Eli5: Why does Alcoholics Anonymous have a stipulation that you have to accept God in order to stop drinking?

AA does NOT have a stipulation that one "accepts" God. If you look at the 12 steps you will not see those words - "accept God". Wording is very carefully chosen and very important in recovery literature, so right there we could say that your question is addressing something incorrectly.

I could go through each "God" step and explain what the wording means but I'll just skip to the biggest question here which seems to be "why does a person need "God" to recover". The answer is pretty simple, but first I think it's important to clarify that 12 step programs just call for a "higher power", which is often more simply referred to as God, but still, just a higher power.

Ill speak in the first person for simplicity. Addiction is a power greater than me. I cannot control my addiction, as has been proven time and time again. If I could control it I would not need recovery or the 12 steps or any of that. If I could control it I would not be an "addict". 12 step programs call for a power that is greater than both me, and my disease. If there is nothing more powerful out there than my disease then recovery is pointless and stupid and a waste of time. But there must be something out there considering millions of addicts are recovering, right?

"A higher power" could be love, honesty, nature, the program of AA, whatever. As long as I believe it is a power both greater than my disease and greater than myself, that's all that matters. A lot of people use "recovery" as their higher power and it works 100% for all applications in the steps. I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand and accept that 12 step programs are not religious. It's very frustrating.

I've been studying recovery literature for the last 6 years and these programs saved my life and the lives of everyone I love, so I defend them fiercely when there is blind misinformation going around about them and people saying they are something that they are not.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread