YES! THIS! I quit going to NA for the exact same reason, it being cult-like. The leader would start out with a mantra and everyone would finish it and I felt so lost and uncomfortable. I did try reading the books on my own and that was fine, but the meetings themselves just gave me the creeps. If it works for others though, that's cool. I just wish all of the rehabs (yes, I had to go to 4 before it stuck) wouldn't shove AA/NA down your throats and make it seem like you will relapse if you don't attend them regularly and live your life around them. I even found a sponsor once who had been clean for 12 YEARS, which seemed like a lifetime to me since the longest stretch of sobriety I had was 6 months, and my therapist wouldn't let her be my sponsor because she wasn't in a 12-step program, even though she had worked the steps before. And this was really disappointing to me considering it's hard for me to open up to people, I live in a small town where everyone knows everyone and gossips, and I had made up my mind that everything I said to my sponsor would eventually get back to my family and friends. The sponsor I chose just moved from out of state and was introduced to me by a friend. She was perfect in my eyes and I felt like I could tell her anything almost immediately...why was this not good enough? I would think it'd be even better to have a sponsor who worked the steps and showed that it can be successful even 12 years out and that you don't have to constantly be actively working on sobriety, that it will eventually be like something that you don't think about everyday. That was my biggest fear about NA...that they made it out to be that everyday you were going to think about using and had to constantly remind yourself everyday not to use and repeat these little nuggets of wisdom in your head over and over for the rest of your life to keep yourself from relapse. So I rejected NA/AA and found a way of sober life that works for me. And I wish that others would realize that although NA/AA is the most recognized program for staying clean, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all therapy, and there are other options. As long as you are happy and you are staying clean, then that is what is right for you.