How LifeRing Works

Here's a Flash video that explains how LifeRing works and what we mean by the motto "Empowering Your Sober Self" -- in 98 seconds.  I had fun making it.  I've improved it a little and added a sound track since first posting it.  Your comments are welcome.



You can see a silent version of the same content as a Flash video here.

Treatment Journal Reviews Empowering Your Sober Self

The current issue of Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly contains a review of my book Empowering Your Sober Self.  The reviewer, who is none other than the distinguished scholar William L. White (Slaying the Dragon and other works), writes, in conclusion:

Nicolaus offers us a clear window into the basic approach of LifeRing Secular Recovery, one of the major secular alternatives to AA. LifeRing was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1999 and became a national organization at a founding conference in Florida in 2001. LifeRing hosts face-to-face recovery support meetings, a range of e-mail lists for member- to-member communication, online (www.unhooked.com, www.lifering.org) chat rooms and Internet forum (bulletin board), an online social network (lifering.ning.com), LifeRing social events, and the annual LifeRing Congress.

In Empower Your Sober Self, Nicolaus has created an engaging text for individuals seeking recovery and for service professionals wanting a greater understanding of LifeRing’s core ideas and recovery support strategies. Empower Your Sober Self also includes the voices of many LifeRing members whose personal stories illustrate key points in the book.

 The discussions in this book include some of the more controversial issues in the addictions field. Nicolaus outlines positions on these issues clearly and forcefully and in ways that help distinguish LifeRing Secular Recovery from 12-step programs and from other 12-step alternatives. This book is intended to inform rather than convert. Not everyone will agree with the ideas and approaches set forth here, but for the past decade, individuals and families have used LifeRing Secular Recovery as an effective framework to initiate and maintain long-term recovery from life-impairing addictions. Those recoveries are cause for celebration, and this book details how they did it. Those seeking a solution to alcohol and other drug problems and professionals assisting people with such problems will find great value in Empower Your Sober Self.

This strikes me as a fair and even-handed assessment and I'm grateful to the writer.  It's also a good sign that the journal, which goes to the more research-minded echelons of the treatment profession and to academics, has taken note of this book.  Hopefully, the review -- and the book, for those who will read it -- will persuade a larger number of treatment professionals to include LifeRing meetings in their referral pool.

For a PDF copy of the complete review, click here.

Your input needed on website redesign project

A major redesign is in the works for the lifering.org (a/k/a unhooked.com) website.  Whether it needs it or not (LOL!).  The site first launched on June 16 1996 and it's been growing like a kudzu vine ever since.  Now a talented and experienced web designer has stepped forward.  He is Chris Adams. 

Chris' day job is as senior art director for Rolling Orange (see http://rollingorange.com/team/) and his personal website is at http://culturedesign.com/   He has designed websites for Santa Cruz Snowboards, Giro, RockShox, Bell BMX, Blackburn, Mahlzeit (Zurich), Carnegie Hall, Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), Electronic Arts, 3M, Andersen Windows, Stanford University, Stanford School of Medicine, Yale University, University of Chicago, Santa Clara University, Covad, Cisco, Borland, QPorter (Zurich Mobile), Straub Hospital & Clinics (Honolulu), Wilcox Health (Kauai), and 3M Dental, among others.  We are in good hands. 

Chris' design process begins by casting as wide a web as possible for user input.  In the coming days, if you have any connection with LifeRing, you will be invited to share your views about the lifering.org (unhooked.com) website via an online survey.  Your emails, letters, even phone calls are also invited.  Chris and the rest of the LifeRing IT group want to be sure that everyone has a chance to be heard and that no idea is overlooked. 

Two survey forms are now up on the web, asking for your input.  One is for the "general public" -- anyone at all with an interest in LifeRing, especially our online presence.  Click here for that one.  The other is aimed more specifically at LifeRing convenors, who are the living core of this organization.  Click here for the convenor input form.  Both are anonymous, and there's no rule against filling out both.  But do it now, or very soon.  (Survey is now closed.  Thank you to all who participated.)

We hope very much to launch the new design in January, which means an enormous amount of work between now and then, and everyone's timely cooperation is necessary.  I'm excited about this project, and I think you will be too.  We're going to have a top notch professional looking website, and that's going to inspire even greater confidence in the organization and attract even more people to this positive, empowering recovery environment of ours.

Choice of Support Groups: It's the Law

My article, "Choice of Support Groups: It's the Law" is in the current issue of Counselor magazine, which is not only the best publication of its type but also, now, the official journal of the California Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselors (CAADAC).

The article discusses the recent federal court decision holding that the 12-step program is religious in nature, when viewed in light of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

If you don't happen to receive this publication in the mail, I've scanned this article and made a PDF file for downloading.  It's at http://lifering.org/discussion/Counselor-Choice-Article.pdf  -- be patient, it's a 16 mb file and takes a bit of time to download.

This article is an expansion and update of the LifeRing brochure of the same title, available for download here.

You can also view a slideshow and an informal video of a talk I gave on this topic, here.

Choice is the Law: Forthcoming Article

The October issue of Counselor magazine, the premier monthly journal of addiction professionals, will include an article I wrote about a recent federal court decision that requires a secular option in coerced treatment settings.

I reported on this court decision -- Inouye v. Kemna -- in a talk to the 2008 CAADAC conference, and there is an informal video and a slide show of the presentation on the LifeRing website, here.  But the upcoming Counselor magazine article is the first print coverage of this important federal court decision, and of its precedents, in a nationally distributed medium read by addiction professionals.

The court decision says, in a nutshell, that criminal justice officers and addiction treatment professionals in a government setting should be aware by now that they cannot force clients into 12-step treatment or support groups over their objection, but must provide secular alternatives; and if they do coerce clients into 12-step, they and their agencies can be sued for money damages.

Using Craigslist to Get the Word Out

Convenor David F. in San Rafael California has been using Craigslist to get out the word about the LifeRing meetings in Marin County.  Here is a PDF download of a recent item.  Because Craigslist automatically deletes notices after seven days, you have to stay on top of it and repost the notice regularly.

Notice the introduction, describing what we do, what our basic philosophy is, key points of our meeting format, all in easy-to-understand language and in a few words.  It concludes with links for the reader who wants to know more.  Meeting locations are hyperlinked to maps for easy access. 

This is a tool for helping meetings grow that can be used anywhere there's Craigslist.  Does it work?  Well, the meetings in Marin County have been growing. And it's free.

Letter to a columnist

The letter below is by Michael Walsh, convenor of the soon-to-be-started LifeRing meeting in Victoria BC Canada. He addresses it to Sharon Kirkey, a columnist who penned an article on alcoholism read throughout Canada, that mentions only AA as a resource.

Dear Sharon,

I am happy to see your latest writings on alcohol however I am dismayed to see that the only choice you provide alcoholics is AA. I have been in recovery for six years, five of which I have been completely clean and sober. I did use AA for the first three years but the religious aspect of the program does not sit well with me and does not sit well for thousands of others. Please see how many times God is used in the steps below. You also say AA is a self-help program which it is absolutely not. The old timers of AA would read that and scoff because they know (in their AA washed minds) that you cannot do anything without God. You are seen as a powerless soul and that your best thinking got you into the rooms of AA.

I know Dr. Cunningham as well as I went through Homewood Health Center myself and was provided an excellent experience.

Sharon, I am not knocking AA right off of it’s mantle but even AA head office in NYC will tell you that their retention rate is only five percent in the first year of one’s recovery. Further, sixty percent of people who go into recovery do so without the use of AA. Bill W is quoted as saying that there are many paths to recovery.

There are many ways in which people recover and I would really like to see people who are going to write a column in which tens of thousands of people read do more research and provide more than one route. It is like Starbucks or Tim Horton’s.

Treatment facilities, drug and alcohol counselors and medical/mental health professionals are actively looking for alternatives for their clients because many do not want to go the AA route or they stop going. Any counselor should tell you that a recovery program is different for everyone and AA is definitely not for everyone. Does anyone ever look into and talk about the failure rate of AA? No!

One such viable alternative group is called LifeRing out of California. It is slowly starting to get the recognition it deserves as major treatment centers in the USA are starting to buy into it’s program. Their website is www.unhooked.com. I am about to start a meeting here in Victoria next month. Vancouver Coastal Health Authority has bought into LifeRing as of late also.

Sharon, you would be doing readers a great service by providing them with more than one choice in recovery. I will also add that Bill W and his partner both died of lung cancer due to smoking cigarettes. Bill W’s last speech showed him being rolled up in a wheel chair with oxygen tank in hand. There is so much tobacco use at AA meetings which is another reason why I do not go.

Thanks for listening and I implore and beg you to please issue a column related to my e-mail to you today. Many people will thank you for that.

Happy season to you.

Michael Walsh

310 – 283 Michigan Street

Victoria, BC

V8V 1R4

250.920.2095

• Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
• Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
• Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
• Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
• Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
• Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
• Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
• Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
• Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
• Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
• Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
• Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

Letter from a Counselor in Nebraska

Received at the LifeRing Service Center June 8, a letter dated June 6:

Dear LifeRing:

I was so pleased to hear your advertisement on NPR this morning. I came right home and checked out your website. Please put me on whatever lists you have to receive information about this organization. I believe it is something my clients and I have been looking for.

Nancy M.
Therapist
Lincoln, NE

Did anyone else hear "our advertisement on NPR"?