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.

Three little anecdotes

These three things all happened the week that I marked my 15th anniversary clean and sober:

A young man came from the Kaiser Chemical Dependency Recovery Program in Oakland and told me about a session he had with his case manager. Now that he was in phase three of the program, he must "get serious" about his recovery. That means -- the case manager told him -- he must either get a sponsor and work the steps, or he must work the LifeRing Recovery by Choice workbook.

A not-so-young man came to the workbook study group, first time, and said that he had been busted for growing marijuana. His case fell under Prop. 36, the California law that mandates the option of treatment instead of prison for certain drug-related crimes. The judge told him that he could not sentence him to attend AA/NA because they were religious. Instead, he sentenced him to ten weeks of LifeRing.

The program director of a new inpatient treatment program in a nearby suburb telephoned the Service Center and said they had reviewed the LifeRing materials (they had ordered a set earlier) and found them excellent, and could we please arrange to hold a LifeRing meeting at their facility.