If the 12 steps is not working for you then seek another social support network related to alcoholism and addiction. AA might be the household name on the block that everyone knows but it is far from the only one available.
And many others have an approach that is not so clearly religious. The 12 steps clearly describe an interventionalist intentional personal god and this might not be for you. Many other alcohol help groups are entirely secular. While many people like yourself have managed to fit the square peg of their belief into the round hole provided by AA, usually by hacking bits off both until they become compatible in a contrived and artificial way.... many others simply fail to do so and find other less overtly theist groups to be more to their liking.
You could also seek to explore the useful aspects of AA individually. They do not have to be done together. One can see social support and "sponsors" outside of organisations like AA and others.
Meditation can also be explored entirely without the woo and nonsense. I heartily recommend reading the Sam Harris links at the bottom of my post for an intro on this. Following this have a read of "Wherever you go there you are" and the other books Sam recommends.
These forms of meditation are nothing whatsoever to do with "listening for gods answer" or any other such unsubstantiated religious tosh nonsense. I am as anti religion, theism and deism as it gets on this forum but I can recommend more secular forms of meditation without a modicum of reservation or embarrasment.
It is all about noticing, learning, recognising and controlling your moment to moment attention. And it can be massively beneficial to all kinds of people, including people with issues like your own and in fact no issues at all. Types like "Vipassana" are not going to have much of the woo nonsense that is clearly turning you off the subject.
And on top of all that MY advice with alcoholism is to realise that if you take alcohol out of your life then it leaves a hole. And if you do not fill that hole something else will. Usually alcohol again. I heartily recommend engaging in aspects of life that not only fill your time in beneficial and fulfilling ways but.... where possible.... should leave you nowhere near the option of alcohol. The most obvious example is hill and nature walking far away from.... as stephen fry would say..... "the nearest lemon" but examples and other ideas ABOUND if you but think of them or have others suggest them. I am sure myself and others on this thread will only be too happy to list some at length if you like until one clicks with you.
While this might sound as trivial as saying "The cure to addiction is get a hobby", and I have had people in the past attempt to misrepresent my views on the matter with that over simplification, it certainly is to my mind one of the foundation blocks to progress on this issue. You can not just improve life with the removal of alcohol but with also the REPLACEMENT of it with other fulfulling aspects of life.
And finally I would note that for many people alcohol is the problem. They simply became addicted to it. And their problem is addiction. For many others however alcohol is not the problem but a SYMPTOM of the problem.... some other issue or aspect of the addicts life which they are unhappy with, unable to cope with, or unable to progress with. Part of your journey must be to figure out which of these two camps you fall into. If it is just addiction your path is clearer. If it is something else, then part of your path is to deal with this aspect of life in parallel to dealing with your reliance on alcohol. And focusing on either to the neglect of the other is to again risk relapse. Again I am sure myself and others on this thread will be willing sounding boards if you want to bounce ideas off related to that particular path of inquiry into your future.
Also avoid any temptation to consider relapse a "failure" on your path. We all stumble on our walk through life. As Batmans dad says in the film "Why do we fall? In order to learn to pick ourselves up again!".
I hope some of this helps. I put as much in as I could without getting too carried away, but any questions or further feedback from your side will of course stimulate more specific replies from mine rather than the general response I have given thus far.
How to Meditate : : Sam Harris
A Contemplative Science : : Sam Harris
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