Whichever path you are on
Recovery routes across every faith and every position on faith, honestly described, with the UK links that actually exist.
The first thing that puts people off recovery, more than cost or geography or any practical worry, is the quiet suspicion that it will ask them to believe something they do not. For some people that is a Christian framing. For others it is any framing at all.
Both are a misreading of the ground, and both have straightforward answers. You do not have to leave your beliefs at the door, and you do not have to adopt someone else's. This page is a map of what actually exists in the UK for people on every path, with no steering.
Last updated: 31 October 2026.
There are recovery traditions grown directly out of several of the world's faiths, and most of them are small, kind, and quiet about themselves. The best known are listed below, with their own pages where we have gathered enough to be useful.
The twelve steps themselves can be worked honestly from inside almost any faith, and millions of people do. The references to a higher power are deliberately broad. If you are Christian, that is likely to be God as you already understand God. If you are Muslim, Allah. If you are Jewish, Hashem. If you are Hindu or Sikh, the concept you already use. Being in the room does not require you to redefine any of that.
The one honest exception is Christian recovery, which comes in two flavours: AA-adjacent (which assumes nothing specifically Christian), and explicitly Christ-centred programmes like Celebrate Recovery, which do. Both are good routes depending on what you want.
You are the biggest group of people putting off recovery for a reason that does not need to stop you. There are two straightforward answers.
First, there are secular recovery fellowships that do not involve belief in anything beyond yourself and other people trying to do the same thing. SMART Recovery, LifeRing Secular Recovery, Women for Sobriety, Recovery Dharma, Refuge Recovery. Different flavours of the same idea: structure, community, no theology. The non-religious recovery meetings page has a fuller list.
Second, if you want to go to AA or NA anyway, agnostic and atheist meetings exist specifically for people who find the standard meeting's phrasing a stretch. Many regular AA meetings in London, Edinburgh and other cities are plainly secular in practice even when the readings use the traditional words.
This is probably most people in the room, whichever room. Recovery does not require you to have decided. The twelve steps use the phrase "God as we understood Him" because the fellowship's own history is full of people whose understanding was in flux. The non-twelve-step fellowships ask even less of you on this front.
If you are in that in-between, both routes stay open. You do not have to pick a side to walk into a meeting.
Buddhist and mindfulness recovery: 406 UK-reachable meetings between Recovery Dharma and Refuge Recovery. Almost all online, in-person pockets in several English counties.
Secular, humanist and agnostic recovery: SMART Recovery, LifeRing, Women for Sobriety, plus AA Agnostica and Secular AA for people who want AA without the theological wrapper.
Christian recovery: both the AA-adjacent route (how AA works for Christians who already have a faith) and explicitly Christian programmes like Celebrate Recovery UK, Teen Challenge UK, Betel UK and Yeldall Manor.
Muslim recovery: Millati Islami, how Ramadan interacts with meetings, approaching the twelve steps from an Islamic frame.
Jewish recovery: smaller UK footprint, mostly adaptations of twelve-step within synagogue communities, with national groups being rebuilt.
Hindu and dharmic traditions: thinner UK provision in a dedicated form, but a strong overlap with the Buddhist and mindfulness route for anyone from these traditions who wants it.
Pagan and earth-based paths: a small but settled recovery community, mostly through secular fellowships, with the broader pagan community filling the social piece.
No meeting of any tradition asks what you believe. No meeting asks what you earn. No meeting asks for your real name. Fellowship traditions vary on prayer: AA closes most meetings with the Serenity Prayer, some NA groups do too, SMART and LifeRing meetings do not. If prayer is a hard line for you, SMART and LifeRing are the simplest answers.
Meetings do ask you to listen while people share, and to let other people speak. Beyond that, you set your own level.
No. The twelve steps use the phrase "God as we understood Him" because the fellowship's own history is full of people whose understanding was in flux. Agnostic and atheist AA meetings exist explicitly for people who find the standard meeting's phrasing a stretch, and in London, Edinburgh and other cities many regular meetings are plainly secular in practice.
Yes. Recovery Dharma and Refuge Recovery between them run 406 UK-reachable meetings, almost all online. In-person meetings exist in Bristol, East Sussex, Greater London, Oxfordshire, Somerset and West Sussex. Both are structured programmes rooted in Buddhist practice but open to people with no Buddhist background.
The main named Islamic recovery fellowship is Millati Islami, a US-based organisation whose meetings are reachable online from the UK. The twelve steps can be worked honestly from an Islamic frame; many Muslims attend regular AA or NA with God translated as Allah, which is how the steps are written to allow for.
The UK's dedicated Jewish recovery provision is lighter than it has been. JACS UK, which was the main named organisation, is currently rebuilding its web presence. Many Jewish people in recovery attend ordinary twelve-step meetings; some London synagogues host or support twelve-step groups. Chabad also has recovery resources for people who prefer that framing.
Two routes. First, ordinary AA and NA work straightforwardly for Christians, with your own understanding of God in the gaps the programme leaves. Second, Celebrate Recovery UK is an explicitly Christ-centred programme run through many UK churches, and residential programmes like Teen Challenge UK, Betel UK and Yeldall Manor are rooted in Christian practice.
You do not have to. SMART Recovery, LifeRing Secular Recovery and Women for Sobriety are structured programmes with no theology. All three run meetings reachable from the UK, mostly online. You can get well through any of them without ever being asked to adopt any belief.
No. Recovery Dharma and Refuge Recovery meetings are open to anyone wanting a recovery programme rooted in Buddhist practice. People from every faith and none attend. If you have never meditated and the vocabulary is unfamiliar, both programmes assume that and explain as they go.
No. Both are secular by design. SMART uses CBT-style tools and does not use prayer, religious language or step-work. LifeRing meetings are conversational, non-religious and focus on strengthening what members call the sober self.