Sorry for your loss. And I understand AA or NA not sitting well with you. It didn't for me either ten years ago. It took ten more years of drinking and drugging before I was willing to just be open minded and seriously look into the program. If was the spirituality thing that rubbed me the wrong way. Then I just gave up, decided that there was simply something more powerful than me, that I couldn't control alcohol and drugs, and just let go, let myself be open minded to a lot of things that when drunk I didn't give a rat's hind quarters about.
There are fundamentalists at everything. I'm lucky that where I go, and I go to several different groups, the overriding theme is take what you want, leave the rest.
I'm sorry darklight has such an absolutist view, but I did want to say that AA is far more about just not drinking. Drinking or drugging is but a symptom, and, for me, and from everything I see in the literature of AA and NA, to remain sober one must address the inner beasts that makes one need alcohol or drugs.
Many get sober without AA or NA. Or at least they abstain. I only have nine months of sobriety and I'm sure I could have done it some other way, but I must say I wasn't able to do that on my own. Posting and reading here helps.
AA and SR are like life, filled with people with different views. The only thing to put first is your recovery.
Me? Off to a meet.
If someone tells you the AA way is the only way, run. I can't think of a soul in my groups that don't go to psychiatrists also. Additionally, if someone tells you that AA is filled with a bunch of fundamentalists who deny the efficacy of psychiatry, run.
One thing is for sure, you will find people who are sober to hang with, at least for an hour.
Another thing...AA is basically talk therapy, and evolved about 40 years after that concept began to take root, and, some say, CBT evolved from the same concept. I would probably be dead if it wasn't for CBT or modern psychiatry. If someone in AA tells you psychiatric meds are for the birds, run faster. Then again, there isn't a chemical solution to what made me drink and drug.
What's the big turn off about AA for you?
Thanks for posting.