AA is controversial among a tiny minority of anti-religion internet blowhards. For the vast majority of reasonable folks, it really isn't. Glad to hear it has worked for you.
It is kind of dismaying to get out of nearly a month of expensive treatment and then be told, "Welp, pretty much all we've got for you at this point is for you to attend a crapload of AA meetings, good luck." But I figure that desperation is an important part of staying sober, at least until you've fleshed out some kind of support.
Anyway, similar to you, he'd built a life, had two sons, a wife. Only things weren't that rosey for him. This guy had no filter, he'd sometimes offer up fucked up stories from his childhood at weird times. At one point he went back to drinking and was really unreliable at work, his wife kicked him out. Around that time I moved on. About 6 years later I heard he'd committed suicide.
This always haunted me. I've worked with a few people who've committed suicide. What I have to say to you is; you matter, to your wife and to your family, and to you co workers, although they don't know it. Good luck and please seek help if you ever need it again.
The CEO of the startup I'd just blown-off a job at (showed up the first week, "worked at home" for another couple of weeks, then stopped showing up entirely) drove over and knocked on my door to find out what was going on. Drunk off my ass, I told him, and that I'd get some help. So I made That Call and got some help. Did about three weeks of inpatient care (Stanford recovery unit, and then a place in the Santa Cruz mountains), then moved into a halfway house and spent a lot of time in AA meetings [AA is controversial, I know]. Never spent another night in that townhouse, wound up selling it. That CEO hired me back as a consultant a few months after I got out of inpatient.
I've got 18 years sober now, much of which I've spent working on software at great companies on products you've almost certainly heard of and probably used. Married, with a teen-age son, and doing better financially than I ever would have imagined. Still going to AA meetings, though nowhere near as often as I probably should.