Frequently Asked Questions
Some questions come up again and again when we present
LifeRing Recovery at treatment centers and when I read the email to webmaster.
Here are my answers. Have other questions? Have better
answers? Send them in. -- Marty N, webmaster.
Is LifeRing Recovery like Alcoholics Anonymous?
Yes and No. Like AA, our objective is abstinence. Like AA also, we
see the group process as central to our self-help recovery. We also like
some of the folk
wisdom and catchy sayings that alcoholics in AA have developed over the years,
such as "one day at a time" and "take what you need and leave
the rest." We have
borrowed from AA in some of our organizational concepts, such as not charging
fees but passing the basket, and other things.
The basic difference between our approach and AA's is
over how people change. We see a potential for change within every
alcoholic and addict, no matter how low they have sunk. We see that
people can turn that potential into a reality through their own efforts with the support of self-help groups. Over time,
and with work, the desire
to stay clean and sober that lies within us can grow into the actual power to
do it. We see "Higher
Powers" and the rest of the theological material as redundant at best to the recovery process.
We see alcoholism and drug addiction as basically
identical and we welcome alcoholics and addicts into our meetings without
distinction. We also welcome people involved in relationships where
alcohol and/or drugs are a problem.
We value confidentiality and protect our members'
anonymity, but we permit members to disclose their own participation if they
feel that being open will strengthen their recovery.
We do not require people to quit smoking in order to
participate in our groups, but our meetings generally are non-smoking and we
provide encouragement, education and support for quitting whenever the member feels ready.
In LifeRing, do you do Steps? If not,
what is your program?
Our only "step" is not to drink or use, no
matter what. In our experience, the process of working any prefabricated
capital-P Program such as the Twelve Steps usually fails to engage people's
sober energies at a deep enough level to
produce a resilient, autonomous recovery. We provide a safe, supportive,
resource-rich environment where participants design and build their own
tailormade recovery programs, in accordance with their personality, culture, gender,
lifestyle, and history. This is more challenging than following a "factory" program, but it gives participants a greater
sense of ownership, a deeper commitment, more flexibility in adapting to
changes, and a greater ability to stay sober on their own. The fact that
our members work up a considerable diversity of different recovery programs is
a source of strength and celebration for us.
Do your members have to write up their
personal sobriety programs?
No. Writing them is a good idea, though. I
wrote mine, after four years.
If we had 100 people write down their personal sobriety programs it would make
an interesting book. No two programs would be exactly alike, but they
could all be good programs. We could hand it to newcomers and say,
"here's some ideas for starters." For people who
feel overwhelmed by the idea of building their own sobriety program -- Where
do I start? What do I do? -- we offer a 300-p. workbook,
Recovery
By Choice. The workbook doesn't give you the answers, that's not its
purpose. Its purpose is to ask questions for you to think about.
It's not a prefabricated structure, it's a scaffolding that helps you build
your own structure your way. If your first attempt crashes, change
something and try again. If you keep working, eventually you'll
succeed. And you'll have self-knowledge and autonomy as a sober
person.
If I attend LifeRing, can I also go to
AA/NA?
No problem. About a third of LifeRing members
nationwide also attend 12-Step groups. Usually they go there mainly for
the social support, and do not get involved in the Steps & Sponsors
aspects. If our members are traveling in areas where no LifeRing
meetings exist, we encourage them to go to any other sobriety support
group. LifeRing is not a cult and does not demand that participants
forsake all other loyalties; in fact, we welcome imports of ideas from other
programs, provided they fit with our "three-S"
philosophy.
Do you have sponsors?
If you see somebody in LifeRing whose style of recovery
specially appeals to you, by all means make friends with them and pick their
brains. Most meetings circulate sign-up sheets and encourage you to take
phone numbers and call people between meetings when you need support. Basically,
we all collectively sponsor each other. As
a newcomer, you may find friendships with other newcomers as valuable as, or
more valuable than, friendships with old-timers who have forgotten what their
early recovery was like. We value informal
voluntary one-on-one relationships, but we see no reason to erect them into a program
requirement. Since we have no complicated mysterious doctrine filled
with paradoxes, you don't need
expert guide-interpreters here. We also feel that vesting our older
members with the kind of power over newer members that AA sponsors typically have is corrupting, and we have elected not to go there.
In some circumstances, where an outside authority
requires that you have a sponsor or lose your license, go to jail, etc., an
individual LifeRing member may be willing to act this role and fill out the
required paperwork for you. Ask.
What kinds of people are most likely to be
successful in LifeRing?
People who have a sincere desire to get clean and sober
are likely to be successful in LifeRing, regardless of any other traits. Our meetings include all kinds of religiously devout
people as well as all kinds of agnostics and atheists, and every stripe in
between. Since we're secular, none of that matters. A few years ago,
surveys indicated we were predominantly middle class, educated and affluent,
but today our meetings include all classes, nationalities, and levels of
education and income. Survey studies today probably would not find a
significant difference between our membership profile and that of the general population
of recovering persons. Our method requires more initiative and
motivation than the traditional approach, but our environment also tends to
bring those qualities out in people.
A few kinds of people are not likely to be comfortable in
the LifeRing environment: people who prefer more of a Sunday-school
atmosphere, people who resist taking responsibility for their own recovery,
people whose goal is control, moderation, or substitution rather than
abstinence, and people
who are unable to participate in any kind of group process.
In LifeRing do I have to define myself as
an alcoholic or an addict?
Our primary objective is to support one another in
staying clean and sober. If you find that labeling yourself as an
alcoholic or addict helps you do that, then by all means do so. If you
find that your mind only seizes on these labels as excuses to relapse, then by all means stay
away from them. Studies have found no strong correlation between the use
of these labels and success at recovery. It's your choice. In our
meetings, some people introduce themselves as alcoholics and/or addicts, some
don't, some go back and forth. There should be no pressure to conform
one way or the other. Do whichever works best for you to stay
abstinent.
Does LifeRing define alcoholism/addiction
as a disease?
Like the "alcoholic" label, the
"disease" model is a two-edged sword. Many people find it tremendously helpful in
staying clean and sober. Others find it a wonderful rationale for chronic
relapse. By all means adopt the disease model if it helps you stay
abstinent. But if you find that the disease model mainly supplies your
mind with rationalizations to slip and slide, then dump it and think of yourself
instead as
having made bad choices in the past, and making better choices today. LifeRing is not held together by any
particular theory of alcoholism/addiction, but by a common commitment to the
behavior of abstinence. Whatever theory works for you to get there and
stay there is a good theory. You can always revisit the issue
later.
The definition of alcoholism as a medical
disease is the key to public and private funding of treatment.
There is a large and growing body of evidence that shows neurochemical,
molecular changes in the brains of people under the influence and in the
brains of addicts. There is considerable evidence for a genetic
predisposition in the most severe cases of alcoholism and in nicotine
addiction. Research with laboratory animals shows that they can readily be made addicted by sustained intravenous administration of the drug.
This and other evidence lends credence to the theory that addiction is a
physiological disorder caused by excessive consumption of the substance, or
genetic influence, or a combination of the two.
The evidence that addiction is also a uniform
"psychological disease" is unimpressive by comparison.
Although many psychological and psychiatric disorders appear linked with
substance addiction to some degree, fifty years of studies have failed to find a consistent
personality profile that is common to alcoholics or addicts. The
notion of an "alcoholic personality" has been debunked.
The further
notion that addiction is a "spiritual disease" is not a scientific
proposition and its presence is a marker of the Twelve-Step religious
influence. The term "disease model" has widely divergent
meanings depending on which of these and other elements is thought to be
included.
Does LifeRing aim at anything more than
helping people get clean and sober?
We do not. It's not necessary, and it's
counterproductive.
Being an actively drinking or using addict is like
carrying a big sack of stones. Your back gets bent over, your head faces
down, and you don't go very far. When people finally
put the sack down, most of them straighten up and look forward, and before
long they're striding toward a life's goal. Some become spiritual
seekers. Some try out for baseball teams. Some spend time with
their grandchildren. Some go to work on the great American novel.
They need no preaching from us to find their way. True, there's always a few who stay bent over with head down
after the sack is
gone. We may try to nudge them, but it's their life. We don't sit in
judgment. Most people experience sobriety as liberation. To be a
part of that is reward enough.
If we were to put sobriety in second place, behind some other goal such as uplifting the human character, we would soon get in a
muddle. Sobriety has little to do with character. There are addict
angels and sober scoundrels. Methods that may work for
uplifting the human character may give little traction toward sobriety, and
may even work against it.
Our meetings discuss whatever comes up in the
participants' lives: work, parents, children, relationships, feelings,
sex, books, life, death, money, and much more. By being there and
listening, and offering advice if asked for it, we help each other to deal in
a sober way with all kinds of life issues, far beyond basic sobriety
skills. But the only "official" advice that we dispense on all
these problems is that you can face them better sober.
If we feel that the Sobriety Priority doesn't meet the
full range of our spiritual needs, that's fine. We can go to any number
of churches, gurus, or other vendors of enlightenment. We have a
division of labor. They don't do sobriety. We don't do moral
uplift. By making sobriety our priority, imperfect as we are, we stay
focused on what we do best.
Do you let people who are "wet"
(currently under the influence) attend your meetings?
That's up to the meeting to decide.
Most meetings have the rule that a "wet" can be present but can't
speak once the meeting starts. That's what the
boilerplate
opening statement says. In practice, it's very rare for a
"wet" to attend.
Do your meetings allow cross-talk?
Yes, all our meetings allow cross-talk
(dialogue, responding directly to what a person said). Some allow it
during the whole meeting, some only during a set period at the end.
Cross-talk helps people understand each other better. It lets people
participate who otherwise might not open their mouths. We try to make it
possible for everyone to speak at some time during the meeting, if they
will. The basic healing principle of "two sober drunks
talking" means cross-talk, if it means anything.
Why did you change your name from SOS
(Secular Organizations for Sobriety)?
SOS lost a trademark lawsuit and its
affiliated groups in Northern California had to change their name. This
local event triggered a long-simmering feeling within SOS nationwide that the
organization had to become independent of its financial sponsor (the Council
for Secular Humanism), had to move toward internal democracy, and had to
affirm its commitment to abstinence. The formation of LifeRing Secular
Recovery as an independent national organization was the solution to these
problems.
Are there any studies that prove your
approach works?
Professors Gerard J. Connors and Kurt H.
Dermen published a study in the quarterly American Journal of Drug and Alcohol
Abuse (1996, No. 2) that reports positive outcomes for SOS participants, based on
a nationwide survey. This is not a rigorous double-blind study with a
control group, but no studies of that kind exist for 12-Step groups
either.
If you are a social science professional and
would like to enlist LifeRing for a double-blind outcomes study with a control
group, please contact the LSR Service
Center.
Loosely speaking, LifeRing draws its inspiration mainly from the
cognitive-behaviorist and motivational schools of thought, and these approaches when used
in formal treatment programs have been shown to be equally effective as a
Twelve-Step facilitation approach in recent controlled studies by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism (Project Match).
But you're not going to pick a program because of studies.
Go to a
meeting, sample the atmosphere, listen, talk, see how you feel. If you feel
comfortable and motivated, it will work for you. If not, try something else.
Does your unstructured approach work with
newcomers?
In our meetings at treatment centers, and in
our online groups, there are lots of people who have only a day or a few days
clean and sober, and they do very well. Our approach teaches newcomers
from the beginning that only they can get themselves sober, and that the time
to start taking responsibility and thinking about how best to do it is now. From Day One they
learn to listen for sober survival clues from their peers, and they share
their own day-to-day victories as they go. From Day One they start
building self-confidence and self-esteem as sober people. The key
healing ingredient is not any doctrine, but the companionship of sober
peers. What excuse is there for delaying these live-saving lessons until
some later stage of recovery?
Does your approach work with
the "hard cases"?
There are no harder cases than the attempted
suicides. I see them weekly in the dual diagnosis crisis ward of a local
hospital. See Letters of
Reference. It's not news to tell them that they have a fatal disease,
that drink and drugs are poison, and that if they keep drinking/drugging they
will kill themselves. That's just what they were trying to do.
Most of them accepted long ago that they were alcoholics/ addicts; that's why
they keep drinking and drugging. Most of them have done the Steps a
dozen times, and the Higher Power did nothing for them. I go in there
and try to get them to focus on something positive about themselves. I
ask them whether there is a sober place inside them somewhere, and to talk
about that. Most of them can find such a spot. I ask them what
could be done to make that spot grow. Many of them have ideas about
that. I ask them whether they see a sober place in the other people in
the room. If I am lucky, they will begin to point out and reinforce the
sober potential in one another. Sparks of hope begin to appear.
What had been a sullen session with depressed would-be suicides sometimes
turns into an animated support meeting of people who are rediscovering a
reason to live. Yes, the LifeRing approach can work with the hard
cases. In fact, it was only when I began to spend time with this
population that I began really to think about and to understand the power of
the LifeRing approach.
What are the weaknesses of the LifeRing
approach?
We are still young and relatively small.
Not enough people know how good we are. To be
more effective, we need to have many more meetings, much better organization, more funds,
more literature, more outreach. You can make a
difference here.
How can I contact LifeRing?
By email:
service@lifering.org.
Telephone: 510-763-0779. Mail: LifeRing Secular Recovery, 1440 Broadway,
Suite 312, Oakland CA 94612.
Further
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