No required belief
You can speak in your own language, stay quiet, ask questions, and take what helps.
Read common questionsAbout
Secular, not separate
Secular AA Ottawa is for people who want to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous without prayer, religious language, or required belief.
We know from our own experience that the AA program can work in many voices. Secular groups make room for atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and anyone still sorting out what they believe.
Our format is secular. Most secular AA groups work with versions of the steps that do not refer to a higher power, while staying grounded in AA's primary purpose.
Respectful of AA
We are secular but not anti-AA. We honour the traditions while keeping the door open.
Community first
Meetings are built around shared experience, practical recovery, and helping each other stay sober.
Vision, purpose, mission
A secular space within AA
Vision
A space in the AA fellowship where alcoholics can achieve sobriety without having to accept anyone else’s beliefs or having to deny their own.
Purpose
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety by improving access, raising awareness, and supporting the participation of secular groups within the AA fellowship.
Mission
To provide inclusive and secular meetings, events, and resources to carry the message to the still-suffering alcoholic.
Design symbolism
A circle and triangle in motion
The circles and triangles are a deliberate abstraction of AA's historic Recovery, Unity, and Service symbol. In our mark, those familiar shapes open into motion to suggest that secular AA welcomes individual paths through the program rather than one rigid form.
The gold points represent members. The lines between them represent the connections that hold the fellowship together. The three legacies remain present in the wordmark, while the geometry opens into movement, curiosity, and room for honest belief or non-belief.