Alcoholics Anonymous is not for everyone. The quality of the meetings varies widely. Sometimes I'll be in a meeting and shudder to think about a new comer walking into that meeting. A lot of people in meetings have issues other than alcohol that make them difficult to be around. Some meetings are full of lonely people who drink too much and want to cut down but aren't alcoholics, so they use AA as a social club.

That said, there is value in studying the texts of AA. They contain a lot of wisdom. The 12 steps as written by Bill Wilson in Akron and modified through debate with other real alcoholics are especially interesting and are based on time tested methods of self-examination. The "God" word doesn't have to be a hangup. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were Christians, so they used God in the sense of the creator of the Universe, but it's acceptable and encouraged that a person substitute their own conception of God.

You don't have to go to a meeting to find a sponsor. A sponsor is only supposed to explain how the 12 steps work. A sponsor is not your therapist, guru, priest or companion. This is often lost in modern AA since so many people are accustomed to talk therapy. You could call the AA hotline in your town and tell them you are looking for someone to take you through the 12 steps.

People say a lot of things about AA without ever talking about the steps [1], which are the core of AA. It's hard to overestimate the brilliance of what Bill Wilson came up with on Dr. Bob's kitchen table. A quick summary:

Steps 1 to 3: Getting clarity about how bad the problem is, about whether you can solve it by yourself, and if not, who can you ask for help and how willing your are to humble yourself to ask for help. Are you done yet? Are you ready to surrender?

Steps 4 to 7: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (Wise Mind [2]), with Step 5 being Cognitive Processing Therapy for trauma, which entails telling your trauma to someone as a way to acknowledge and release it. In all this you learn meta-cognition or thinking about thinking and feeling. Are my feelings based on anything real or am I practicing one of the cognitive distortions [3]? You learn to be the observer of yourself, which is the key into meditation. Becoming the witness is that path to your higher power, so the last part of this phase is to resolve to not spin your wheels in repetive thoughts and emotions, but turn them over to your observer and witness of yourself. From that mental standpoint, it becomes much easier to ease your mind into a calmer state and hopefully eliminate what drove you to drink in the first place.

Steps 8 to 12: Rejoining the human race, since most severe alcoholics end up isolated and alone. Getting right with others is an important part of maintaining getting right with yourself. This maintanence is extremely important and most successful recovery persons "carve out a little part of each day" to practice this maintenance. An important part of this maintenance is helping other alcoholics, which is expressed in the saying "You have to give it away to keep it"

If you go to an AA meeting and no one there understands any of this, then find another meeting.

I have previously written about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29951607

My not real name email is my profile if anyone has any questions about the 12 steps

[1] https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps

[2] https://dbtselfhelp.com/dbt-skills-list/mindfulness/wise-min...

[3] http://www.pacwrc.pitt.edu/curriculum/313_MngngImpctTrmtcStr...