It is uncanny how much closer everybody I meet who is in recovery tells me they feel to their G-d.
But I do not hear what "middos" has to do with this, really. The actual recovery work does not involve middos at all, just plain derech eretz: Self-honesty is all there really is, in recovery.
Once a person is not burdened with so much insanity (like chasing women through supermarkets or following them on the highway, looking up schmutz on the internet or in newspapers or fantasizing about sex - all totally nuts, unless one has nothing better to do with their lives but live inside a lie), he or she finds that "middos-work" actually works, for a change.
I believe that this is just a function of not being a nut, any more.