Cosima, I am not expressing any opinion at all, merely reporting experience. There is a pretty comprehensive, if incomplete, description of the real alcoholic set out in the Big Book. I identify very well with it because it describes my experience.
Your idea about it all being the same thing, addiction, is as old as AA itself, perhaps even older. 1000s of groups thought the same thing, that they, as an AA group, could help people with all kinds of problems. In the foreword of the first edition it was stated that "our way of life has its advantages for all ".
Every group that tried it, failed. The conclusion reached out of bitter experience was that we can't offer AA membership to a non-alcoholic. The reason being lack of identification.
So instead, you can read all about it in the AA pamphlet "Problems Other than Alcohol", we found other ways of making our solution available to non-alcoholics, and today I believe there are over 200 fellowships using the program for which they have not been charged a penny.
To quote Doug Selman, Otago University professor of psychiatry who was explaining the spectrum old the new diagnosis, alcohol use disorder, "This disorder has a very long tail from mild to severe or chronic. The majority will recover on their own or with some therapy" (within the AA definitions this would constitute all those up to and including hard drinkers) "but there is a small group at the extreme end for whom only some kind of conversion experience will work." That's where I ended up.
He went on to say that "Medicine has not been able to come up with a way to induce such an experience. AA are the experts in this area."