DriGuy

Hardliners often tend to browbeat others who they think aren't doing it right. If there are only a few hardliners in a group, they are easy to disregard as extremists. If the group is mostly hardliners, as my small town group was, it can be very annoying, because browbeating, especially from an entire group, is not an effective way of helping anyone no matter what the issues are. Worse yet, it may be totally undeserved. It can be like telling an Olympic gold medalist, that he didn't deserve the medal because he didn't train the right way.

One thing, that I have learned here in SR is that in a large population of recovering alcoholics like this one, where many alcoholics from different walks of life have successfully engaged in recovery using a wide variety of approaches, is that alcoholics can be much more respectful of others than small heterogeneous groups that rally for one approach only.

Yes, some alcoholics can be off putting, just as many normies can be. Sometimes entire work environments or whole communities can be off putting, but as you realize, you can not let that interfere with your personal goals. Our sobriety is much more important to us to be sidetracked by irrelevant criticism.

I think you should stick with AA for now. If it gets to a point where it actually makes things worse for your recovery, then get out, but I think it's too early to know that right now. Just be aware of the possible consequences of your decision no matter what you decide. In other words, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I remember one old timer, a firm believer in God and Jesus by the way, who laid it out in an AA meeting one time and kind of set the place back on it's heels. He said, "I didn't join AA to get religion. I came here to get sober."

I have read several times that the majority of alcoholics quit on their own. They don't talk about recovery or go out of their way to help others to stop. We seldom hear from that subset. It's like they don't exist, except that they do. I'll speculate that each one had some sort of plan, maybe not clearly articulated, if at all. Maybe they relied on personal commitment alone. Who knows? We tend to hear from the more vocal subset, however, and with that comes a lot of opinion, not all of which applies to everyone. Yet these are opinions that we sort and use, and they help us identify those all important individual inner strengths that we can use to forge our own paths.