The reason he wakes up on the carpet is simple. He took a first drink, and he is an alcoholic. What he really needs to figure out is why he makes the conscious decision to take the first drink in the first place, knowing full well the consequences.
Not drinking does not mean you are in recovery. It must be more than that. Iron will all you want, but you have to attack the source of your drinking or you are just punching water.
It doesn't matter what treatment program you choose IMHO. If you do not contain within you the personal resolve to beat this thing, any program will fail. Placing importance on a program NOT being of a certain type shows too much attention to detail and desire for control - the problems that have you drinking in the first place. When the program you choose does not go exactly how you wanted it to, you will have a tendency to discard everything because those "quacks" don't know what they are doing.
For me, treatment had more to do with the individuals (addiction counselors, psychologist, and psychiatrist) who intervened in my life when I was at the end of my rope. It was less about the fact that it was a 12-step program and more about the mental health care aspect. It also required that I stash my judgmental mind away in the closet for awhile and just go with the flow and follow what I was told to do without question. This was tough, and I was out of my comfort zone a lot of the time, but beating an addiction is not supposed to be comfortable. Either way, it was more comfortable than the living hell I was in prior to treatment.
You need to figure out for yourself what action must be different. For me, it was treating the underlying anxiety that I was self-medicating with alcohol.