An Outline for Workbook Study

Lloyd E., who just began a Tuesday night workbook study group at the Kaiser CDRP (Chemical Dependency Recovery Program) in Oakland, has drafted a short study outline that I want to pass along, below.  The Recovery by Choice workbook was written mainly for individual study, and the convenor who leads a group through the text needs to select a few issues out of the many that the book contains, or -- experience shows -- it may take a group several years to complete the book.  There are several outlines in existence, and more will probably be created.  Lloyd's outline is short, but it touches on every chapter in the book.  He's based it on a review exercise in the Relapse chapter.  Here it is:

Recovery by Choice

Weekly Topics of Conversation

1.  Decision:          Do we remember why we originally wanted to get clean and sober?  Have we found additional reasons?  How do we make sobriety our priority?

2.  Body:                 Can we make progress in addressing concerns about our bodies and our mental health?

3.  Exposure:        Have we done the best we can to minimize our exposure?  Or are we being reckless about getting into trigger situations and neglecting our reminders?

4.  Activities:         Can we make progress in learning to do life’s activities clean and sober, and in starting up new activities that interest us?  Or are we barely functional or doing very little different from when we were drinking/using?

5.  People:             Have we worked out who are the friends and who are the opponents of our recovery, and can we make progress in improving our relationships?  Or are we spending too much time with people who are a drag on our recovery, and not enough with people who care for us as sober persons?

6.  Feelings:          Can we succeed in building more clean and sober pleasure into our lives.  Can we identify and deal with our trigger feelings, and do we feel better about our emotional lives?  Or are we treating recovery as a punishment or retreating into numbness?

7.  Lifestyle:          Can we pinpoint our major lifestyle issues and can we make progress in repairing damage that addiction did to our lifestyle?  Or have we resigned ourselves to the way things were and given up trying to solve real-life problems?

8:  History:             Have we reviewed our personal history and come to an understanding of what part of our life was us, and what part was our addiction?  Do we have a clearer sense of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

9.  Culture:            Can we recognize the sources of support and the problems areas for our recovery within our culture, and have we begun to figure out our roles in it?

10. Treatment:    Have we made the necessary decisions about treatment and support groups, and do we know how to get what we need from these resources.

11.  Relapse:         Do we understand the structures of relapse and do we recognize what might undermine our recovery?  Do we have a better sense of ourselves, .and do we monitor ourselves frequently for early warning signs.   Have we prepared ourselves to eject immediately in case of relapse?

12.  Plans:              How do we develop our Personal Recovery Plans for the short and long term?

My only quibble with this outline is that it has 12 -- count them -- 12 points.  Inevitably people will start to refer to this as the "12 Steps of LifeRing."  (Sigh and groan.)  Apart from that, I think it's a great starting point for a workbook study group.  Initial reviews of the opening session were raves.  It took more than five years of nudging and begging to get a room at this facility for a workbook study meeting, and this one looks like it's going to be a big success story.  Congratulations, Lloyd!

New Face, New Look at Service Center

A while back I covered the cleanup and remodeling work underway at the LifeRing Service Center in Oakland.  See blog item.  I promised photos of the "After" condition.  Then something happened to my camera (duh, I fell on it when texting while walking in the park in the dark) and I couldn't follow through.  Now at last I have some snaps to share.  Ta-daa!
Here's Rachaell Castro, our new and great Office Administrator, at work in front of the computers that keep track of your literature orders, your meeting basket contributions, your donations, and much else.  And yes, that's a real orchid in the foreground and a real palm tree in the back.  The big white box in the rear is Fluffy the HP9050 printer.

This is the meeting space, where the monthly convenor workshops meet, as well as the weekly Tuesday eve workbook study meetings, and numerous spontaneous gatherings.  Photo collages of past Congresses line the wall.  And yes, that's a real silk plant in the corner.

This is the business end: the shipping desk, stock shelf, and the mailing machines.  This hasn't changed much, except that it's neater, we're better equipped with packing material, and the worn-out jam-happy folding machine has departed in favor of a newer and bigger model, visible in the left rear.  This is where LifeRing Press books are shipped out, where the Northern California schedules are folded, where mass mailings are folded and tabbed, and much else.  Pictures of the LifeRing Constitutional Congress in 2001 are on the right, under the clock.

If you want to reach the Service Center, the email is service@lifering.org.  If your issue is with LifeRing Press, the direct email line is publisher@lifering.com.  That's "org" for the organization and "com" for the commerce side where we sell books and things. By phone call 800-811-4142.  If you want to talk live to a real person, namely Rachaell (she pronounces it "Rachel") call Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays between 9 am and noon.  Those are also the hours to come to the Service Center to buy books, and to pick up schedules and other supplies for your meeting.  The Center is located in Suite 312 (third floor) of the 1440 Broadway building, just a few steps from the corner of 14th and Broadway and from the Oakland City Center BART station.  See map link.  The Service Center's mission is "Serve the Meetings"  See you there!

Need Vet Convenor in Oakland

This came in to the Service Center via email today:

Greetings,
Happy New Year!!
I would like more information about LifeRing and how we can possibly bring a weekly group to the Vet Center of Oakland. The Vet Center/ Oakland office is just right around the corner from the Oakland LifeRing Service Center. Vet Centers are a MH component of the Dept. of Veteran Affairs and provide readjustment counseling and outreach services specifically to all veterans who served in any combat zone and are dealing with PTSD. Services are also available for their family members for military related issues. Many of our Veterans have dealt with and currently deal with substance issues, as they have tried to self medicate the symptoms related to PTSD. Please contact me at [phone] @ your earliest convenience to discuss how we can possibly work together.
Sincerely,
[name]

Based on my conversations with Tonisa C. who has been convening the Ft. Miley VA LifeRing group, it's clear to me that the convenor of this kind of meeting needs to be a veteran.  When talking about their military experiences, vets talk a language all their own and the convenor needs to be able to work without a translator.  If you are a vet, of any generation, and have six months clean and sober, please contact the LifeRing Service Center ASAP, at 1-800-811-4142 or email service@lifering.org.

Draft of new brochure, for comment

This past week I've given LifeRing presentations to two groups of lawyers, one in Hayward and another one here in Oakland, today. At the Oakland talk a number of social workers were also in the audience. There were expressions of surprise both from the lawyers and from the social workers when I mentioned the recent federal court case that said 12-step groups are religious and that a government official cannot refer a client exclusively to 12-step groups. I was surprised they were surprised -- I kind of thought that maybe lawyers would know this stuff and that social workers would have been told by their employers. Am I naive, or what! Sooo, right after the noontime talk today I drafted up a new LifeRing brochure, called "Choice of Support Groups: It's the Law," and I would appreciate it if those of you concerned with this issue would have a look at it and give me the benefit of your comments on the brochure. The draft is posted for your download here. Please post comments on the brochure here.

The text of the brochure is drawn largely from my earlier blog post about this court case, there. Please post comments about the court decision there. Thank you.

Empowerment in Two Minutes

I sat in on a LifeRing meeting the other day with 29 people in it. That's considerably larger than the average LifeRing meeting, but it's normal for this particular group. It convenes during lunch hour at a treatment center. There's a treatment group session immediately afterward in the same room. There's no way to stretch the meeting time. Bottom line, if people are going to get their sober self empowered in this meeting, they each have an average of two minutes for it to happen.

There were times when the meeting was sparkling. The face of the person speaking was animated with feeling. People's eyes were focused on the speaker. There was quick, positive feedback. The convenor added a few choice words. The group gave the speaker an enthusiastic round of applause.

At other times the meeting was flat. The speaker's face was a mask, and their recital was unrevealing. People looked away. There was no response. There was perfunctory applause. The convenor gestured to the next person to go.

I wondered, can we define what makes a good check-in under these circumstances, when time is at a premium? Can we, as convenors, deftly intervene so that the meeting enjoys a larger proportion of the sparkling contributions, and fewer of the flat?

Here's the basic elements of a participant's check-in:

(1) Introduction. (a) Name: "My name is ___________." In many settings, this may be followed by (b) Label: "I'm an alcoholic/addict" and by (c) Time: "I have _______ days clean and sober."

(2) Story. "My week was _________."

(3) Feedback from other participants. "I had a similar experience .... (etc.)"

(4) Conclusion, and transition to next person.

Four simple elements, usually present in any check-in, no matter the length. How can we handle them so that something useful happens in an average of two minutes? Let's see.

(1) Introduction.

(a) Name. If the person forgets to say their (first) name, that's not good. The convenor or someone should ask them to say it. It's good for people to put their names out. Saying your name is a way of declaring membership in the circle, of connecting with the group dynamic. It's a friendly thing.

(b) Label. Whether a person then labels themselves ("I'm an alcoholic/addict") is optional in LifeRing. It's mandatory in some treatment settings and in many 12-step settings, but not here. The glue in LifeRing is the commitment to a common behavior -- abstinence -- and not to any particular label, diagnosis, or theory about what's wrong with us. Research suggests that on the average, people can stay clean and sober whether they label themselves or not. Moreover, in LifeRing it doesn't make any difference whether your "drug of choice" was alcohol or meth or whatever, so there's no need for people to declare whether they qualify for this meeting (alcoholic if AA, heroin addict if NA, etc.). Everybody is welcome. Bottom line, if the convenor senses that people in the meeting are labeling themselves because they think it's required of them, or because they mistakenly think they're in a 12-step meeting, it may be wise to say a few words to indicate to people that it's optional. "In our LifeRing format all we ask is that you say your name; the rest is optional." Save a few seconds; it all adds up.

(c) Time. Many treatment centers and 12-step groups require people to declare, in their introduction, how much clean and sober time they have. In LifeRing, it's definitely optional. In the particular session I observed, the treatment center's format had penetrated into and become part of the LifeRing meeting's format. Each person said their time ("I have 11 days"), and the room gave each person a round of applause for it. After a while that ritual started to feel repetitive, and the applause tapered. A person early in the hour with 5 days would get twice as much applause as a person later in the hour with 10 days. When I convene this kind of short-format meeting, I try to shift these time declarations to the end of their story. True, it's empowering to receive applause for your time. But it's much more empowering for you, and more instructive for the rest of the group, to receive applause for some specific victory you won that got you to this count of sober days. This brings us to the main element of a person's two-minute share, the content or story.

(2) Story. "My week was _________." The dullest, flattest shares here consisted of nothing but an adjective or two: "My week was fine." "My week was bad, but I made it." An adjective or a string of adjectives don't amount to a story. The person who tries to get by with this contribution is not participating. They're not revealing anything about themselves. They're not putting anything out that other people can relate to. The convenor now has to make a quick decision: is this person unclear about what's expected, or is this person refusing to participate? Everyone has a right to refuse to participate, and if that's the case, the convenor and the group have to respect it and go on to the next person. However, it's very rare for a person in a LifeRing meeting to refuse to participate. After all, we're not asking for the story of their life or their innermost secrets or their opinions about some book passage that they haven't read. We're just asking, "How was your week?" The convenor who runs into a participant who says "My week was fine" and then looks to the next person, needs to nudge a little. "So what was the finest thing that happened to you?" "What were your highlights and heartaches?"

LifeRing meetings don't revolve around the recital of life stories, but that doesn't mean the abandonment of stories as such. On the contrary, stories are the heart and soul of the check-in. "How was your week?" is precisely a request for a story.

A hundred years ago, asking for a story probably meant settling in for a half hour or more. Today, people have sat through tens of thousands of stories each told in 30 seconds or a minute. TV and radio commercials are miniature narratives that assume the audience has a limited attention span, and they probably over time generate ADHD-like symptoms in the brains of those who spend much time watching TV. Zillions of amateur videos posted on You-Tube tell their tales in less than two minutes. Bottom line: in our culture, asking people to present a story inside of two minutes or less in a LifeRing meeting is not an unreasonable request. It can be done and it's done all the time.

And what stories people tell! How was my week? My boss assigned me to ladle out the rum punch at the office party, and I did it and I didn't drink. -- I got together with my sober buddy and we watched the Raiders game and didn't drink, for the first time I can remember. -- I drove home and there were my parents in the living room smoking crack. I ran out of the house and got back in my truck and peeled out of there. -- My sister and I talked and hugged each other for the first time since my daughter killed her daughter in a car accident when she was drunk, following in my footsteps. Now that I'm sober, we're talking again. -- I have no money now, nothing at all, and I went to my mom and asked her if I could move back home, and we cried. -- The week has been a roller coaster of feelings. Sometimes I felt ecstatic, other times I thought I was going insane. -- Today is my birthday, and if I make it to bed sober it'll be my first sober birthday since middle school. -- And so on, in infinite variety.

Stories like these, which can be spun in a few sentences, have a three-dimensional vividness that many people in the meeting can resonate with. Mere adjectives -- "my week was fine"-- are barricades. Narratives told from real life are doors and windows that invite people in and create emotional relationships. I feel an emotional bond with a person who tells me a story from their week, even if nothing remotely like the same incident has happened to me; just the fact that they opened themselves up and shared it with me inclines me to view them with respect and attachment. And if I have experienced something similar, the affinity bonds can be quite strong and lasting.

In the brochure "Self-Help Is What We Do" and in other LifeRing publications, there are diagrams showing arrows going between the "S" and the "S" in two people -- reinforcing connections that strengthen the Sober Selves. It's in the telling of real-life stories that these arrows of empowerment issue out of the narrator, fly across the room, and hit their targets in the viscera of the listeners. The LifeRing slogan, "Empower Your Sober Self," has a very broad set of meanings; but in the specific context of a 30-person 60-minute meeting, the process of empowering the sober self flies on the wings of personal narratives, stories.


(3) Crosstalk. Can there be crosstalk in meetings where the average time available is two minutes? My experience is that there can be and should be. When the person has finished their story, if I am the convenor I always look around the room and ask: "Comments? Feedback?" Sometimes no one has anything to say, but often there is one hand, or two, and then more, and webs of connections get spun across the room in several directions. True, with crosstalk, the time allotted to this person may go well over two minutes; but if the topic is interesting and animates the group, that's worth doing. Other speakers will finish in a shorter time and stimulate no crosstalk at all. Two minutes is an average, not a rigid mold. We don't keep an egg timer, an oven timer, or a stopwatch with a bell. As the convenor gains experience, you develop a gut feeling for when to allow a dialogue to go on, and when to cut it off and move to the next person. Frequently the feet of the participants will tell you; if a lot of feet twitch, tap, and twist, it's time to move it.

(4) Conclusion. Psychologists have found that the opening and the ending of a presentation are the most memorable parts, and of these two, the more memorable is the ending. The speaker's vivid narrative generated flashes of sober empowerment all around, but to engrave that experience more permanently in memory, a strong and positive conclusion is necessary. It's here at the end, more than in the speaker's introductory recital of their sober time, that a solid note of applause is called for.

In a two-minute presentation, sometimes the speaker will end on a note that draws a strong audience response. Sometimes a crosstalk contributor will supply the cue for a round of applause in support of the speaker -- for example, "You WILL have a sober birthday today! I'm rooting for you!" If that doesn't happen, the convenor can do a lot of important work here with just a few words. The goal is to frame the speaker's story in empowering terms, as a sober victory. For example, to follow along with the illustrative stories outlined in an earlier paragraph:

"Shame on your boss for making you serve the rum punch. Congratulations to you for surviving that experience clean and sober! You deserve a hand!" -- "That was smart, to get a sober buddy to watch the Raiders game with! And it worked -- the Raiders won!" (Laughter). -- "That's hard, coming home to parents who are smoking crack. I would have done the same as you -- peeled out of there! Let's give him a hand!" -- "I feel really moved by how your family is coming back together thanks to your sobriety. That is so inspiring!" (Applause) -- "Moving back home is hard. But now you have a second chance, a new start. Good for you!" (Applause) -- "You stayed sober even though you were riding an emotional roller coaster. That is awesome!" (Applause) -- "You WILL stay sober on your birthday today, we're all pulling for you!" (Applause)

What is being done here? The convenor is taking the gist of the speaker's story and defining it as a sober victory, as a gain in the power of the speaker's sober self. Sometimes the speaker is aware that her story is a victory, but often she isn't. She may, in fact, begin by feeling distressed; for example, by the emotional roller-coaster ride. Someone in cross-talk may have reassured her that this is a common experience. The convenor can go further and compliment her on sticking to her sobriety despite the distress that she felt; if she can stay clean and sober through this kind of extreme experience, most likely she will do very well with time, when the emotional swings become milder, as they typically will. The convenor is reframing her story in way that builds her confidence.

Reframing for the positive works even if the speaker has just had a disastrous relapse. "I don't have any days clean and sober -- I only have hours." -- "I admire you for your decision to come back into recovery and for being here at the meeting; that wasn't easy. Let's give her a round of applause for that!"

Positive reframing is possible 99 per cent of the time, but not always. In a recent meeting I convened, one person said they were there on a DUI and just had the bad luck to be caught, but they had no problem with alcohol and considered it just another food choice. I probed, optimistically: "So, have you decided that because of the trouble drinking has got you into, you want to give abstinence a try?" The answer was, "No, I have no problem with alcohol and I intend to keep using it." My instant response: "Next person, please; how was your week?"

Note that positive reframing isn't dispensing advice ("You should ____") or otherwise telling the speaker what to do. The convenor is not playing therapist, doctor, or sponsor. All that the convenor is doing is to summarize the speaker's own story in such a way that a sober empowering element in the speaker's own story becomes more visible and more memorable, both to the speaker and to the group. The ownership of the positive element always remains with the speaker.

Ending on a positive note is, of course, the necessary platform for the group's applause. I'm a strong believer in the power of group applause for an individual's sober victories, no matter how small. I watch the faces of people who are being applauded, and most of the time, what shows is genuine happiness. Happiness about one's own recovery is the vital fuel of of progress. Moments of happiness, a few seconds long, may give people the courage to keep going for days or weeks. Sober happiness powerfully expands the sober self and shrivels the addict self inside. So, in this LifeRing meeting with 30 people in recovery (not counting the one misplaced DUI parolee), the group will applaud at least 30 times. Because frequent applause can eventually lead to fatigue, in a meeting of that size I may discourage people from mentioning their sober time at the beginning of their check-in, the usual cue for applause in this environment (see section 1 (c) above). Applauding the count of sober days is good, especially if there's nothing else of substance to applaud ("My week was fine"), but applauding a vivid short narrative is much, much more empowering, both for the speaker and for the group.

At the end of the ring, I will ask the group for one more round of applause, for everyone present, as in the usual LifeRing meeting format. Because of all this clapping, LifeRing hours with 30 people tend to sound more like a pep rally than like group therapy. No doubt, participants in smaller LifeRing meetings -- a comfortable size is 8 - 12 -- have more opportunity to explore their issues in depth. But circumstances don't always permit the small group format. Luckily, the LifeRing process is flexible and scalable. The buzz after the 30-person 60-minute meeting I convened was clear: "Great meeting!" "Really enjoyed that." "Got a lot out of it." "Glad to be here." And they come back. If we pay attention to the basics of the LifeRing process, we can deliver sober self-empowerment in two-minute packages.

I have even experienced the LifeRing format further compressed to serve rooms with 45 - 50 people inside of an hour. LifeRing convenor Henry S., who leads the Thursday evening meeting at the Oakland CA Kaiser CDRP, has honed the short format to a fine art. From down the hall, this meeting sounds like a basketball game: every minute or so, there's loud cheers and applause. It may not be a place for deep, meditative reflection, but it's sober, it's secular, and it's self-help. Moreover, it's consistently popular. As LifeRing grows, we're going to gain more and more experience with participatory formats for larger gatherings.

LifeRing Service Center, Press, Move to New Office

A Place Of Our Own
Marjorie posts temporary door sign on our new home.	Gillian gets high on the ladder to brighten up the ceiling.	Chet makes like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence.
Chet and Marjorie assembling the rubber-like steel shelving.	Ta-daa! Ready to hold boxes of LifeRing Press books.	Syl fights off the great white cardboard box shark.
Lloyd, George and Ellen get down with the shipping desk.	It got pretty chaotic sometimes but, heck, we're used to that!	Chet prepares to tape Mark.
Lloyd, George, Marty (in rear), Chet pile the wagons high.	Laurie and Mark ham for the camera..	Marylou helps put things back together the next day.
	During the week of April 7-13 '03, LifeRing Press and the LifeRing Service Center moved to new office space. Lots of volunteers made the move short work and a good time. The new space is bigger and more versatile, and more important: it's all our own! Please mark the new mailing address: LifeRing 1440 Broadway Suite 312 Oakland CA 94612-2023 The phone number, fax, and email remain the same: Tel: 510-763-0779 Fax: 510-763-1513 service@lifering.org (Service Center) publisher@lifering.com (Press) Come to the Office Warming Party May 23, 2003
Caroline gets the shipping desk ready for action. She also repaired the supply cabinet.

"One More Arrow In the Quiver"

Report on a presentation to staff and patients of a 12-Step treatment facility

By Marty N.

This morning (1/27/00) Marjorie J and I presented the LifeRing approach to a "doctor's hour" meeting of patients and some staff at the Merritt-Peralta Institute (MPI) in Oakland. The MPI is a unit in Oakland’s privately owned Summit mega-hospital located on Pill Hill in midtown. About 30 persons were present, seated around a long table in the board room. The MPI has a reputation for being a hard-core traditional 12-Step treatment facility. Knowledgeable sources have described it without malice as a Step-Nazi citadel. It is one of the largest inpatient facilities and is, after Kaiser, one of the largest outpatient programs in the S.F. Bay Area.

In the reception area on the fifth floor there is a placard containing the 12 Steps in red letters about 2 inches high; this is framed behind glass in a wood case about three feet by four feet. The frame is bolted to the wall with ¼” thick carriage bolts. You can’t miss it. The literature rack is filled with AA and NA schedules in messy profusion. There is an MPI alumni newsletter that contains nothing but 12-Step homilies.

How, you may ask, did we get invited to present our program to this staff? The bottom line answer is: patient demand. The medical director of the facility told us that they were constantly encountering patients who did not want to have anything to do with the 12-Step program, and he, the director, did not know where to send them or what to do with them. So, if you are ever a patient in a treatment facility and you have problems with the 12-Step approach, be sure to register your concerns. You may not see immediate changes, but the cumulative impact of your pressure over a period of time may eventually create an opening for change, as in this case. There are individual treatment professionals in every facility I have had contact with who, like this physician, are driven by a desire to help the patient, over and above any personal 12-step affiliations, and who realize from daily professional experience that the 12-Step approach just does not cut it for a number of their patients. Patient demand is driving these professionals to look for alternatives. Patient demand combined with staff professionalism is what got us invited to this citadel of traditionalism. As far as I know, we are the first and only non-Step group to ever be invited there.

Our host told us before we began that he did not want to polarize the issue into Us v. Them, and did not want to have the session turn into a debate. He wanted us to be seen as a complement and an adjunct to their traditional program, one more arrow in the quiver, not as a rival or a competitor. This is a situation with which everyone who advocates for a secular alternative has to deal. It’s all a lot of fun to polemicize with faceless dodecamaniacs on the Internet, but when you’re talking to a staff meeting and your objective is to win approval to hold a meeting on the premises, the word is: be positive. Our experience in talking to the Kaiser groups in Oakland over the past three years came in very useful here.

In this case, I began by telling about my own recovery. I said that I had 7 years 3 months and 25 days clean and sober, all of it in SOS/LSR, and had never attended any 12-Step meeting. I described LSR/SOS as a supportive, tool-rich environment where people are encouraged to build their own recovery programs, taking what they need for their individual recovery. Then, by way of example, I outlined my own personal 1-2-3 program (do something every day, go to meetings, use the Sobriety Priority as a decision-making tool) along the lines I’ve written in my story in the Handbook. The audience members could see nothing objectionable in this approach, which is in its secular way quite traditional, and it seemed to reassure them at the outset that we were sound.

Then, I explained the concept of the drunk self and the sober self at war in the user/abuser. By drawing cartoon heads on the whiteboard, I was able to show the small, weak, sober self becoming empowered by interaction and support via the meetings, and becoming dominant within the person. This is a plausible, intuitively correct model of recovery, presented in an entirely positive way without polemics. Only later will some in the audience realize that this simple and sensible recovery model requires no Higher Powers. Like Occam's razor, it has no need of the God hypothesis. I concluded with a few words of gratitude toward the LSR/SOS program for being there for me to get sober in, and with appreciation for my new sober life.

Marjorie then took the floor and told very movingly of finding SOS/LSR on the Internet, and how the sosmail list helped her pull herself out of drinking and isolation and helped her get sober, and how participating in LifeRing positively changed the quality of her life.

We then took questions. The first question was to describe what goes on at an LSR meeting. I read the opening statement for our SF Bay meetings out of the Handbook, and briefly described the check-in format and the topic format, emphasizing our use of crosstalk, and our practice of closing meetings with a round of applause.

I don’t remember all the questions in detail, but one of the next ones was about crosstalk. I said that we felt the process of drunks talking with drunks was central to making the sober place inside us stronger (pointing to the whiteboard and the diagram I had drawn), and for that reason we encouraged crosstalk and allowed it in either all or part of each of our meetings. Marjorie pointed out that sometimes we asked a person whether they wanted crosstalk to their share, so that a person could be protected if they felt crosstalk would threaten them. This set the questioner (a person who introduced himself saying “I’m Joe (or whatever name) and I’m an alcoholic”) grumbling to himself but without a comeback. (You need to know that AA, even though it has made an icon out of “drunks talking to drunks” does not allow crosstalk in its meetings.)

Another question was, “do you have mentors or sponsors?” I said that if a newcomer in our group felt attracted to another person’s recovery program and wanted to learn from them in particular, they were free and encouraged to approach that person and form a closer relationship with them. But we had never formalized these relationships. The reason is partly historical. When AA began, meetings were underground and you had to be invited; the person who brought you was your “sponsor.” But today meetings are publicly announced, so there isn’t any need for this role, really. Besides, I said, formalizing the relationship scares us; sponsors have a lot of power, but there isn’t any exam, or any standards, or licensing board, and that worries us; so we’ve kept mentoring strictly informal. The questioner did not pursue this and seemed satisfied.

One person wanted to know the history. I told briefly of how the founder got sober in AA in 1978 but then felt he had to start on a new foundation, and began SSG, and so on. Another questioner (another one who began “I’m Joe and I’m an alcoholic”) took off on this and asked a very interesting question that I had never heard before. He said, what was it the founder could not handle in AA? What was the thing that made him finally decide to leave?

I said the thing that gave the founder cold sweats and finally made him leave AA was the thought “what if God wants me to drink?” He realized in that case he would have to tell God to go to hell. And when he thought about the implications of that, he realized he had to start a program that was not God-based, but was based on the Sobriety Priority. The questioner took this answer very seriously and did not argue with it.

Someone asked whether we were just for atheists and agnostics. I explained that we were not atheist/agnostic but secular, meaning that people of all faiths and none were welcome, and that neither religion nor anti-religion were business that came up in the meetings. I said that people with very definite religious beliefs felt comfortable in our group because our process did not require them to amend the beliefs they came in with.

The same questioner who had asked about the founder then volunteered that he had attended a couple of our meetings and found that, as far as religion goes, in our program “you get to keep what you have.” I think this is a very good expression.

Another questioner asked, skeptically, “is this some kind of experimental program? Have there been any studies done as to whether it works or not?” I answered that as to studies, there was the 1996 study by Connors and Dermen, a copy of which was included in the presentation packet we put together and handed out. Admittedly, I said, this was not a comparative study with a control group, which was the only way to really find out anything scientifically. But then, scientific studies with control groups had never been done for AA or NA either, except in rare instances and with mixed results. If anyone in this room would like to study our group in a scientific way, I said, I’m sure we would be glad to cooperate; please to talk to me afterward. As for being “experimental,” I said we gladly copped to that, we were still learning and developing and trying things out, and I hoped that we would always be listening and learning and developing, and that if we ever got to the point where we thought we had the final answer on how to get you, you, and you, and everyone in the world sober, we would become obnoxious. (I had sense enough to stop there and take another question.)

A questioner wanted to know about our history locally and our name change, and where did we have meetings. I dealt with the name change very briefly: we got involved in litigation with another group that claimed rights to the name and we lost and the court made us change our name. End of story. As to history, I pointed out that our first local meeting was on March 17, 1988, and this meeting was still going, and in fact Marjorie was the current secretary of it. At this time, we have meetings in the area seven days a week, and you can do “seven in seven” in our organization. This made a strong impression on the group. I pointed out we had meetings at the Kaiser in Oakland, at Kaiser in San Francisco, at Kaiser in Richmond and at Kaiser in San Rafael, as well as at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley. This also seemed to impress, as Kaiser is the biggest chemical dependency outpatient program around here, the implication being that if Kaiser hosted our meetings, we must be OK. Also, I said, at Kaiser Oakland on Saturday morning, the patients have to attend a support group between the hours of 10 and 11, and Kaiser has AA and NA and LifeRing going side by side during this hour, patients’ choice. Several heads nodded approvingly at this concept.

When they ran out of questions, our host thanked us and again said, as he had earlier in introducing us, that he frequently had patients who resisted the 12-Step programs and he did not know what to do with them. He felt that an alternative group would be a useful addition to the program, “one more arrow in the quiver.” That seemed to express a consensus. They gave us a good hand. What happened next was completely unexpected to us. The whole group, patients and staff, linked hands and recited the Serenity Prayer, followed by some kind of rah-rah chant along the lines of “keep coming back, it works if you work it,” like at an AA meeting. We took it in stride.

Several patients and staffers talked with us afterward to express interest and support. The physician who was our host said he was pleased with the way it turned out. He joked that he hoped he still had a job after hosting our talk. He looked relaxed and upbeat. He introduced us to the program coordinator, a younger man, and the two of them agreed in our presence that we should have an evening LifeRing meeting at the facility. They would consult their calendar and get back to me. With cordial shaking of hands and thank-yous, we parted.

We left 15 copies of the Professionals’ Packet and a bundle of meeting schedules. One of the staffers said he would personally see that the schedules got into their literature rack. I will follow up about the meeting. I have been looking for a way to get a meeting at this facility for more than three years. From time to time people who have gone through their program manage to find us, and it’s always the same story: 12-Steps rammed down one’s throat, many patients not happy, looking for an alternative. Hopefully they’ll have one soon.

Credit our member B. for providing a key information link to make this happen. A little before Thanksgiving B. had a major relapse, and managed in one weekend to check himself into, and get thrown out of, both the Herrick crisis unit and the MPI unit. When he sobered up and told the story at a meeting, he happened to mention that he saw the same physician, Dr. C., at both places. That was how I learned that the Dr. C whom I already knew from the Wednesday morning Herrick meeting was also on staff at MPI. I had had no idea. The very next day I buttonholed Dr. C at Herrick and asked him whether we could start a meeting at MPI. I nagged him by phone and by letter over the holidays. Last week finally came the invitation, on five days' notice. We were ready.

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P.S. I got the call today (ten days later) that we are invited back for a second presentation, this time to staff only, on 2/24. -- MN.

Edited 3/3/00 MN.