For some people entering addiction recovery, the words “higher power” are comforting. For others, they are the moment the brakes go on.
They may be willing to admit alcohol or drugs have become a serious problem. They may be willing to attend meetings, see a therapist, change their relationships, and completely reorganize their lives. But then someone tells them recovery requires turning their life over to a Higher Power, and suddenly they wonder whether they have accidentally wandered into a religious conversion program.
That reaction is understandable.
The idea of a higher power in addiction recovery is most closely associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, which places it near the beginning of its program. Step Two speaks of coming to believe in a “Power greater than ourselves,” while Step Three refers to God “as we understood Him.” But I think the more interesting question is not simply whether someone believes in God.
It is why the idea of something greater than ourselves became so important to addiction recovery in the first place.
What Does a Higher Power in Addiction Recovery Really Mean?
Addiction has a peculiar way of demonstrating the limits of self-control. A person may be intelligent, successful, disciplined, responsible, and perfectly capable of managing almost every other part of life. Yet the same person repeatedly makes a promise at eight in the morning that he breaks at eight that night.
I’m not drinking today.
Then he drinks.
I’m only having two.
Then he has eight.
I’m never doing that again.
Then he does it again.
Eventually there is an uncomfortable contradiction between what a person believes about his ability to control his behavior and what his actual behavior keeps demonstrating.
This is one reason I think the Twelve-Step concept of powerlessness is often misunderstood. It does not have to mean, “I am helpless and incapable of changing.” Taken seriously, it can mean something much more practical: the strategy I have been using to control this problem is clearly not working.
That realization can actually be the beginning of change.
If I insist that I should be able to solve the problem entirely by myself, every relapse simply produces another round of promises, guilt, determination, and eventually the same behavior. At some point, humility may require admitting that sheer willpower has not been enough.
Why the “Higher Power” Language Bothers Some People
For a religious person, believing in something greater than oneself may seem obvious. For an atheist or agnostic, however, the concept can sound artificial. Some people also have complicated histories with religion and hear “Higher Power” as code for being told what they are supposed to believe.
AA intentionally leaves considerable room around the concept rather than requiring adherence to a particular denomination or theological system. Its own Twelve Steps speak of God “as we understood Him.”
There are also legitimate recovery approaches that do not organize themselves around a Higher Power at all. SMART Recovery, for example, describes itself as a self-management, evidence-informed approach grounded in principles drawn from cognitive and behavioral therapies. NIAAA likewise recommends that people have access to different recovery options rather than assuming one method is appropriate for everyone.
So I do not think someone who struggles with the Higher Power concept should conclude that recovery is unavailable to them.
But I also would not dismiss the concept too quickly.
Maybe the Important Word Is Not “Power.” Maybe It Is “Higher.”
Addiction tends to progressively narrow a person’s world.
The next drink becomes more important than tomorrow morning. Escaping tonight becomes more important than repairing the marriage. Immediate relief becomes more important than health, responsibility, integrity, work, children, faith, or the person you once intended to become.
Recovery requires reversing that hierarchy.
Something has to become higher than the immediate desire to use.
For one person that may begin with his children. For another it is a marriage he is about to lose. Someone else discovers meaning through service, community, responsibility, or faith. And for the person who believes in God, recovery can involve the much deeper realization that his life is not ultimately ordered around appetite, comfort, or even his own will.
Seen that way, the Higher Power question is not merely a theological technicality. It asks: What is important enough that you are willing to place it above the urge to drink? That is a question almost everyone in recovery eventually has to answer.
One of the more striking things I have noticed in working with people struggling with alcohol and substance use is that many of them are deeply spiritual people. They are often searching intensely for meaning, transcendence, relief, connection, and something larger than themselves. The problem is not always the absence of spirituality; sometimes it is the absence of an apparatus for directing it. Without a coherent framework, discipline, community, or understanding of what that longing is actually reaching for, the search can become distorted and end up attaching itself to alcohol, drugs, pleasure, or escape. In that sense, recovery is sometimes less about creating a spiritual life than helping a person properly order one that was already there.
As a Catholic, I Don’t Think God Is an Abstraction
There is one place where my own perspective differs from the deliberately broad language often used in recovery circles.
As a Catholic, when I speak about God, I do not mean “the universe,” positive energy, or whatever concept happens to make someone feel supported. I believe God is real and personal, and that human beings were created for something beyond themselves.
That does not mean I impose my faith on clients. Therapy should never become disguised evangelization. But when a client wants his Catholic or Christian faith integrated into recovery, I do not have to translate God into a vague psychological metaphor in order to discuss Him.
Faith can also challenge one of addiction’s most persistent distortions: the belief that because I have repeatedly failed, failure has become my identity.
Christianity leaves room for guilt and responsibility without leaving a person trapped in shame. What I have done matters. The people I have hurt matter. Making amends matters. But what I have done does not exhaust what I am capable of becoming.
That is remarkably compatible with recovery.
Faith Does Not Replace Treatment
There is an important caution here. Belief in God should not become another way of avoiding reality.
“I’m putting it in God’s hands” cannot mean refusing treatment, ignoring withdrawal risk, avoiding difficult conversations, or expecting prayer to do work that we ourselves are still responsible for doing.
Recovery may involve therapy, medical care, medication, meetings, changing friendships, repairing relationships, learning to tolerate distress, and building entirely new routines. NIAAA recognizes behavioral treatment, medications, and mutual-support groups as legitimate options that can be used individually or together.
Faith can give those efforts meaning. It does not eliminate the need to make them.
There is an old temptation in addiction to search for the one thing that will finally make recovery easy. The right meeting. The right therapist. The right medication. The right spiritual experience.
Usually recovery is less dramatic than that.
It is a long series of choices increasingly ordered toward the kind of life you actually want.
You Don’t Have to Resolve the Higher Power Question Before You Begin
If AA is helping you, there is good reason to keep using what is working. Peer support can add something professional treatment alone cannot easily reproduce, and NIAAA recognizes mutual-support groups such as AA as a useful component of recovery for many people.
If the Higher Power language prevents you from engaging with AA, there are other approaches, including SMART Recovery and other secular mutual-support options.
And if you are a person of faith, perhaps the question deserves to go deeper than merely finding a definition of “Higher Power” you can tolerate.
The more interesting question may be:
What has actually been occupying the highest place in my life?
For someone struggling with addiction, the uncomfortable answer may be alcohol, drugs, pleasure, escape, control, or simply the avoidance of suffering.
Recovery eventually requires putting something else there.
If you are struggling with alcohol or another addiction, or you are already sober but recognize that deeper issues remain, you can also read about alternatives to AA and my approach to CBT for addiction recovery. If you would like to discuss whether therapy could be useful, you can contact me here.
