I’ve found tremendous satisfaction and purpose in working with other addicts within a secular Twelve Step framework. We’re pioneers, in a sense, embarking into unknown territories together. At every turn, we’re met with a recovery challenge and ask ourselves “How do we interpret this particular Step or spiritual principle from a secular humanist perspective?”

Books and guides exist for those working a secular Twelve Step recovery. But the secular movement really isn’t that old, and every resource I’ve found (if I can use an alcoholic metaphor) tastes like recent vintage. There simply isn’t a collected, collective wisdom on secular recovery distilled (yes, again) over generations—not yet, at least.

Secular fellowship is often driven by a unique common purpose: self-justified anger against religiosity in traditional Twelve Step recovery culture! Secular Twelve Step groups exist as a direct result of recovering, nonbelieving addicts needing a safe place to meet away from the ‘eyes of God’. It’s like their identity has been forged in the fires of rebellion, and meeting together is an opportunity to rage against the empire and tell tales of survival, of escape from theistic indoctrination. Well, it’s not that bad, not really.

Most secular meetings are just like their traditional theistic counterparts, minus the God talk. But the subject of belief does come up, usually from an agnostic point of view. It’s almost like an initiation or a group inclusion ritual: “I want to stay sober. They say I can’t stay sober without God. I do not and cannot believe in any god.” Ah, my sweet summer child. Welcome to the fold. Take shelter among us heathens and apostates and stay as long as you need.

Twelve Step groups have been around for ninety years. What people don’t realize is that in another ninety years (if humanity hasn’t accidentally ‘extincted itself’) the secular species might well be the extant dominant therapy of the Twelve Step movement. The theistic God-steps will still exist for a small segment of religiously-inclined addicts, but in the main the survivor will be secular groups. I’m not doomcasting, and the decline of traditional Twelve Step culture is not something I want to see, not in any timeline. But if you want to see evidence of this evolutionary process in action, go to a traditional Twelve Step meeting anywhere and look at the median demographic of the typical attendee—White, Christian, and 60-70 years of age. We’re shrinking and narrowing as society grows and diversifies and the internal census confirms this.

Now, if you can find one nearby, go to a secular meeting. As a special composition group, it not only attracts nonbelievers, atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers but also others who identify as marginalized, especially relative to the average demographic found in the traditional rooms. In secular Twelve Step groups around the world, queer people, non-Whites, people with dual and multiple diagnoses, pagans, and others have all found secular meetings a safe space to call home. Together, we are the thriving future of Twelve Step culture. I would like to see the data to confirm my hypothesis, but I’m pretty sure that as traditional Twelve Step groups are slowly dying off their secular counterparts are not only growing but flourishing.

Anyone, anywhere who believes themselves to be responsible for the survival of the Twelve Step fellowship, who believes that they have a hand in what comes of its future, had better get fully behind the secular movement that’s coming from within it. There are those too who speak against the secular movement at every turn. They don’t have a reasonable argument against secularism in the Twelve Steps, they just seem to be born that way: prejudicial and fearful. Maybe they need a better higher power if they’re that threatened by people getting sober without God. And there are a couple of tropes repeated ad nauseam by some that are not only tiresome but dead wrong: “Our program is spiritual not religious” and “We are already a secular program”. As to the former, what it really means is that the program deals with God but not in a strictly Christian fashion. That might seem to be nonreligious to an apostate, but to a nonbeliever, that’s still religious. The latter is simply a confusion where meaning of the term ‘secular’ is conflated with ‘non-sectarian’. What they’re actually saying is that while the traditional program has Christian foundations it isn’t tethered to any particular denomination of Christianity. That’s non-sectarian not secular.

I support secular Twelve Step recovery because it is effective. It works. It saved my life, and I’m seeing it save others’ lives. I see it enrich the sobriety of those who have migrated over to us from the traditional Twelve Step community. I see people come through the doors and express a profound gratitude for the existence of a secular meeting to go to. It’s a program suited to getting sober in the 21st century. But we’re a work-in-progress.

The first secular Twelve Step meeting was the Quad A Group (‘Atheists and Agnostic in AA’) in Chicago in the mid-1970s. That’s only 50 years ago! On the scale of the transformation of social institutions, we’re well beyond fledgling but still in somewhat of an adolescent phase—the secular movement still carries a lot of rebellious angst against its theistic parent. But as we come of age, and as we come to believe that we are the future of the Twelve Step recovery, we’re finding a voice that’s positive, affirming, and independent from our parent.

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If the early secular movement was fuelled by being iconoclastic, it’s undergoing maturation today through community-building and the creation of a positive culture with its own distinct voice and vernacular.

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What does the future bring for the community of recovery through the secular Twelve Steps? Some answers are already making themselves known. More and more secular groups are popping-up everywhere around the world. We’re organizing by putting on conferences and local round-ups, where members with lived experience in secular Twelve Step recovery share their experience, strength and hope. We’re cultivating our own genre of recovery literature—it seems every couple of months, I find in my in-box notice of a new book or an anthology of daily meditations written from a secular Twelve Step perspective. If the early secular movement was fuelled by being iconoclastic, it’s undergoing maturation today through community-building and the creation of a positive culture with its own distinct voice and vernacular.

The secular Twelve Steps groups are not responsible for the survival of its parent, the traditional institution. But if the parent wants to ensure its long-term survival, it must embrace its secular spawn wholeheartedly and without reservation, celebrating a circle of love and service that meets the needs of a rapidly growing secular population of still suffering addicts. If it doesn’t, we’re going to move on ahead anyways and without them, which would be a tragic and completely avoidable loss for both parent and child.

I first found recovery in the traditional Twelve Step community. Even though I am agnostic to the core, I developed a relationship with a God of my understanding. I felt I had to do so in order to stay sober. Many years later, after leaving and encountering difficulty, I found my way back but to a secular meeting and it saved my life. To be here today, I needed both the traditional and the secular programs. I’ve also seen those who came into recovery via the secular path later find a spirituality that led them to adopt the traditional path. So it can work in both directions. Both traditional and secular programs are needed in our society, as together they save lives. But lived experience tells me that we’re stronger together, parent and offspring, than we could ever be apart.