courage2

O, I've known people in AA who never had a sponsor and never did the steps and had longterm sobriety and were good reasonably happy decent people. I even asked a couple of them to be my sponsor, and they refused because they said they'd never been through the steps themselves. One who was particularly easy to talk to said that she thought there were *lots* of people in AA who went, and listened, and shared, and got a lot out of it, but didn't want or need to do the steps formally. Also I know many women who find the Big Book paternalistic and anti-feminist. Personally, I desperately needed a mentor and in AA that's a sponsor. I got a good one.Her approach to the steps was rigorous and incredibly revelatory for me. In the end, after about 3 years, our relationship got too personal for me, but that had nothing to do with her sponsorship. I think, however, that my experience of early recovery is very different from yours. I didn't know about any alternative to AA at the time, and flung myself into the program out of desperation. I was a mental and physical wreck -- I couldn't think straight, much less question assumptions about the program. You seem like you're looking for an intellectual approach to sobriety, which AA emphatically doesn't provide.