What Do I Do if I Want to Leave AA?

I left AA when I reached five years sober. It didn’t make sense to me to stay, given the other expansive changes I had made in my life. I had just recently relocated to the U.S. to pursue a writing career. While leaving AA wasn’t the easiest decision I’ve made for my recovery, it was certainly the best.

What made leaving so difficult is that the act itself challenged the belief system I had built my recovery on, and I was terrified of what that meant for my recovery and my friendships. Three and a half years later, however, I’ve never felt more empowered and secure in my recovery.

It is entirely possible to be able to share what didn’t work for us in AA and still support it as a valid pathway of recovery. Leaving AA isn’t synonymous with being an AA basher.

There are a couple of important points I’d like to make before I share my experience of leaving 12-step fellowships (and helping support hundreds of other people through the process). First, I am not anti-AA. That’s the biggest misconception about my activism. I believe that it is vitally important to share our individual journeys of recovery, however modern or non-traditional they are. I’m pretty sure that every single person reading this article has identified with someone’s story of recovery. To the criticism that I am anti-AA by simply sharing my story of leaving AA, I say…