I don’t know that there is or that there needs to be a point to this story or to the accompanying comments. Even if it does, people are going to express -- and have already expressed -- their own responses to it.
I never promised anyone I would stop drinking, never mind getting sober. In part because I never believed I would, nor did I generally want to get sober. And after putting down the drink, I never told anyone that I would never drink again. How could I know that? Like many others, I didn’t have an urge to announce my decision to the rest of the world. I got sober quietly within the context of AA. There was no Internet and there were no other substantial alternatives in terms of "treatment." I was never drawn towards making a show of things in my sobriety (not because of any special personal attributes; it just isn’t me), but there were plenty of people who were. I instead, and pretty early on, focused on building a better life for myself with the guidance of a few people who I came to trust. And that’s what I did. I’m hardly alone in that.
Though many people in AA do share their ESH and help others to achieve sobriety, not everyone does it for the same reason. For some people, it's therapeutic to engage in a kind of public airing, a purge of sorts, around where they've come from. For others, talking about where they've been and where they are now pulls for attention, support, sympathy and more attention. All of these things are natural and, by themselves, are not unhealthy. But they could be. I've seen it here dozens of times. And you don't need to be an alcoholic to want these things.
Expressing the honesty of our feelings is not always, necessarily or completely an honest enterprise to the extent that doing so often carries with it private motivations. Due to both my personal and professional experience, the cynical part of me, which is not insignificant, is most active when I’m questioning the sincerity of human motives. My own included. We’re too much prone to give neutral or socially acceptable labels and other nonthreatening descriptions to even our extreme breaches of simple human decency and to behaviors of questionable intent in order to make ourselves feel better about what we do. If there is compelling evidence about some natural inclination to disclose exactly why we say or do something in any consistent way, then I’ve yet to see it; someone who struggles with the integrity of their own personal choices gives away the ambivalence surrounding their behavior by doing just that. A person who “who speaks his mind” is not always trustworthy. “I’m not stealing, I’m just doing what’s best for me and my family.” A “slip” or a relapse is just a “bump in the road” that is functionally equivalent to every other bump on the same highway.
Living years of one's life being criticized, shunned, humiliated and (sometimes) involuntarily alienated from other people provides a context from which it becomes seductive to want things like attention and support which is often, or at least seems to be, unconditional in AA. In my experience, there were plenty of people along the way who made it their mission to be Mr., Mrs., or Ms. AA. You need no other skills beyond what you're naturally given to know something like this when you see it, as impolite that some people may believe that it is to talk about it. Though it isn’t my business to “take people’s inventory,” it most certainly is in my better interest, and sometimes my responsibility, to know who and what I’m dealing with. Early on, I was taken by such people for their seemingly endless energy and their willingness to help. Later, I avoided some of them for their aggressiveness and their obvious disregard for the well-being of people who were struggling to get sober, their focusing instead on maintaining whatever illusory sense of prominence they held within the AA “community.” In the end, it only mattered whether or not they were helping people, without regard for what motivated them to do so. And, in this case, the person did stay sober for eight years. But I still kept my distance.
Punishment is hardly the remedy for people who overreach in their attempts to be liked or accepted. But sometimes the behavior itself does tend to rub people the wrong way. The OP laid out the context in which the relevant events unfolded, and the local responses to what this person did are only expectable. People are afraid for themselves when presented with a person who gave away long-term sobriety, and some may be holding a kind of resentment around that person’s obvious grabs for attention. So what? We are, after all, only human. A wholly compassionate response may be most helpful, but it is only an ideal that few people can approximate without casting a shadow on their own humanity. We either do the best we can, or we don’t. It isn’t an ethical proposition.
As I have done under similar circumstances, the OP approached this man and, by doing so, offered relief and support for someone in need. What did I have to lose, and what else was I to do? People who are excessive in areas of their self-appraisal more often than not do much more damage to themselves than can any other force of nature. It’s not anyone’s responsibility that some people use sobriety as a staging area to feed their egos, as is true of any other area of human endeavor. Part of the problem with getting sober is distorted or otherwise unrealistic expectations about who I am and what I need when I first put down the drink. I was not the best person to decide what I needed when I walked into my first AA meeting, and I know that I was not alone in this. For people who find it difficult to ask for help, getting unsolicited help or support can be both a welcoming relief and a potential threat. In either case, it is not something that many of us experience as a matter of course while we were drinking.