer support try more than one room before they settle. That can mean another twelve-step room, including a substance-specific fellowship such as Cocaine Anonymous.

Is AA religious?

AA describes itself as spiritual rather than religious, and it has no religious affiliation or requirement. The twelve steps do refer to God and to a higher power, and the AA text known as the Big Book contains a chapter, “We Agnostics,” addressed specifically to readers who do not believe. How much religion you actually encounter depends heavily on the individual meeting.

The honest answer has three parts, and most arguments about this question happen because people are answering different ones.

Officially, no. AA states that it has one requirement for membership, which is a desire to stop drinking. There is no creed, no church affiliation, and no belief test.

In its literature, partly. Six of the twelve steps refer to God or to a higher power. The Big Book devotes a chapter, titled “We Agnostics,” to readers who do not believe, which tells you the question was live from the beginning.

In practice, it varies enormously. This is the part that matters most and the part that gets left out. AA groups are autonomous, meaning each one runs itself. One meeting may open with a prayer and lean heavily on scripture-adjacent language. Another meeting in the same city may never mention God at all. The tone of a room is set by the people in it, not by a central office.

That variation has a practical consequence. If you went to one AA meeting and found it too religious, you have learned about that meeting. You have not learned much about AA. Longtime members who do not believe in God commonly describe treating the group itself, or the program, or their own developing conscience as the higher power the steps refer to. These are member workarounds rather than official teaching, but they are widespread enough that you will hear them in most rooms.

Secular AA: staying in AA without the God part

Secular and agnostic AA meetings exist, and AA publishes Conference-approved literature written by agnostic and atheist members. If the religious framing is your only objection, this may be the most practical answer available, because AA has far more meetings in far more places than any alternative fellowship. Availability of secular meetings varies significantly by region.

Almost no guide to alternatives to AA mentions this, which is a real gap. Most of those guides are published by treatment centers that sell non-twelve-step programs, and they have no reason to tell you that you might be able to stay where you are.

AA’s own literature for nonbelievers

In 2017, AA’s General Service Conference approved a pamphlet called The “God” Word: Agnostic and Atheist Members in A.A., catalogued as P-86. It collects the experiences of ten agnostic and atheist members and makes the case that the Fellowship has room for believers and nonbelievers alike. It originated with a group of agnostic, atheist and freethinking members in London and is now distributed through AA intergroups across the United States.

The following year, AA Grapevine, the fellowship’s own journal, published One Big Tent, a collection of stories by atheist and agnostic members covering how they work the program, sponsor others, and do service without holding a belief in God. Members who want a plain statement of what working the steps is meant to deliver often start with the 12 Promises of AA.

Secular meetings

Alongside the literature, a network of secular AA meetings has grown up over the past two decades. These meetings use the AA framework and often read the steps in a secular interpretation, or set the God language aside entirely. A series of international conferences for secular AA members began in 2014.

In meeting listings, these groups usually identify themselves with a label such as secular, agnostic, atheist, freethinkers, or beyond belief. Local intergroup websites tend to list more of them than the national finder does, so if a search of the main directory comes up empty, check the intergroup site for your area.

The part worth knowing in advance

This has been contested ground inside AA, and pretending otherwise would not help you. Proposals for official literature addressed to nonbelievers were raised and declined repeatedly for decades before the 2017 approval. In some areas, secular groups have been removed from local meeting lists over how they read the steps. Availability is uneven: a reader in a large city may have several secular options within reach, and a reader in a rural county may have none.

What that means practically is that secular AA is worth checking first if availability matters to you, and worth abandoning quickly if your area does not have it. The alternatives below exist for exactly that situation.

Secular and science-based alternatives

Four established fellowships operate without a higher power: SMART Recovery, LifeRing Secular Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, and Women for Sobriety. All are free. They differ from AA structurally as well as theologically, replacing sponsorship and a fixed sequence of steps with tools you apply yourself.

These programs share a starting assumption that separates them from the twelve-step model. They treat you as capable of directing your own recovery rather than as someone who needs to accept powerlessness first. What follows is the single thing that most distinguishes each one, rather than a general description.

• SMART Recovery uses tools drawn from cognitive and behavioral therapy in a facilitated format closer to a structured workshop than a share-around-the-room meeting. There is no sponsorship and no step sequence. It runs in-person meetings and holds online meetings daily. Note that SMART no longer positions itself as abstinence-only: it encourages members to consider abstinence while leaving the recovery goal to the individual, including goals involving moderation, harm reduction, or medication for addiction.
• LifeRing Secular Recovery is built on what it calls the three S philosophy of sobriety, secularity and self-help. Rather than a shared program, each member builds and revises their own personal recovery plan, and meetings focus on what people are actually doing this week.
• Secular Organizations for Sobriety, also known as SOS, is less a single program than a network of autonomous local groups. It keeps sobriety separate from any belief system and treats it as a standalone priority that members maintain through their own effort and mutual support.
• Women for Sobriety is women-only and secular, organized around its New Life Program and its thirteen Acceptance Statements rather than steps. The emphasis is on rebuilding self-regard and on issues that mixed-gender rooms often do not surface. It also runs a separate program for friends and family, called CARE.

The tradeoff is availability, and it is a significant one. AA and Narcotics Anonymous have vastly more in-person meetings in vastly more places. Across much of the country, the realistic secular option is an online meeting rather than a room you can drive to. For some people that is an advantage. For someone who needs to get out of the house and sit with other people, it is a real limitation.

For a side-by-side comparison of all of these against the twelve-step fellowships, including which have a version for family members, see our guide to addiction support groups.

Alternatives that are not secular

An alternative to AA does not have to be secular. Recovery Dharma and Refuge Recovery are built on Buddhist practice, Celebrate Recovery is explicitly Christian, and Wellbriety is grounded in Indigenous culture. These suit someone whose objection is the twelve steps, the disease model, or the specific religious tradition rather than spirituality itself.

Guides on this topic almost always assume that leaving AA means going secular. For a large share of readers that assumption is wrong. You might object to the powerlessness framing while being perfectly comfortable with a contemplative practice. You might want a program rooted in your own faith rather than one rooted in someone else’s.

• Recovery Dharma applies Buddhist teaching and meditation to recovery, and is run by its members with little formal hierarchy. Recovery is defined by the individual rather than prescribed. Most meetings are online, with a growing number in person.
• Refuge Recovery also draws on Buddhist practice, organized around its own framework of truths about addiction and recovery, with meditation as the central practice. It holds both in-person and online meetings.
• Celebrate Recovery is a Christian program hosted by churches, built on a set of biblical principles alongside an adapted twelve steps. It addresses a broader range of difficulties than substance use, which is why many participants are there for something other than addiction. Availability depends on which churches near you host it.
• Wellbriety centers Native and Indigenous cultural practice, including the Medicine Wheel, and treats healing as something belonging to family and community rather than to the individual alone.

If the appeal of a contemplative program is the meditation rather than the framework, note that several secular fellowships also use mindfulness tools without the Buddhist context.

What the research says about AA and its alternatives

A 2020 Cochrane systematic review of 27 studies covering more than 10,000 people found that clinical programs designed to connect people to AA produced higher rates of continuous abstinence than other established treatments, performed comparably on measures of drinking intensity, and reduced healthcare costs. AA has the strongest evidence base of any mutual-help organization, in large part because it has been studied far more than any alternative.

Stating that on a page about alternatives to AA may seem like an odd choice. It is here because it is true, and because you should be able to weigh it yourself.

The Cochrane review examined twelve-step facilitation, meaning structured clinical work intended to get people into AA and keep them there. Compared against well-established treatments including cognitive behavioral therapy, the manualized versions produced better continuous abstinence outcomes and similar results on how much people drank when they did drink. The reviewers also found lower healthcare costs, which they attributed partly to AA being free and widely available over the long term.

Three things that finding does not tell you.

It does not tell you AA is the best fit for you. A strong average across thousands of people says very little about whether one specific room will work for one specific person. Averages are useful for policy and close to useless for choosing a Tuesday evening meeting.

It does not mean the alternatives do not work. The research literature on SMART Recovery, LifeRing, Recovery Dharma and the rest is much thinner than the literature on AA. That is a fact about how much research has been funded and conducted, not a finding of ineffectiveness. Absence of study is not evidence of failure.

It does not account for the variable you actually control. Attendance. A program you will keep going back to will do more for you than a program with better published outcomes that you quit after two weeks. Every study of mutual-help groups depends on people continuing to show up, which means fit is not a soft consideration. It is the mechanism.

The practical reading is this: AA is worth trying, including in its secular form, and if it does not fit you, the alternatives are legitimate rather than second-best. What matters is landing somewhere you will return to.

Non-12-step rehab is a different thing

A support group is free, peer-led, and something you attend. A non-12-step rehab is a paid treatment program staffed by clinicians. People search for both using similar words, but they are not substitutes for one another, and the cost difference between them is total.

Everything above this section is a free peer support group. If what you are actually looking for is a treatment program that does not use the twelve-step model, that is a different search with different questions attached, starting with what it costs and whether your coverage applies.

To compare treatment programs and what each level of care involves, start with treatment options. To browse programs directly, use our directory.

Frequently asked questions

Is AA religious?

AA describes itself as spiritual rather than religious and has no religious affiliation. Its only membership requirement is a desire to stop drinking. Six of the twelve steps do refer to God or a higher power, and how much religion a person encounters varies considerably between meetings, because AA groups are autonomous and set their own tone.

Are there AA meetings that do not mention God?

Yes. Secular and agnostic AA meetings operate in many areas, and in 2017 AA’s General Service Conference approved a pamphlet written by agnostic and atheist members. Availability varies significantly by region, and local intergroup websites usually list more of these meetings than the national directory does.

What is the best alternative to AA?

There is no single best alternative, because the useful question is which objection a person has. Someone put off by religious framing wants something different from someone who does not intend to stop drinking entirely. Identifying the objection first narrows the options quickly.

Does SMART Recovery require abstinence?

No. SMART Recovery encourages members to consider abstinence but leaves the recovery goal to the individual, including goals involving moderation, harm reduction, or medication for addiction. Older sources describing SMART as abstinence-only are out of date.

Are alternatives to AA free?

Yes. Every fellowship covered on this page is free to attend, with no dues, fees, or insurance requirement. Optional costs such as literature exist, and groups commonly give literature to newcomers at no charge.

Is AA more effective than the alternatives?

A 2020 Cochrane review found that clinical programs designed to connect people to AA produced higher continuous abstinence rates than other established treatments. AA has also been studied far more than any alternative, so the comparison is uneven. For an individual, continued attendance matters more than average published outcomes.

You Might Like

• Addiction Support Groups: Types, Costs, and How to Choose One
• The AA Big Book
• Medication-Assisted Treatment
• Harm Reduction

References

1. Kelly JF, Humphreys K, Ferri M. Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs for alcohol use disorder. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2020, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD012880. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012880.pub2.
2. Kelly JF, Abry A, Ferri M, Humphreys K. Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-Step Facilitation Treatments for Alcohol Use Disorder: A Distillation of a 2020 Cochrane Review for Clinicians and Policy Makers. Alcohol and Alcoholism. 2020;55(6):641-651. DOI: 10.1093/alcalc/agaa050.
3. Alcoholics Anonymous. The “God” Word: Agnostic and Atheist Members in A.A. (P-86). General Service Conference-approved.
4. AA Grapevine. One Big Tent: Atheist and Agnostic AA Members Share Their Experience, Strength and Hope. ISBN 9781938413704.
5. Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. Around the World; Estimated Worldwide A.A. Individual and Group Membership (SMF-132).
6. SMART Recovery. Position statements on recovery goals and on medication-assisted treatment.
7. Women for Sobriety. New Life Program and the 13 Acceptance Statements. https://womenforsobriety.org/