If there would have been any other path I could have taken other than the 12 step path, I would have taken it! And I did! It was just that it was clear to me that I had exhausted everything else. I was already a frum guy and that had obviously not worked...what, does it only start to 'work' once you become a tzaddik?! What kind of religion is that? And other people saying stuff like, "well, then you didn't try it hard enough!" was not very helpful to me. I was sure that the RMCH"L or Reb Yisroel could have "fixed me"...but they were both gone, of course. And Mesilas Yeshorim was not working! It just was not: I wasn't clean, was I?
The most basic thing that AA really gave me was the acceptance that what was 'not working' was not "Mesillas Yeshorim", Hashem, or anything else - it was me. I was broken and needed fixing and obviously could not do that myself. I had been trying for 20 years. And it showed me how to go about that in a way that worked for me.
For me, this requires a group experience. The self-honesty, the work with other drunks, and the recovery, are medicines I will apparently need to keep taking till the very day I die. It just happens that I love that idea. I want my recovery - which to me means my personal honesty with no one else but my very own G-d, Himself - to be the very last thought I have on this earth. Him and me - and no one else, no thing else - nothing - in-between.
For me, my Recovery is the tube that all my Torah runs through. The clearer my recovery gets, the more clear and unobstructed my Torah will be, for myself and for others. May Hashem Give me more and more of His Torah to make mine - my chelek of it, going through me into this world.