Thanks for this steve. I have given this kind of thing a lot of thought over the last year, for a couple of reasons.
The first one being being getting diagnosed with serious health problems and being able to see how similar coming to terms with these has been to coming to terms with the fact I am an alcoholic - at times it has been freaky.
The second one being that when I did my most recent 5th step with my sponsor, who is not an alcoholic but an al anon, she told me a lot of what I had written in my 5th step was 'normal' behavior for someone in my postion. I.e. age, back ground etc...
And thirdly because of the time I have spent going to SLAA and what I learnt there and in their literature. Some of the on going problems I have had in soberity have had nothing to do with alcoholism as such but sexual abuse, however I do know AA members who beleive differently, which is fine. But results speak for themselves and insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result right, alcoholic or not!
Thanks