Pages About LifeRing's History and Pre-History

"We the members of LifeRing Secular Recovery, in order to establish a free-standing, democratic recovery support network based on abstinence, secularity, and self-help, adopt the following Bylaws."

Thus begins the founding document that the Constitutional Congress of LifeRing Secular Recovery enthusiastically adopted at 7:29 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001, at the UU in the Pines retreat center in Brooksville, Florida.  (more)

LifeRing began as the "unofficial SOS." Over the course of several years, SOS activists found that in order to live up to SOS ideals, it was necessary to leave SOS and become a free-standing abstinence organization.   This brief overview serves as a guide to the more detailed historical articles and reference material linked on this page.   Go there.

After the Secular Recovery Convention (see below), the Study Committee Report found two organizations existing de facto.  The old official SOS made its status as subcommittee of Council of Secular Humanism permanent, with all that entails: ownership by an outside organization with no interest in abstinence, leadership appointed from above, membership disenfranchised, no meaningful internal process.  The former unofficial SOS, taking seriously the slogan "Save Our Selves," coalesced around LifeRing Secular Recovery and became, in fact as in name, a free-standing organization with its own web presence, its own publishing house, and, in February 2001, its own democratic internal structure.  

After a day of learning and laughter came an acerbic business meeting.  Adroit maneuvering by the chair kept the peace for the moment by delegating all issues to a Study Committee, to report back in six months.

A split in the Northern California chapter over the abstinence issue snowballed into a court fight, and the good guys lost.  Result: the name "SOS" in Northern California now belongs to the bad guys, and the biggest chapter of SOS adopted the name LifeRing Secular Recovery.   Click for a detailed report on the name litigation and its sequels.   

It started out as a retreat for rest & relaxation, but turned into a working session that laid out, and started work on, a big agenda for the organization.  

It was billed as a grand international get-together for the SOSers of the world, but it ended up as a cocktail-hour diversion for the Humanists.  During a post-mortem walk through the main streets of the Mexican capital, plans were laid for a real SOS convention of our own.  It took almost three years for them to become reality ...