Sobriety just wasn't for me either.
Just like AA wasn't.
I was a card carrying member of the "AA No Way" club for a long time. But it was the only reliable game in town that was available to me every day several times a day. I needed that much support (and work on my own) to stay stopped. AA is a "suggested" program of recovery that allows enough wiggle room for the most stubborn independent thinker to succeed. The people of AA can make things more difficult - because they are limited just the same as you and I are limited. But the program? All it requires is the desire to not drink, to be willing to believe there is a strength greater than yourself, and to be the best version of a human being as you can be.
If you read the first 164 pages of the AA big book with the filter the writers themselves employed, "we know only a little... more will be revealed," you might see things differently. I sure did. Powerless over alcohol? Bah. That's all they knew in 1935. We now know that we are powerless over our own addictions - it's a fact and there's nothing to be done to reverse it. All those slogans people spout? Whatever. Works for them. But if it ain't in the first 164 pages, it's just people doing their thing and being human, like people will insist on doing.
I sound like a Big Book thumper! What I really am is a person who was desperate enough to try many avenues to get out of my desperate state. AA is not my singular program of recovery, but it's part of it. Principles, ideas and assistance from a variety of areas are what are helping me to stay sober. Therapy, SMART Recovery and it's precursor AVRT, rehabs, IOP, Refuge Recovery, youtube, TED Talks, Brene Brown, SR, AA, individual connections, meditation, writing, gratitude, routine... it's all of that and more.
It takes what it takes.
If reading a book does it for you, then I will be very happy for you.
But you know and I know that it's not the book or the program - it's you who ultimately decides if you want to continue taking your chances using a toxic substance that has proven to cause trouble for you. Or not. That's the start of the rest of it.
O