There have been some major misconceptions about AA on this thread that I want to clear up. I'm doing this mainly for the benefit of anyone who believes they may have a drinking problem and is thinking of giving AA a try.

The biggest misconception is that AA is some kind of dogmatic cult. That has not been my experience at all. The thing to remember about AA is that it's huge, diverse, and totally decentralized. The AA central office has essentially no control over individual meetings, and meetings vary dramatically. Some are very traditional, old school, and religious; others are loose, nontraditional, and go very light on the God stuff. There are even regular meetings for atheists and agnostics that are advertised as such.

While I don't doubt that there are some meetings where people are very dogmatic and authoritarian -- the so-called "AA Nazis" -- I've never personally attended that type of meeting. The meetings I go to, and that I'm most comfortable with, are nontraditional. I've often heard people say at meetings, "Take what you need and leave the rest," and they mean it.Even he Big Book says that the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking, and that the steps are "a suggested program of recovery" -- not mandatory. No one in AA has ever pressured or coerced me to believe anything in particular, or to do anything in particular. I deeply appreciate this because as a recovering Catholic, I'm allergic dogma and religious bullshit.

AA is not for everyone, and people are certainly capable of recovering from alcoholism and other addictions without it. But for many of us, the fellowship, support, and understanding we found at AA was a beautiful thing, and it was critical in helping us become sober. Many of us have also found the program useful because it has helped us examine and better understand ourselves and our behavior, and has provided some guidelines about how to live and how to be better people. We started going to meetings because we wanted to stop drinking, but we stay because the program continues to give us much more than that.

My main suggestion to anyone who is considering giving AA a try is to attend a lot of different meetings. Meetings vary tremendously and you may have to do some searching to find one that is right for you. There are many specialized meetings that are listed as such -- for example, women-only meetings, men-only meetings, and meetings especially for LGBTQ people, for African-Americans, for Spanish speakers, for teens, for atheists, etc. For myself, finding a recovery community where I felt comfortable was a crucial step in my journey to sobriety.