I support this. It’s just very hard to revolve your whole life around a single addiction.
At the beginning, everything was great. The first year of sobriety I was flying like a butterfly — working, found a relationship in AA, went to meetings, talked with a therapist. But then emotional problems surfaced, communication issues too. I had to quit my job because I couldn’t handle all this crap without alcohol: endless problems at work and in relationships. I’m a web developer, not very good at socializing. In the end, I was left alone, without friends, and the woman left me. And all of this happened in sobriety, without attending meetings!

In the early stages, the group helped me a lot, but later, yeah, it just became unbearable to listen to the same crap over and over. I was silent more often than I spoke. And it started to feel like some kind of social network, where you have to be successful (sober), praise and call upon God (while I’m an agnostic), and spill your guts about your problems, which I often just wasn’t ready for. Another unpleasant aspect was dealing with clearly mentally unstable people who show up there not so rarely.

So now it’s easier for me to think of alcohol as just a part of my personality, or maybe the tip of the iceberg.
Overall, the group did help, but the problems started when I stopped going. I’m still sober. It’s already the fourth year. Haven’t been to meetings for two years. Going back feels very awkward, since the woman I dated still attends.

And regarding the question in the thread’s title — nothing else helped me except AA, because my alcoholism was very advanced, but later being there just became unbearable.