If you are familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), you may know that its concept of surrender is one of its most contentious notions. The idea of surrender can seem disempowering, especially if you are supposed to turn your will and your life over to the care of a higher power. If surrender is necessary for recovering, some people may believe, then recovery is impossible for them.
The term surrender seems to imply giving something up involuntarily, which results in some sort of constraint. People charged with crimes, for example, must surrender to the police. They may then have to surrender their passports as a condition of bail.
Surrender suggests punishment and confinement, not liberation.
Many also bristle at the idea of being powerless. Those who do have power rarely want to give it up. Those who have very little power are understandably nervous about having even less.
Since surrendering is so fraught for many, but AA remains one of the primary recovery options available, it’s worthwhile thinking of alternatives.
Renouncing as an alternative to surrendering
I prefer the term renounce. Renouncing beliefs and actions is stronger and more morally significant than merely changing them. There is a level of conscious attention and engagement in renouncing in which a person disavows or no longer pledges allegiance to behaviors or views about the world and her place in it.
To renounce is to adopt a new moral stance toward one’s self. When a person renounces something, she is saying something no longer belongs to or is a part of her. She puts down particular beliefs, values, attitudes, or actions.
If I renounce some of my past actions, I am saying that I disapprove of them and want no longer to do them. Some of us renounce parts of ourselves, often phrasing it along the lines of, I don’t want to be that type of person anymore. More specifically, some might say, I don’t want to be the drunk parent who misses my kids growing up. I don’t want to be the reason why my kids won’t have friends over to the house.
Genuine renunciation of our using behaviors and patterns requires that we take responsibility for both what we have done and what we commit to do in the future. Claiming to renounce our behaviors and parts of our identities without repairing some of the harms we caused (while not inflicting new harms or injures) is merely a theatrical performance that aims to deflect responsibility. Renouncing something but not changing behaviors is a continuation of old patterns.
No matter the size or scope of the renunciation, people begin to belong more to themselves by making choices and taking deliberate action. It is empowering and liberating to work toward a better future, which is characteristic of recovery.
Originally published on psychologytoday.com May 20, 2026.