I've got to be careful how I try and get my point across on this subject. Alcoholics, untreated ones, have a habit of hearing what they want to hear rather than what is actually said.
My experience is that life time attendance of meetings is not essential to permanent recovery, however, working with others when the opportunity comes up does seem to be essential. These comments are based on experience, I travel a lot and go months without meetings.
It has no bearing on my sobrety because I worked the steps and had a spiritual experience as a result. This experience changed my whole outlook on life. I live and act in a different way to when my alcoholic mind was active.
When I was back in NZ recently a woman I spoke to said she heard someone say (probably me) that meetings were not vital. That was all she heard, she stopped meetings before finishing the steps, and got drunk.
I suppose you could find a lot of people today who have subverted the meetings. Instead of beng a 12 step opportunity to help others, for some people they have become "the" program of recovery. The answer to every problem is more meetings, and the cause of every problem is not enough meetings.
I find nothing destroys hope as much as that approach. I remember one time being in a meeting when a woman with 25 years shared she had been away on holiday and after three days without a meeting her whole world fell apart. That's not what the program is about. I was thinking why the heck hasn't she recovered. Where is the freedom we talk about in that kind of existence? That is not what I signed up for.
The solution is to find a sponsor who has taken all the steps and will take you through them so you can have your own experience.
I came out of that with a whole new set of values. Selfish to the core, I was never much interested in anybody else, yet three months in I had a life changing experience and suddenly I found that kind of activity both rewarding and enjoyable. Talk about a personality change.
At the other end of things is what happens to the alcoholic of my type who continues as a taker, who stops giving back? I heard from someone who works in a large rehab, like 1000 people a year or more, spotting an unusual trend. An increasing number of people with time, like 10 + years were turning up having relapsed. I pay attention to this stuff because I have a lot of time up. Curious to find out why, he looked for a common theme. Some had done steps, some hadn't, some did lots of meetings, some none at all, so it wasn't those factors. What they all had in common is that none of them were sponsoring anyone. They were not working with others. The why doesn't matter, wherther they didn't want to, thought they were not good enough, never thought of it, who knows. The result is the important thing.
What does the big book say "Nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail" This has been known for a long time.
Whether we will want to do that will depend to a great extent on how we tackle the actual program, and get that spiritual experience. The step actually says we get the experience first and then we try to pass it on.
Without the experience, my guess is it would be a drag, a chore, a discipline of which we will eventually get tired. Then we stop and then.....