Originally Posted by
2012Starlight 
This AA thing perhaps just comes across a bit too religious for my taste. Even cult like. I have tried different types of treatment btw, 'group therapy' I guess you could call it, but it never appealed to me and I basically gave up on it early on. Felt it pathetic. I have always felt that drinking is ultimately my own choice only and that treatment makes no difference at the end of the day.
I remember at least one doctor telling me the same along the way - drinking is eventually your own choice you make, when sober too. And one of the psychologists we spoke to during this time told me wife she had to leave me, so that my actions after this would show whether or not we would get back together. That time only would show if we belong together or not. And so here I am going 7 months sober soon to try and win her back. Maybe it will not happen. Maybe it will, one day.
One of the most hardcore alcoholics I spoke to, when asked how to avoid drinking, said: Don't drink. Which is not an easy thing to do, but that's what it comes down to, whether you're 'spiritual' or not. It comes down to your own will, determination, if you have a strong character.
Maybe this doesn't sound well measured or carefully thought out, just wrote it out off the top of my head.
You sound
very much like I did up until about a year and a half ago. In fact, there may even still be some of my old posts floating around SR that reflect similar sentiments. I don't know if I was looking for answers, or just validation to drink again. If no one was coming up with something fresh and new, some idea I hadn't heard of or tried before, then I was gonna do what I'd already made up my mind was inevitable. There is some truth to the notion that so long as I had already started drinking again "in my head," It was probable that I would eventually make it a reality.
For almost all my 28 years of active alcoholism, I despised AA. I, too, called it a cult. I was an atheist/agnostic for 30 years, so the whole "God thing" was all I felt necessary to discard the whole idea. Some years back an alcoholic friend of mine - used to be a drinking buddy - told me he was going to send me a Big Book and some other AA literature. I warned him that I wanted no part of it and I would throw away anything he sent pertaining to it. Sure enough, he mailed a brand new, leather-bound Big Book to me. Within one minute, I tossed it into the trash. I reveled in the idea of it rotting in a landfill, as I turned up my bottle of vodka.
I'm not going to attempt to proselytize or get into theological discussions here. For one, I don't feel equipped to do a very good job of it and, two, I don't think I'd be able to talk anyone into experiencing the same thing(s) I did. It's a very personal experience. I didn't "have" to go on drinking until I lost nearly everything, but it did result in stifling my arrogance to a large degree. It did teach me that maybe I wasn't so smart after all. It taught me that maybe I should try being a bit more humble. I had tried numerous ways to achieve lasting sobriety but, suddenly, this atheist/agnostic didn't want to continue attempting to do it anymore through self-reliance alone. I did come to be willing to believe in God, and through that willingness, developed an understanding, and a thirst for more, that I'd never experienced before.
Have all my problems been solved as a result of working the 12 steps? Of course not. Has it given me
lasting peace and serenity? No, not always. But I have found more of that than I ever had in the past. I now know
A way to achieve it, and can come back to it when I get "lost in the weeds." I never had that in the past. I had precious little to prevent me from picking up the bottle again, because, in the end, I couldn't come up with good enough reasons not to do it. I don't want to see anyone make the same mistakes I did. I hope you are seeking help because you genuinely want to stay sober, not looking for reasons you can't, or won't, and thus taking the full weight of failing to do so on your shoulders because you don't have the willpower to do it all on your own. I would ask you to consider that maybe you don't, and that's the whole point.