From what I've seen, it's no wonder he's saying this -- for someone with very little practice at living life sober, it's like suddenly waking up in China or Timbuktu.  They have to learn everything from scratch and it's very painful.

I used to think "When my A sobers up, everything will be fixed!"  He never did sober up for good, but he had nearly a year between binges sometimes.  The drunken stupors were taken away, but the rest wasn't a picnic either.  He was trying to negotiate life in Timbuktu and he had no coping skills.  He barely kept himself together all day long, and making amends to me was the last thing on his mind.  At one point he was supposed to write an amends letters.  He put it off for months and months and finally gave it to me -- it was a typed sheet of paper saying "Sorry."  That was it.  I suspect we are all blinded by our own senses of victimization and righteousness that it's very, very hard to see what we've done to other people, much less have the energy and emotional balance to deal with it.

That doesn't mean that we should have pity on the poor A's and cater to them because the poor dears have problems in their lives.  They're responsible for them, we're responsible for us.  If they've used up all other people's good will and more, they pay the price.  They can get left behind when other people (us) put the focus on their own lives and well-being.  Sometimes the aloneness helps them get their feet under them and get a more solid recovery.  Sometimes the aloneness makes them want to catch up and be a part of the human community again.  Sometimes they're not ready to recover and they relapse despite everything.  We can't control anything about them, even when they're not drinking.  But we can control how we run our own lives.  I don't think it's realistic to expect A's in early recovery to be very responsive.  But it's realistic to expect that we deserve responsiveness in our lives.