This is something that always used to bug me about AA, the supposed “whatever higher power you believe in” cop out, but in practice every AA group I went to was very overtly Christian and tuned out if you shared anything else or didn’t overtly present your views / beliefs as being so identical to theirs that it’s practically Christianity. Which is fair to a degree: as far as I know, the founders were (all? mostly?) Christians who were helping other Christians, and indeed “what works for one doesn’t work for everyone so we should support whatever works” but it used to piss me off when AA folk would be offended if you even suggested AA was “Christian-centric”, or the way they’d cluck at you and suggest that any clinging to a view that was different than theirs was probably going to lead to a relapse, like, inherently.

Sorry for the tangent/rant, it’s just from your response...I’m not sure why your friend couldn’t see that in many ways what you do to maintain your sobriety has so much in common with the steps and what they aim at. It brought back old frustrations.