Groups like Secularists for Sobriety who have criticized AA for being too spiritual have recognized something very important. The 12 Steps of AA, like any recovery program, has an inherently spiritual agenda. If alcohol were the problem, then abstinence would be the solution. But alcohol addiction is the symptom of a deeper spiritual disorder. This vicious cycle of addiction swapping is not what recovery is about.
Abstinence is only a small portion of what is involved in recovery.
Recovery involves becoming a different kind of person, a person connected in deep and practical ways with God. For Christians, the spiritual nature of the recovery journey can be confusing. Like many of us, I wanted my existing spirituality to be all I needed. I did not welcome the thought that my spirituality was distorted by my addictive process. But it was just this kind of spiritual grandiosity, combined with the spiritual reinforcement of denial, that made my own addictive processes so resistant to change.