I don't want to encourage a debate between AA and Rational Recovery and can only speak from personal experience. That is that, although I got sober through AA (albeit with some issues which were helped by an Agnostics group, although I am not really an agnostic) I find many of the aspects and teachings of Rational Recovery helpful and well founded. Thus I cannot agree with its founder if he is said to believe that a person is best advised to choose between one or the other. There may, however, be some truth to what he says if he is referring to the historic and more rigid conventional version of AA, a literal adherence to all aspects of the Big Book in its original form. If the latter is meant and if this is put forward as the exclusive path for recovery then I would say that AA, so interpreted, might be inconsistent with the insights of Rational Recovery.In a practical sense, then, if the only AA group to which one has access takes this narrow, dogmatic approach, I would not be surprised if a person had difficulty trying to use it and Rational Recovery at the same time.
W.