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.

More Help from Professionals

This email came to the LifeRing Service Center a couple of days ago:

Hello LifeRing;

I am researching LifeRing and seriously considering getting a meeting started here in ______. ... I am looking for some guidance on how to become a convenor and start a meeting. ... I have 19 months sobriety this time around, almost exclusively without a 12 step program. I'm a participant at my CDRP at Kaiser Permanente. In fact, it is my therapist who suggested looking into starting a meeting.

I am very impressed with what I've discovered so far about LifeRing. I just finished listening to LifeRing 101 on my computer. I just ordered the workbook and "How's your week" from the website. ...

Any help you can give is greatly appreciated.

[Signature]

Note the line, "it is my therapist who suggested looking into starting a meeting." A very similar thing happened a few weeks ago in another city hundreds of miles away from the above: a counselor not only suggested that the client start a LifeRing meeting but set up the room and the time slot.

Another Professional Seeks LifeRing

Received yesterday at the LifeRing Service Center:

This is ___________ the owner of [Treatment Program]. I have space and would like to have an onsite LifeRing meeting on Friday evenings at our site. The ideal time frame for this meeting to start would be at 6pm and end at whatever the typical time frame is for meetings. We can however be flexible about the time if something else works better.

So, I need a facilitator and help getting it set up and listed. I will do anything you want me to do to help with this process. People being treated at our program would be encouraged to attend as well as it being open to the public. There would be no charge for the use of the space, we just want to offer the support group to our clients and the community.

Our only request would be that the room is cleaned up, materials put away, and that the building is locked up when finished.

Please let me know if this is doable and what are next steps. Thank you advance for considering us to provide this important service.

[Signed]

A Sample Letter to Local Referral Sources

This sample is based on a letter that Sue G. sent out to substance abuse treatment providers in the Buffalo area when she opened the meeting. It has generated a good response, and the meeting receives referrals from some of the providers. It proves that letters of this type needn't be complicated. It probably didn't hurt that Sue G. is herself a social service professional with name recognition in the local service provider community. -- Ed.

Dear Service Provider:

I am writing to introduce a new self-help group to your agency. SOAR (Secular Organization for Addiction Recovery) is a local group for people suffering from addictions, which is based on the principles of LifeRing Secular Recovery.

SOAR is an alternative concept that doesn't use the twelve-step philosophy in addiction recovery, rather, it is based on individuals using self-help and learning through experimentation. Steps to recovery are not the focus, but total abstinence from the addictive behavior is the goal. This philosophy recognizes that there is no set pathway to recovery, that no one approach will work for every person. Group members are encouraged to share with each other what works for them, and members can pick and choose their own approach to staying clean and sober.

I have enclosed some more detailed information for your perusal. Please feel free to copy anything that you would like to post or hand out, and to call me at the number on the flier if you have any questions.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Susan J. Gibbons, Convenor

Posted 11/26/00

A Targeted Mailing From the Service Center to Rochester MN Treatment Facilities

The Service Center yesterday sent out a mailing to licensed chemical dependency treatment facilities in the Rochester, MN area, in an effort to bring referrals to the new Rochester meeting. The mailing included a cover letter, a copy of the new "Presenting book" in photocopy format, and the four basic LifeRing brochures. It was an expensive project, see below, but it seemed worth doing.

In an earlier article, I described a mailing the Service Center sent out to treatment providers in the city of San Francisco. The data source for that mailing was the online Substance Abuse Facility Locator created in January 2000 by SAMHSA (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In the earlier article I complained that the SAMHSA database was posted in an elaborate screen format that made it laborious to download the data. Since then, SAMHSA has posted its database in raw table format, which makes it almost a breeze to download the data and use it in a mailmerge project, such as this one to Rochester MN.

To access this database in computer-readable format, point your browser to

http://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/ows-bin/owa/DASIS$.startup

This is the start page for the Drug and Alcohol Services Information System. From there, click on

State Recognized Substance Abuse Providers

which gets you to http://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/ows-bin/owa/NFRFTP$.Startup , a listing of databases in .zip file format, by state. Click on the state you want. Up comes a screen that invites you to click to download a .zip file. Click and save the file to your disk in a location where you can find it again. Then use PKZIP or any functional equivalent, such as WinZip, to open the .zip file and extract its contents to your disk. The contents of the .zip file (for Minnesota) consist of three separate files:

mn_rpt.txt

mn_dat.txt

readme.txt

The file you want is mn_dat.txt. This contains the facilities data in plain text (ASCII) format with fixed-length records separated by a vertical line | as delimiter. Either the fixed-length format or the delimiter would have been enough, but I guess SAMHSA wanted to make sure, so they gave us both.

Next I imported the dat.txt file into Microsoft Access. Probably any other database will handle the information equally well, and you might even be able to use the dat.txt file directly as a Mailmerge data file in your word processor, if you massage it a bit. I used Access. If you are using Access, the procedure is this:

Create a new blank Access database. On the File menu, click on "Get External Data" and then on "Import." In the file browse box that opens, set the file type to "Text files." Find the directory where you stored the mn_dat.txt file. Click on it. Then click "Import." When the "Import Text Wizard" opens, click on "Delimited." Then click "Next." Where it asks you to "Choose the delimiter," click on "Other" and enter the vertical bar | in the field next to "other." Also click "First Row Contains Field Names." Click "Finish." You should in moments have a new Access table named "mn_dat." Open it and you will see a listing of 312 facility names and addresses.

Next, create a new Access query on the table, so as to pull out the Rochester records. If you know the target zip codes you could query by that field. I simply entered "Rochester or Winona" in the "address" field. (A quick spot check showed that the smaller towns in the vicinity of Rochester had no listings.) A short list of 20 facilities resulted. Inspecting the data showed that the street address field in one record was blank. I manually copied the "mailing address" data into this field so as to create a usable record. (If you run into a lot of data problems of this kind, more complicated methods of massaging the data are available.) I saved the query as "RochesterMN" and closed Access.

It was then a straightforward process of creating the form letter and a mailing label in MS Word, linking to the new "RochesterMN" query as data source, and running the job on the printer. After that it's collate-stuff-and-lick, and it's done.

A word about the economics of this project. This was an expensive mailing. The "Treatment booklet" in photocopy format, tape bound, costs $4.40 each. Add 40 cents for the 4 brochures, plus about 30 cents for the envelope, cover sheet, and mailing label. Add $1.65 for postage. Total $6.75 each. Total cost for this small mailing: $135.00, labor donated. I thought it was worth doing because of the long-term importance of gaining a toe-hold in Minnesota, the bastion of the "Minnesota Model" -- and to back up the excellent work that the local convenor, Roger L., has done in obtaining a room, getting local press coverage, and distributing flyers.

If the treatment providers send their clients to the meeting, and if the clients put money in the meeting basket, and if the meeting treasurer sends the basket surplus over local needs to the Service Center, then the Service Center will be in a financial position to continue this kind of service indefinitely. I am more than happy to donate my labor to the extent practicable, but I hope people understand that the Service Center cannot at this early point in our development afford to do this kind of mailing for each and every locality where a new meeting gets underway. I am posting the how-to instructions here with the thought that computer-savvy local convenors can use local initiative for similar efforts.

One measure that will cut the cost of this kind of mailing substantially is to get the "Treatment booklet" printed commercially. The LifeRing Board of Directors have approved a proposal to print this item as a paperbound book, half-sheet format, with glossy cover and spot color. This will reduce the cost per copy from $4.40 to $2.04 each, and make for a more attractive and professional presentation besides. The postage should also be slightly cheaper, and we can use a more attractive half-size envelope. Look for the announcement that the print edition is ready around mid-September.

-- Marty N. 8/5/00

• View the Rochester cover letter (PDF).
• View the data file used for this mailing.
• View the photocopy-format "Treatment booklet" (PDF).
• View a page proof of the booklet in paperback format.
• View the earlier article on the San Francisco mailing.