Thx Rob. Good to see you back. I'm becoming accustomed to seeing "Is A.A. a cult?" threads.
I would say it's getting hard to find alcoholics of the hopeless variety in A.A. and even harder to find ones who decide in from the beginning and do all the steps.
So... there's a bunch in A.A. who do a bunch of other stuff. Stuff that I cannot reconcile with out of that book or my experience. So to the OP, maybe you're right in the claim that A.A. wasn't intended to be a cult or that it isn't what it once was. Well... I've found a couple of meetings aside from my home group that is not a cult.
Like Rob says, you're given the choice to get in or get out from even before you do the steps; it's the step before the step: "If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps." So by that logic, if you don't want what we have and are NOT willing to go to any length to get it, you are NOT ready to take certain steps.
The question then becomes how to get and stay sober/clean. Well if not A.A. or N.A., then what? There's an industry out there that would sure like to help you, but they WILL reach into your pockets. So I guess you can buy your way out of this cult-dilemma.
So... if A.A. didn't work for me, I may be more sympathetic to other methods. I've never seen meetings, steps nor traditions drilled into anybody's head. But... I've seen a lot of this stuff lately. I'm having a good time with A.A. and it doesn't consume my whole life either. I don't see it happen too often, but once in a great while, we see a new person get this deal and they stick around and it's obvious that their life gets better, not worse. That by itself debunks any talk of "cult".