I'll say a couple of things about the god thing -
first off, I'm not trying to recruit people for AA and I honestly haven't gone to a meeting in a million years - I don't like the one near me (too churchy) and I have young children and there's nothing else convenient and I'd like to go but it's not a problem for me to not.
The reasons why (or at least my interpretation of the reasons why) The way that the whole god thing and higher power thing works for me is that
i am not the highest power in the universe
i do not run the universe
even my own life rests in whatever fate the universe has in store for me,
and this is OK
Something I've seen in criticism of AA is that in order to do AA you have to be super negative about yourself. I don't think that's the case at all, and none of the things I said above are negative, are reflective of low self esteem, are me being down about myself. Honestly if you disagree with any of the above statements except for maybe 3.1 you're an egomaniac. Most alcoholics are to some extent, and most alcoholics have a very difficult time letting things go, relaxing about things in general, and this is part of what drives us to drink. Internalizing that i do not run this shit, that for the vast majority of things that irk or worry me I should just move past them because it's not my problem or I don't have power over it - that was huge. And accepting that I really have a limited range of power over my own life and that that, too, is OK (we all live we all die, we do what we can while we're here and we wind up leaving the same way) - that's freedom.
It's also not super negative to admit powerlessness over alcohol. If you're sitting in the room refusing to admit that, your ego is still trying to run shit. It's not rational. If you had any power over alcohol you'd have exercised it by now.