And the rest of us have a right to be protected from drunks who get behind the wheel and drive.

I speak from personal experience.

Your first time there, likely during the lowest point in your life, you get lovebombed. Everybody is so happy you're there, everybody wants to be your friend and you're strongly encouraged to get a sponsor straight away to keep you on the straight and narrow. You get applause every time you announce you're in your first 30 days of sobriety. They also do have their holy book, and they go through a series of rituals at every meeting, such as the reading of the 12 steps and traditions, etc, and they end with what amounts to a prayer circle and the reading of the serenity prayer. We were often told that the 12 steps were the only possible way to sobriety (i.e. salvation), and anyone who couldn't do it were "unfortunates" who "must have been born that way".

They can claim not to be religious because you're supposed to use your own interpretation of "God" or "Higher Power". "It can even be the doorknob", I was told.

Yeah, right. I'm nevertheless supposed to pray to and surrender to this higher power as I saw it. Praying to the doorknob or an oak tree, eh? Very useful.

I've been sober for a while now, and while I never did get a sponsor or took the 12 steps seriously, I enjoyed the fellowship and uncritical acceptance at the meetings. While I refer to being "lovebombed" (a standard cult recruitment technique), I nevertheless always felt that the friendship and comradery I found there were completely genuine.

I got more out of Smart Recovery, which is far less absolutist and is more science-based, but those meetings are much harder to find.

Your mileage may vary.

Just saying you're not a religious organization does not make it true. Religious groups make a lot of false claims, but AA takes the cake.

It's also a very ineffective method of treatment, and does a lot to exacerbate addiction problems.

... from a list of approved programs.

That said, the respondents deny that Wood ever raised concerns about the religious aspects of the program. Scanning the complaint by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, it sounds like this was an after-the-fact complaint filed by Wood.