AA doesn't have to come before everything else; your recovery does. Now, if AA is the program that helps you maintain sobriety (as it is mine), then you should make every conceivable effort to do what you need to do in that program to ensure you do not take a drink. If you use something else, then that "something else" is what you need to focus on.
If going to meetings helped you to not drink, and you drank again after you weren't going to meetings, then there's obviously some correlation there. But I really don't see how you can "keep the 12 steps in my life" if you're drinking, considering that Step 1 is admitting you are powerless over alcohol, and ingesting alcohol pretty much runs counter to that. Without Step 1, I'd have to think there's a pretty low likelihood of working the others.