Report from LSR Convenor's Workshop Nov. 6 1999 Oakland

A three-hour Lifering Secular Recovery convenor's workshop was held Saturday morning Nov. 6 in downtown Oakland in a room of the Kaiser Chemical Dependency Recovery Program facility at 969 Broadway. 

We spent about the first hour discussing what "convenor" means and what the convenor's role is.  The word to "convene" means to bring people together, in particular, to bring them together in self-help groups.  All the activities in an organization that serve to bring people together are "convenor work."  Convenor roles include not only the meeting founder, the meeting secretary and the meeting treasurer, but also numerous roles behind the scenes of meetings, such as getting out mailings, answering the telephone, developing and updating computer files, producing and distributing literature, giving talks, filling literature racks, and many other roles.  

In all of these roles, the convenor is a peer, not an authority over the members.  As convenors, we are not doctors, counselors, therapists, or other sorts of therapeutic authorities.  We are co-recoverers, peers.  Our ancestry lies with the original self-help groups organized by Native Americans in the 1770s to overcome the effects of the white man's liquor (reference).  Although we see many things differently than AA, we agree with them that meeting leadership ought to rotate frequently.  The convenor is not a shopkeeper whose aim is permanent ownership of the "store." 

Rule One for the convenor  is to develop the leadership abilities of the other members so that they can become convenors in their turn.  To borrow a religious image, a convenor is like the shamash in the menorah, the Jewish holiday candlestick: the shamash is the candle that lights the other candles.  A convenor who remains leader of a meeting for a very long time may deserve credit for staying sober but has not achieved success as a convenor.  Convenors who are unable to pass the leadership on will eventually burn out.  In order to develop the other participants' leadership abilities, the convenor sometimes needs to learn to shut up and listen.  The convenor who fills every silence, answers every question, and makes the "definitive statement" on every issue will soon drive everyone away.  The crowning success for the convenor who founds a new meeting is to be able to turn it over to someone else who carries it on.  This is the way for us to grow as an organization. 

During the second hour we discussed how the LSR process works.  The starting point is the desire to be clean and sober.  We looked at where the desire to become sober comes from.  We identified a number of sources: the harmful consequences of drinking/drugging, the person's vision of a better kind of life, the person's rational reflection, the evolutionary survival instinct, and the binary action of the addictive chemical itself.  We looked at the conflict in the recovering person, evidenced by inner arguments, self-talk between the part that wants to drink and the part that doesn't.  We did a sketch of the inside of the addict's brain, mapping out an addicted place and a sober place.   We pointed out that it makes no sense to condemn people in recovery for being "selfish" or for having "egos."  Which self are we talking about?  Yes, developing the power of the addicted self and the addicted ego is stupid; but cultivating sober selfishness and sober ego strength, sober self-esteem, are positive qualities.  And what is meant by "surrendering"?  It might make some  sense to ask the drunken self to surrender, but to ask the sober self to give up the fight is certainly counter-productive.  

We studied the dynamics that happen when recovering people get together in self-help groups.  We looked at how the sober selves in a properly run support group strengthen one another.  We discussed the unique power of words to change emotions.  We showed that the economics of giving support involve a plus both for the receiver and for the giver.   We showed how the reciprocal exchanges in a support group lead to empowerment of the sober self within each person.  At the same time, the addict self within the person becomes dis-empowered through abstinence and deprivation of social support.  We criticized the practice of people bragging about how drunk they used to be, as being a case of social support for the drunken self and counterproductive for the sober self.   Eventually, as the sober self grows and the addicted self withers,  the sober self within the individual becomes dominant and the individual is transformed.   The addicted self remains within and always retains the potential to come back into power, especially if the person were to provide it with fuel.  But the desire to be sober has achieved priority within the person, and defines them.  Sober becomes their new "me." 

In the third hour, we discussed the meeting process in detail.  We discussed opening statements and their function and content.  We discussed the role of sharing and crosstalk, and the pros and cons of various meeting formats: short check-ins, long check-ins, and topics.   Check-ins have the advantage of promoting participation by everyone at the meeting, and participation is crucial to the recovery effort.  Some meetings are all check-in.  The topic system has the advantage that the person with the topic gets to think about it all week.  The topic system also allows a person to bring their topic to the forefront even if they are not big talkers during check-in.  

When a meeting that uses a long check-in finishes the check-in before the time is up, it's up to the meeting secretary to come up with a topic.  Meeting secretaries who are on their toes during check-in will be counting people's concerns and will probably propose a topic that will engage the greatest number of people.  If the meeting uses a short check-in with a topic, and check-in discloses that one person has an urgent situation, for example a relapse or a suicidal urge, the meeting secretary will generally ask the person with the topic this week to hold it off so that the urgent situation can be handled.  

All LSR meetings use crosstalk to some extent; some use it throughout the meeting.  There are no hard rules about how to do it.  It's up to the meeting secretary to shape the meeting format to best meet the need of  the participants.  We talked about how to handle difficult people, such as religious proselytizers and chronic whiners.  We discussed the relative merits of prevention, redirection and confrontation with such people.  We closed promptly at noon by talking about closings, particularly the custom of closing by giving each other a round of applause, and that's how we closed.    

We only got through about half the agenda, and could have easily gone on for another three hours.   We laughed a lot and there was a good all-around participation and lively spirit to the discussion.  Some people suggested that we ought to have this kind of workshop for convenors about every three months, like an inservice.  Other people suggested we ought to have a shortened version of this for the general public, not just for convenors.  About half of us went for lunch together afterward.   In attendance were Dan D., (Oakland), Chet G., (Oakland), David B., (Oakland), Gillian E., (San Francisco), Andre A., (Oakland), Robbin L., (Oakland), Marjorie J., (Oakland), Bill S., (Oakland),  Larry S., (Oakland),  Dianna S. (San Rafael) and Marty N. (Berkeley).  The event was organized by the LSR Service Center.  -- Marty N.  11/6/99

 (A condensed version of this report appears on www.unhooked.com)