Elliot I have watched folks come to meeting after meeting drunk & then one day they got it!!! They showed up sober & were just as welcome as they were when they were drunk.
AA offers a SOLUTION, some of us do not want it and die, some of us take some time for the fog to clear enough to see that there is a SOLUTION in AA, others are simply not willing to do the work needed to hang around long enough for the miracle of the SOLUTION to happen, some of these folks make it back, others don't & die.
AA is not the only solution, but it has saved millions of us from jail, institutions, prison, & an early grave. The key I have found is honesty & a willingness to do what ever it takes to stay sober.
I walked out of my first AA meeting after five minutes. Then I contacted a friend who was in AA and she took me to my next meeting....a very different story. I realized that I need not worry about being "found out," since everyone else was there for the same reason I was!
AA meetings are a slice of life and reflect the neighborhood, community, culture of the surrounding area. I have found AA meetings that were intolerably "religious," and others that I just couldn't relate to. My approach is like trying out new restaurants: if I don't like one, I just don't return. I don't stop eating out. I try others.
AA is IMO not a "no drinking" program, but a "design for living" program. My essential problem was really my thinking, not my drinking...the drinking was a maladaptive solution. It took considerable time in AA, and completing the 12 Steps, for me to learn to think differently. To get a "new pair of glasses," as Chuck C., a friend of Bill Wilson, wrote.
As for high bottom/low bottom....yadayadayada....I am, and was an intelligent, high earning professional when I got sober the first time. Because I compared my story with others, I didn't think I was so bad....so I went back out and tried it some more. I spent five years relapsing...suffering all those consequences that I hadn't had YET...when I first got sober. I've learned that YET can be accurately defined as "You're Eligible, Too." I went to half a dozen very high end rehabs....ended up sleeping on the floor of a church. Haven't had a drink since.
Today, I maintain my spiritual fitness, practice the principles of AA in all my affairs (well, mostly, anyway<G>), and have been recovered for over a dozen years. Happy, joyous and free....and smarter than ever now that I realize I know so very little.
blessings
zbear