This is wonderful, this is the "flip side" why we have separate fellowships:
All you have to do to be a member of AA is to have a desire to NOT drink (or stop drinking). Try one and if they poo poo cuz you're an addict, try another one.
That's not entirely correct, and is one of the myths perpetuated by non members, the third tradition in it's entirety clearly states:
3.) Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. Group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
and meetings are:
5.) Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose-that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
So what happens is we get addicts who:
I've never been to an AA meeting
and give their "opinion" about who we are and what we should do without having ever been to a meeting, or being a member of alcoholics anonymous, and as members of alcoholics anonymous we aren't interested in listening to people opinions about experience they have never had, and we aren't afraid to tell them so at group level, so we get a reputation for intolerance and "getting resentful" at addicts.
We aren't resentful, we just aren't interested in listening to your opinion about experience you don't possess, it would be like me being jewish and going to a catholic church and lecturing them about how to run their religion.
Both Religions are just fine the way they are for the people who attend them, for one to go lecture or give opinion about the other because they read a little of their literature is ludicrous at best.
It's incredibly important that Addicts and Alcoholics each have someplace they can go and "identify" what the problem is, just as it is for Jewish people and Catholic people have their own churches, sure both the synagogue and the churches and the services within express purpose is to worship God, they just both have their own way of going about it, as is right.
Neither is right or wrong, and both deserve to exist, and the Catholics shouldn't have to change what they do for Jewish People, and vice versa.
AA is VERY clearly defined with it's Traditions, and those traditions are NOT subject to interpretation by non members.
My "addiction" to alcohol is different then addiction to other substances, in that I can stop for days, weeks or even months, but once I take even a little I don't have control over my intake, my "addiction" to cigarettes, cocaine, and heroin was a completely different animal, in that when I decided to quit for good, I could, and even use those drugs recreationally.
That is not the case with alcohol for me. I am whats known as a "garbage can" "real" alcoholic.
I am not an addict, I am not an "alcoholic/addict, I am an alcoholic and I don't relate to stories by addicts, even a little bit.
Hence I attend Alcoholics Anonymous, a program for alcoholics, by alcoholics.