I am in a similar situation.
My husband struggled with alcoholism and opioid addiction throughout most of our 36 years marriage.
despite those addictions, we still had our fun moments, took family trips together, raised our 3 children and did a good job of it. He was able to keep his job and also do well.
in 2011, he started using heavily and my son ended up taking him to rehab while I was on a camping trip.
this was his introduction to AA and the start to a much less pleasant part of our marriage.
As described by others, AA became his new “church”, it became all consuming of his time and affections. Nothing left for me and the family. It was progressive, but he finally asked for divorce a couple weeks ago.
It is to be noted that he kept attending AA for years while still using, so lying to himself and others.
My husband was a Christian, attended Church regularly, even preached on occasion; now he wants nothing to do with the God that we once served together, but he won’t miss an AA meeting... I don’t think he has a problem with sponsors as described above, but the group therapy as a whole has had a very negative effect on him. AA promotes extreme selfishness; you have to think of yourself fist because sobriety is all that matters. He would tell me that the members claim not to be drinking, but they smoke like chimneys, have sex orgies and other addictive behaviors. He claims to be happier than he’s ever been, but has terrible mood swings, anger outbursts, and his work production has gone way down. Our sex life has totally died and he looks at me with contempt. He has pretty cut off communication with our 3 children and definitely won’t speak to me anymore unless it’s for business.
I attended many Naranon meetings to try to help
myself, and found no hope there; just a terrible underlying depression of being stuck with an addict and having to make the best of it.
This is not life, this is sugar coated death.
I despise AA for having destroyed my marriage and in all reality, my husband just went from one addiction to another ; now he spend a fortune on skydiving, spending all his free time getting the rush of adrenaline.
I lost my husband, my friend, my lover, to AA and will forever be very vocal about it.