you seem to want to heap all the blame on AJ when his family was a piss poor support system who clearly favored Jason as the golden child and AJ as the black sheep. The only people who didn’t treat him that way were Jason and Lila and to an extent Monica. Alan, Edward, Tracy and Ned tore AJ down often while praising Jason and that contributed to his drinking.
Being forced to sign away his rights and watch his son both adopted and raised by an enemy who also happened to be a the local mob boss—tortured him.