Rebellion Dogs Blog

 A fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, Dr. Trysh Tavis continues her academic focus on 20th-century U.S. cultural and literary history, with a particular emphasis on gender and popular culture. From The Language of the Heart: the Recovery Movement from AA to Oprah (2009) to Feminists of Drugs: A History, Trysh Travis, PhD, discusses with us how her first book has evolved into her current work.  Therapy, addiction, and recovery, self-help, and the history of book publishing/promotion all come together in her academic work.At the International Conference of Secular AA in Orlando (ICSAA 2024), attendees expressed that we are all lucky to have this brilliant and eloquent ally of people in recovery. On today's Rebellion Dogs Radio, dig in for an hour or so. Damn, does the time every go past fast in this show. Gulp it down in one sitting, or savor this for two or three sittings. This could be one of those greatest hits that you want to listen to again. Still in development, Feminists on Drugs by  Dr Trysh was born of the momentum of her 2009 book on women and the recovery movement of the 20th century. The study behind Feminists on Drugs: A History looks at women in treatment, navigating childcare, predation, stigma in search of healthcare. This research also celebrates pioneers and turning points that laid the groundwork for today's treatment options.But wait; there's more. We will have Trysh back, for an update. Also, some of what was cut on the editor's floor from this epic discourse will find its way into a new episode before year's end about the Plain Language Big Book. Rebellion Dogs is hosting a 16-week Zoom reading group of the PLBB. This is a sixteen week course, reading a chapter and discussion takes place every Saturday, 4 PM Eastern Time Zone.Mary and Joe really appreciated talking shop with Trysh Travis, and we hope you'll enjoy this energetic and poignant talk, too.    Dr. John Kelly, Harvard, Recovery Research Institute, lead author of the 2020 Cochrane Review “Alcoholics Anonymous and related 12-step Facilitation Treatments.”Clean & Sober, the 1988 movie The Days of Wine and Roses, the 1962 movieMore Trysh on mic:Rebellion Dogs Radio Episode 34, Gender Politics & Women in AADr. Travis, at ICSAA 024, the International Conference of Secular AA, Orlando 2024, with “AA in the Age of Polarization”Trysh Travis #WomenAlsoKnowHistory  

Rebellion Dogs Radio is in conversation again, with Dr. Adina Silvestri.  Mary C and Joe C in conversation with Dr. Adina Silvestri is what's on the menu for Episode 85 of Rebellion Dogs Radio. Some of the topics we discussed with Dr. Adina include an array of today's therapeutic options for trauma, wellness, and breakthroughs, from soundbathing and hypnotherapy, Internal Family Systems, a branch of Attachment Theory, microdosing, writing, and brianspotting.  Joe C was a guest on the Atheists in Recovery Podcast (hosted by Adina). Also, John Sheldon speaks with Adina on Episode 177 of the Beyond Belief Podcast. Dr. Silvestri also reviewed 30 Things: Practical Advice for Living Well, written by William H. Schaberg and published by Rebellion Dog (2024).  https://adinasilvestri.com/counseling-services/  Therapies with Adina include: Internal Family Systems Therapy Brainspotting Writing Bravely Ketamine-Assisted Therapy Therapy Intensive Hypnotherapy Imposter Syndrome Counselling Group, Family and online/in-person therapy Links and other topics, some of which we discussed on the show:https://adinasilvestri.com/counseling-services/Sam Harris Awake AppFree Samples of Adina's Writing Through Grief and Loss: An IFS Journal for Healing 30 Things: Practical Advice for Living Well "As a licensed therapist specializing in substance abuse and erasing shame, I found 30 Things by William Schaberg to be a valuable source of wise and practical advice. This book provides an array of insights that are especially beneficial for therapists and their clients on a journey toward healing and self-improvement… 30 Things offers practical lessons that can significantly benefit therapeutic practices. Schaberg’s insights offer clear steps for living a more balanced and fulfilling life. I recommend this book for both therapists and clients looking to overcome challenges and to grow personally." Adina Silvestri, EdD, LPC, Licensed Professional Counsellor, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, Certified Brainspotting PractitionerRead the full 30 THINGS review Joe C with Adina Silvestri on her podcast Atheists in Recovery, 2019 - use the link below, if you like.   If you like what you hear from Adina, here's the latest… November 19th, in-person or online: the Buffalo Firefly Hypnotherapy + Soundbath Here’s the registration/info link: https://buffalofirefly.com/pages/classes-events-adina-katie   If it’s helpful, you’re welcome to describe it as something like: “A hypnotherapy and soundbath journey with Dr. Adina Silvestri and Katie, to help people regulate their nervous system, explore parts work, and access deeper rest and healing—available both in-person and online.” Thanks for visiting - we would love to hear from you. Listen to this episode, at your leisure, from here or any of your fav podcast platforms. Please come back and have your say. We would love to hear from you.   

Episode #84 features our long-awaited guest, Jamie Marich, PhD, in conversation with Mary C and Joe C of Rebellion Dogs Radio. Dr Jamie's latest collaboration, released in the Fall of 2025, Queering EMDR Therapy. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a psychotherapy that helps process trauma and disturbing memories. This evidence-based process is recognized academically and therapeutically for incorporating forms of bilateral stimulation, which enables the emotional charge of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; memories become less distressing.Queering EMDR is an anthology of essays, papers, personal narratives, poetry, and artwork. This new offering to the EMDR Therapy community and the larger world—something LGBTQIAA2S+ people have long needed—is validating. Honouring lived experience in professional writing is how Queering EMDR celebrates the richness and complexity that has been missed in academic writing within EMDR Therapy.See links below to access Jamie Marich's prolific list of collaborative efforts. Both at the International Conference of Secular AA (ICSAA 2024) in Orlando and at the 2025 ICSAA-Virtual conference, Jamie was invited to share about trauma and the 12-Steps and interact with attendees. We are so glad to be able to chat with Dr. Jamie Marich and to share it with you on this podcast. We will talk about authenticity and its role in connection with others, whether in peer-to-peer environments, work, or in the community. We talk about the regulatory environment, how it helps to create safe spaces for client and therapist and how sometimes… not so much. As a teacher to fellow clinicians, Jamie has taught about navigating the ethics of self-disclosure. We talk about writing, public speaking,  Jamie's body of work, and her thoughts on possible changes for her coming soon.Mary C updates us on the Phoenix, November 13th to 15th, 2026, International Conference of Secular Alcoholics Anonymous. Registration is now open. On November 19th, rooms can be booked. We are one year away, and you have a chance to make suggestions, get involved and have your say about our program. See the link to the Hilton Phoenix Resort at the Peak to preview our event location. This resort is nine miles from downtown, with indoor and outdoor amenities including a water park, hiking, pet-friendly rooms, free parking and suites that can accommodate one to four people comfortably. They even have connection rooms if you’re in a bigger group.    Helpful links:https://jamiemarich.com/ Queering EMDR Therapy on Amazon.com  Institute of Creative Mindfulness - EMDR and Expressive Arts ICSAA 2026 in Phoenix AZ     AA Without religion - secular AA links, meetings, audio recordings, and moreMore about the Hilton Phoenix Resort at the PeakAdolescence Trailer (Netflix series referred to in the podcast)Coming up next, on Episode 85, Adina Silvestra, we talk about therapy, hypnosis, microdosing, soundbathing, and guided writing workshops as therapy.  

 As is tradition, every five years, tens of thousands of AA members, friends, and family gather in a North American city. 2025's theme celebrates 90 years of Alcoholics Anonymous - The Language of The Heart. The 2025 theme celebrates 90 years of Alcoholics Anonymous - The Language of the Rebellion Dogs Publishing looks at the cultural and historical significance of this year's focus on underrepresented populations and how Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, along with youth, women, LGBTQIA+ members, nerodivergent, agnostic, atheist and freethinking members offer a broader, mo re inclusive voice of what is AA and how anyone seeking sobriety can find a community of like-minded AA's to answer questions, listen and share their journey with together.  From Rebellion Dogs Publishing, Joe C participated in and recorded “One Big Tent” on his mobile device. This, we share with you today. Rebellion Dogs Publishing hosted a merch tent in SOBER CITY and outdoor compendium to Vancouver 2025 with food trucks, merchants, recovery travel, books, T-shirts, and other fellowships. Beside our tent were ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and as well as . Inside our tent was Sedona-best friend of Rebellion Dogs, Jay Stinnett, who, along with Jeanette and others, produced the brand new “Conscious Contact,” the first documentary about Bill W in fifteen years, focusing on his constant thirst for mental, emotional, or spiritual connection. In this new movie, we learn that late in life, Bill W. was a student of Transcendental Meditation. We meet the young hippy who was Bill's guru in 1969. Jay and Jeannette were selling links to the movie, hoodies and T-shirts. https://billwconsciouscontact.com/ Speaking of AA history, Tom Adams MSW & Joy Jones' A Marriage that Changed the World: Lois and Bill Wilson and the Addiction Recovery Movement, also came out this year and was on display and starting conversations in the Rebellion Dogs tent. I recall chatting with one shopper, flipping through the pages and talking about how this book is refreshing, is that it's about Lois and Bill - as two equals - not writing women out of the meaningful turns of history. “Imagine,” I said to the reader. “If Lois and Bill had not or could not have worked it out, what would you and I be doing this weekend?”Andy C, this term's chair of the International Conference of Lawyers in AA, is a prolific writers that had books for readers: Gems, More Gems, and Still More Gems. Yes, there is another on its way. Andy has also written Closing Arguments for Lawyers with alcohol use disorder, struggling with the prospects of sobriety. Rebellion Dogs had some offers of our own. Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life, all but sold out (THANK YOU). The ear-torn ones not suitable for sale, along with all other leftovers in our booth, were divided as gifts to a Vancouver Recovery Club House + several women's treatment centres. I stopped by the For more about the Quinquennial AA  International Convention click HERETo obtain your own copy of this panel, others or combinations of any and all Convention Centre panels and BC Place Stadium events, visit Multiview Media.https://2025ic.sclivelearningcenter.com/MVSite/Default.aspx Weigh in: Are you a freethinker inside a 12-step fellowship? Or are you a believer, curious or skeptical of a no-God approach?Is cooperation between AA as a whole and secular AA within our membership essential to AA's well-being? Does it surprise you that some of those who attend freethinkers/secular AA meetings are religious? First, as there are closet-atheist in mainstream AA, how could we know how many secular AA members believe in Gods? But many who attend say that they have a worldview that includes the supernatural (sometimes they call it God), but AA's (The Big Book) and the Steps, represent one person's view, Bill W's view on god and he interacts with earthlings. For some believers, exploring faith is best done elsewhere; AA is practical and something to share, but faith is more a private or separate matter. What could AA as a whole, or secular AA meetings, do to better help people who think maybe they have a drinking problem? How can AA and all of our special composition groups collaborate, for outreach to the public and professionals, and work towards a narrative about AA that resonates with more people in need? Comments and experiences are welcome -join the chat. AA and all our special composition groups collaborate on   

 As a lead up to the 2025 Vancouver AA World Convention, we feature some of the previous world convention AA We Agnostics panels and group sharing. In Minneapolis, 2000, we get to know participants from New York City Agnostics, Vancouver, Canada, Florida got to know participants from New York City Agnostics, Vancouver Canada, Florida,and Cleveland, highlighting the reality that the hope and connection that comes from AA, one alcohlic to another, has nothing to do with belief. We Agnostics panels that have been included in every world convention since 1990. We will have two more - We Agnostics and One Big Tent included in Vancouver, July 3rd to 6th. Also, check the program for our got to know participants from New York City Agnostics, Vancouver, Canada, Florida,and Cleveland, highlighting the reality that the hope and connection that come from AA, one alcoholicSecular AA hospitality suite, open Thursday, Friday, Saturday. It would be great to see some of you there.      

The AA World Convention is a quinquennial (every five years) gathering from different cities that of different towns. The San Diego AA International Convention occurred June 29 to July 2, 1995.  The theme of the convention was "AA Everywhere—Anywhere."AA World Convention is a quinquennial (every five years) gathering from various cities to celebrate AA's birthday. In 1995, in San Diego, we celebrated 60 years of Alcoholics Anonymous. Since 1990 in Seattle, there has been a “We Agnostics Panel." Non-believers have been featured in San Diego (1995), Minneapolis (2000), Toronto (2005), San Antonio (2010) and Atlanta (2015), The Detroit (2020) event was cancelled due to COVID lock-down. At the time of posting, we are 80 days away from Vancouver 2025, July 3-6. AA World Convention with the theme “Language of the Heart.” Rebellion Dogs will be sharing some of these previous recordings. 2025 in Vancouver, we have a Secular AA Hospitality Suite, which you can find in your 2025 AA Vancouver program. We are open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; come and visit. There will be another We Agnostics panel + all about being part of a secular AA group in another panel called, One Big Tent. Who knows what other panels, of the 700 +/- speakers, more secular members will be participating.  So this podcast features San Diego's We Agnostics in 1995. Jacques F, AAWS Director and freethinker from the Serendipity Group in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, was the moderator. Speakers included Merl E. from Hollywood We Agnostics group, Mel D from New York City and  Linda F from the Freedom Group Tuscon AZ who had a coming-out as a non-believer at the podium. Following the formal speakers, we heard from the crowd: Bill, Allan, Quad-A, Chicago, Pete, Matt, Norma Jean, Adrian, John, Katie, Carrie, We Agnostics of Passedina, CA, Elizabeth from Back to Basics in San Francisco and Melanie.     

Dr. Joe Nowinski's body of work comes from working in the trenches—not from any ivory tower. Episode 77 of Rebellion Dogs Radio looks at a run-of-the-mill problem in early recovery that doesn’t get enough ink: if we are together in a relationship and you go to treatment and come home to stay sober, should I live a sober life too? It’s your problem. Well, that’s one way to look at it; others would feel we are in this together. It’s our problem. Here’s another case; a couple is together a long time. Still, their consumption (of alcohol or other drugs) has increased; neither has had legal or health scares. Nevertheless, their consumption has increased, and should they consider being a sober couple, or is sober just for people diagnosed as severe on the alcohol-use disorder spectrum? Are there some consequences to the relationship? Dr. Joe Nowinski has a new book (Johns Hopkins Press Health Book, September 10, 2024) called Sober Love: How to Quit Drinking as a Couple. This is from case studies over years of family practice as a clinical psychologist.Former Chief Medical Officer of Hazelden Betty Ford Marvin D. Seppala, MD, says, “Dr. Nowinski is a highly qualified expert who uses the latest research and his clinical expertise." Couples recognize that alcohol has interfered with their lives. “Alcohol can undermine even the best of relationships. Sober Love delivers the information necessary to develop a plan.”Addiction Medicine doctor Ray Baker says, “I am delighted to recommend this gem of a book! It offers the knowledge, tips and skills needed for recovery people in intimate relationships to interconnect on their mutual journey of growth. It’s one of a kind.”View SOBER LOVE now: https://amzn.to/4dcAhwOIf you’re a Rebellion Dogs Radio long-timer, you know Joe’s a repeat guest. Mary C and Joe C talk with Dr. Nowinski after reading his book. If you are new to Rebellion Dogs Radio, visit our website for links and further discussions:   Recovery After Rehab: A Guide for the Newly Sober and Their Loved Ones (2021) on Episode 62  If You Work It It Works! The Science Behind the 12 Steps (2015) on Episode 12.      

The Plain Language Big Book: is this a compendium to ye' olde book or a re-write in modern language?Referred    What’s Different? The first 164 pages are now 122 pages – by simplifying the language. More “gender-balanced” – e.g. jaywalker is female; but not gender-neutral using “they”. The wording of the Steps has not changed from Him/His, but in other places,gender-balanced He/Him/His “may have changed to God”. Only “Dr. Bob’s Nightmare” is included in the stories (more on some problematic Doctor Bob language to follow). Plain language interpretation reduced 164 pages by 25%—a noteworthy reduction. How Bill wrote does not fit in as far as a contemporary discussion about alcohol use disorder or addiction in general. Here’s an example: it is unimaginable to expect to hear or read this abstract and flowery description of alcohol use disorder at your doctor’s office:“But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is finitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics, these things are poison (“How It Works,” p. 66).”Referred to in this show:Blog JULY 2024 the Plain Language Big Book coming Fall of 2024https://rebelliondogspublishing.com/blog/blog/7425695/plain-language-big-book-coming-soon-who-what-where-when-whyAA membership from 2002 to 2020 change (+/-) over 20 yearsBiographies of the 28 AA stories in the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (and other AA stories)Referredhttps://library.iusb.edu/search-find/archives/gcarchive/docs/ref-bb-authors.pdf SAMHSA (substance abuse and mental health services admin) notes that 72.2% of Americans 12 years old or older who ever had alcohol or other drug dependency consider themselves recovered or in recovery. https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/20230920/new-data-recovery-from-substance-use-mental-health-problems-among-adults-in-united-states 2020 Membership Survey from Great Britain General Service Office+ 81% of newcomers and 94% of people sober 10+ years believe in a higher power (Great Britain and English-speaking Central Europe). Of those who believe, ⅓ believe in a religious god, ⅔ believe in a secular higher power. See page 11.https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AA-Membership-Survey-2020.pdf 

We look at history—why? Isn’t this a contemporary, or even future gazing look at recovery and addiction? Well yes and yes. Yuval Noah Harari, PhD author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind says, “History is not the study of past; history is the study of change; it’s not about remembering the past; it’s about liberating ourselves from it.”Episode 75 of Rebellion Dogs Radio (and this blog) explores three calls to action by Alcoholics Anonymous that need our attention in 2024: New stories of AA diversity today are needed to update the 48-year-old Do You Think You’re Different? Let’s get our freak on; if you ever felt you can’t or won’t blend into AA, we want you to help demonstrate what we mean by, “We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful.” About our primary literate in AA—The Big Book + 12 & 12: rewrite it? Or reify it? Grappling with a need to adapt to changing times, being sensitive to change-resistant tendencies, the trustees’ Literature Committee is polling members, looking for their marching orders: preserve what’s written; or breathe fresh life into last millennium’s AA message and widen our gateway? Directly from AA’s General Service Office, we have these seven questions for you. The 2022, much anticipated, AA membership survey is posted with current data on AA for all to see; counselors, healthcare and criminal court diversion professional who refer people to AA, the general public and last but not least AA members to show how we are doing, from our home groups to the USA/Canada General Service Conference at reaching all those who want or need AA to be available, equitably, and effectively. Our responsibility declaration nudges us to look at this new info, see who were are serving, who we may be failing and confront how, whenever, wherever, someone reaches out, we want the hand of AA always to be there (for everyone regardless of age, race, gender, creed, cultural touchstones). There’s information for the first time about USA/Canada AA’s use of online meetings and our preferences. It’s like those pioneering driving blind days all over again.      DIVERSITY:  What makes you different?If you are someone in recovery and you were helped by peer-to-peer, maybe AA specifically, did you immediately feel at home at your first meeting, or did you feel different that the group you were exposed to? If you felt or feel different, we have a humble writing assignment for you as our first topic.The  AA Literature desk wants your story, 500—800 words. DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DIFFERENT? is the 48-year-old pamphlet #13 that tipped the scale in my own should-I-stay or should-I-go sobriety. I found people (stories) spoken in my language for the first time in AA. If you do not know this collection of AA stories, click the link to read. Thirteen essays of people who felt marginalized, a teenager, atheist, clergy, high bottom, low bottom, movie star, person of color, LGBTQIA+, share the barriers and bridges navigated to find a rightful seat in AA. How timely to hear from a 15-year-old when I was a teenage alcoholic. I was happy to read what Ed the AA atheist and Jan the AA agnostic had to say about sobriety without an anthropomorphic personal higher power. It's a great recovery tool; and it’s old. Today’s teenager doesn’t have any use for 1970s teenage angst; it could be unrelatable, leaving gender identification, pronouns et al alone for now—yes we need to attend to contemporary, sensitive, inclusive language, but—it all starts with a story, one person in recovery talking to another with alcohol use disorder. This pamphlet/leaflet needs to be updated to reflect the diversity of AA in the third decade of the 21st century. So if you, or someone you know, is not the white male, hetero-normative middle-class majority that the membership survey, which we will talk about shortly, reveals is the best served demographic by AA today, then write your story. Maybe you feel different-light, not marginalized enough; I don’t know if you are or are not, either but please consider throwing your hat in the ring by adding your story to the pile. They will only pick a few from many but they can only choose from the stories provided. This could be a literature initiative that helps many—it helped me. https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/Call%20for%20Story_Pamphlet%20DYTYAD%20EN.pdfhttps://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/5a77c27d179d4856b32eed86b01e3426Our current DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DIFFERENT? pamphletSo it was written: Are the writings of Bill Wilson sacred to AA? AA’s General Service Conference is currently seeking each of our opinions. Should we—shouldn’t we? If you want to get an AA area assembly’s member’s remaining hairs on fire, bring up changing the words in the Big Book 164 pages. Beyond the apathetic majority in the middle of AA, my friend Bob K says, “There are those who want us to go back to 1939 and those who think we are already stuck there.” I get it; I have heard the concern and pleas from both camps. I suggest there is a silent majority; the apathetic middle of the road whose sobriety isn’t and wasn’t informed by book-learning in AA. Using myself as an example, the words of Bill Wilson were neither a comfort nor a barrier because I learned AA from the fellowship, one AA member talking to another, one on one, from the podium or around the room in discussion, instructions and “by the book” was not my experience of having the AA message brought to me. The experience of others, trial and correction, the hope and connection and sense of belonging from living persons with substance use disorder, such as alcohol in the case of my AA attendance, this was what informed my recovery. I know others were brought in 12-step culture in by-the-book, instructional, orderly fashion. That’s great but many, like myself, aren’t emotionally attached to a book that either aided or frustrated our recovery. So what’s between the covers of the book next year will not likely change my life one way or another. Some of you, your identity, your story, is connected to being uplifting by, or marginalized as a result of, the words of AA literature. The “we must change or fade to obscurity” camp and the “we must preserve the integrity of the message and not water AA down” camp both love AA and want us to last forever. They just disagree on how to get there; they may be certain, or at least highly suspicious, that the other camp is delusional and dangerous. So be you directly affected by this issue or just a stakeholder as any AA member is, the people who serve the membership want their marching orders from us, as it should be in this chaordic[i], upside-down-service-structure fellowship.Here are the questions from our Literature Committee and the answers I sent in. You show me yours, I'll show you mine; I will go first. But, please tell us what you think, and we will provide information on how to send your views to AA.HOW SHOULD WE TREAT A.A. FOUNDERS’ WRITINGS SUGGESTED QUESTIONS  FOR DISCUSION1.  Do you think that A.A. Founders would object to or embrace revisions to their writings? If yes, why? If not, why?No           1953 GSC speech by Bill Wilson commending groups/members who altered the Steps as carrying on “the same pioneering process we had to go through ourselves,” and concluded about changing text, “If improvements are to come, who can say where they will come from?”2.  Do you think the Founders’ writings are effective in reaching new members? If not, what measures do you think can be taken to resolve this issue?AA has been stuck at 2 million members all century; we are keeping old-timers happy and not appealing to new people. This century, AA has shrunk in members everywhere but USA. Our primary literature is religious, dated, and irrelevant in the eyes of newcomers.3.  What reasons would you consider for changing our Founders’ writings?More has been revealed. A quinquennial revised “Doctors’ Opinion” replace the misogyny and add non-Abrahamic version of the Steps (Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, Secular). 4.  How do you feel about changing A.A. Founders’ writings to replace outdated references?DO NOT REPLACE—preserve an original 164 for fundamentalists, but ALSO offer a contemporary basic text also. Update it every five years then we can re-visit the question in 20 years.5.  What suggestions do you have for preserving the Founders’ writings, along with keeping pace with our current A.A. Society and its future?One original AA text, go back to 1939, why not? One five-year cycling variation of the Big Book.  Grade 5 Math doesn’t change every five years, does it? But school boards update the language of their text books to keep pace with best teaching standards, trial-and-correction, cultural demographic shifts. “IF” AA’s books are basic texts, not a historical document for scholars, then we can follow other teaching/cultural trends. 6.  Should there be a special Conference process for approval of changes to our Founders’ writings?  (e.g., super, or qualified majority – 75%, and/or 2-year consideration process.)You avoid this whole binary controversy with YES/AND instead of EITHER/OR. Keep the fundamentalists happy; encourage the freethinkers to stay in AA. 7.  What additional ideas, thoughts or suggestions  can you share about changing or not changing the Founders’ writings?As stated about changing or no change is not a very creative solution—add ideas, don’t divide members.  If everyone dead before the turn of the century is a founder, modernize Came to Believe and Living Sober, too. Living Sober is the only defendable irreligious literature we have. Those 31 chapters could use a 21st century attention to online meetings, pronouns, and more contemporary touchstones. Came to Believe could offer humanist, non-theistic essays along with Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist and other words for higher power besides a male, interfering singular god the Bill W believed in. That’s just so American-centric. Maybe that’s why groups are smaller and fewer outside of the USA.So, above is one members suggestions. And if you care about AA messaging and if we should preserve, replace or add to our literature, please follow our lead: stop bitching and start typing. We need your input, too. Remember the seven-question link allows a word doc download and your answers must be mailed (snail-mail): Downloads: PDF letter from GSO + 7 questions WORD.docx of 7 Questions for youTrustees’ Literature Committee, AA GSOBox 459Grand Central Station New York NYUSA - 10163and/or: https://www.aa.org/contact-literatureAA's Triennial Survey (USA/Canada General Service Conference) 2022This pamphlet is an initiative by the AA Public Information desk. In AA's effort to provide answers to the type of questions professionals (healthcare/human resources etc.) want to know about AA as well as the press or curious members of the general public, our membership survey answers many of their questions about what their clients/patients may find at a typical AA meeting. It’s demographics than answers questions of diversity of race, age, gender identification, length of time in recovery, the background of members, how people find out about AA, how many meetings we go to, how many of us have sponsors, etc. Also useful, is it helps us take inventory of how well we are helping others. How effective are we at reaching and resonating with people across the cultural divide as far as race/gender/age groups etc. are concerned?Membership Survey 2022 is not AA Worldwide but includes a sample of members, groups and the Areas of the USA/Canada General Service Conference.  More than 6,000 A.A. members were randomly selected and surveyed in 2022 by the General Service Office for the U.S. and Canada. The Membership Survey, which has been conducted periodically since 1968, provides a snapshot of the A.A. fellowship and its members. This survey is not a census. The survey results may be of interest to the professional community, the media, and the general public — anyone who wants to know more about A.A.In January of 2023 I did a presentation for the Growing In Understanding group on the history of this  USA/Canada membership survey and in anticipation of the 2022 info being released – but wait there is more – I also shared the Great Britain 2020 data and looked at new questions they were asking members and what we could learn from them (LINK below for Rebellion Dogs Publishing YouTube page). In April the General Service got a report on the 2022 survey ahead of it being printed. Because this was the first triennial survey to ask about virtual (Zoom, Skype etc) meetings and because new groups have started with no brick-and-mortar physical location time was devoted to this topic. Here are some talking points from USA/Canada delegates:Are they groups that transitioned from live to online/virtual? Do you know if they intend to stay in whatever their current format is?• Some online groups were in-person meetings before the pandemic and have chosen to remain virtual• Other groups decided to convert to a hybrid platform after the pandemic• An in-person group transitioned online, half of the group wants to remain online while half of the group returns in-person• Majority intending to stay virtual• We have many that are not structured and are not interested in becoming part of General Service• New groups being developed for the purpose of reaching more people outside the area• A lot of new groups. Some that transitioned from in-person to either online only or Hybrid. They plan to continue this process.• Our area is open to online groups• Strong resistance to online area assemblies• Some groups and meetings seem to want to meet without any connection to the district, Area and A.A. as a whole• Seeing a substantial decline in online groups and online groups going dark as we move back to in-person groups • Some people with accessibility issues have opted to remain connected online as independent groups• Some AA members seem to prefer to meet online, whether for convenience or safety or due to the difficulties of finding trusted servantsTo the best of your knowledge, do online groups in your area have members from multiple districts, from outside of your Area or from other countries?                       Yes: 76.12%; No: 23.88%• Members of the group include local members and other from around the world. The group is trying to figure out where they belong, where they should send their 7th Tradition contributions, etc.• Most of them have members from all over the U.S. and in some cases, other countries. That is primarily due to them sharing meeting codes on social media.• For the groups that have contacted us we encourage them to use the Traditions to guide the group conscience when making the decision on what district and Area to join By the time surveys were done in 2023 75% of members had attended virtual meetings online or by phone. What do members prefer?19% like in-person and online equally, 79% prefer in-person, 2% prefer virtual. DIVERSITY in AA   AA 2014 survey AA 2022 survey NA 2018 survey Asian 1% 1.2% 2% Black, African American 4% 3.65 13% Hispanic, Latino 3% 7.35 7% Indigenous, Native  1% 2.8% 1% Pacific Islands, Hawaii   0.3%   White, Caucasian 89% 87.7% 70% Multi-racial   0.3% 4% Other 2% 0.5% 1%   AA 2014 survey AA 2022 survey NA 2018 survey Male 62 63.94% 57% Female 38 35.45% 42% Gender fluid, nonbinary   0.46%   Other    0.15% 1% AA shows a 1.3% improvement in moving away from the Caucasian majority. For comparison, Narcotics Anonymous last surveyed their members in 2018 and show improved diversity and inclusion to AA.  This statistical lack of diversity which most of us would agree this is what we see in our meetings, does it make you wonder? What barriers, systemic discrimination and microaggression lurks in our meeting formats, messaging and culture? More context as to the extent of AA's diversity shortcomings, can be offered by more global record record keeping.The Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA USA) surveys alcohol (and other drugs) use disorder in the USA and reports that for people suffering from alcohol use disorder, indigenous/ Native Indian 11.2% of their population, Whites 7.8%, Black/African American 7.1%, Latino/Hispanic 7.1%, Asian 4.1%. People of color are less likely to complete addiction treatment than their white counterparts. As far as genders compare, the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) reports that 68% of males and 64% of females (of people 12 years old and over) consume alcohol but males make up most of the accidents, illness, injury, death and violence associated with drinking, consuming 3 x more the non-male drinkers. 19 liters a year for men, 6.5 liters/year for women. Women's drinking is on the rise, while males are in decline. Women are more susceptible to blackouts, liver disease, and cancers associated with the toxins in alcohol.So, is AA racist? Are we sexist? Is this the cause of underrepresented people in AA?Let me take on the question first. My home group, in Toronto Canada, as ethnically diverse as a major city comes, does not reflect the cultural tapestry within the the University that we are located in or in the larger community. Over ½ of or attendees identify as male, some weeks substantially so. Am I a racist; a misogynist? I don't like to see myself that way. But before I point a finger at AA as a whole, what about my inventory of my white-male privilege and what am I doing or bride the gap in my home group? Equity begins at home, our home group for instance.People who are the target of discrimination have a different experience of society than the majority that does not. Pew Research in 2019 looked at America's views of racism and skin color informed reaction.  “Race relations in the U.S. are generally bad.” 58% of all adults agree. Whites: 56%, Blacks 71%. “The legacy of slavery affects the position of black people in Americana society today a great deal/fair amount.” Combined, 63%, 54% of Whites and 84% of Blacks. “Our country hasn't gone far enough in giving Blacks equal rights with Whites.” Agreement among Whites: 37%, Blacks, 78%. That is a very different experience of society based on what side of the privileged divide we live on. The overall average was 45%.So, the racism or sexism that I do not face informs my experience of AA. The question is how can see more clearly? I do not consider myself a racist or misogynist. But being an ally, that's a verb, not a noun, what am I and what can I do in support of equality for all. From Harvard Business Review, Robert Livingston a good basis for educating ourselves + a good basis for a group inventory, How to Promote Racial Equity (2020). It starts with what we know: Denial is not a river in Egypt and you can't eliminate a problem until a sizable consensus believes there is racism and that it's a problem that will do harm if ignored or denied.  Studies reveal culprits and enablers in society, our workplace, and how could AA be immune, “57% of all Whites and 66% of working-class Whites consider discrimination against Whites to be as big a problem as discrimination against Blacks and other people of color. These beliefs are important, because they can undermine an organization’s efforts to address racism by weakening support for diversity policies.”Race-neutral policies enable denial and maintain discrimination. A commitment to diversity is not evidence of the absence of discrimination. Muttering “always inclusive, never exclusive,” is a sweet refrain but it does nothing to eliminate discrimination in AA. AA, like what studies show rampant in other organizations also, already has equality policies and statements and diversity informed public service announcements AND our 2022 survey reveals that we have not made our rooms more welcoming to stay in for women or people of color. When people of color raise concern in AA they are met with hostility. “That's an outside issue,” is not what ‘outside issue’ means and we all know that; such a rebuttal is microaggression, maybe not so “micro.” The idea that racism is a deliberate action motivated by malice is another denial-wake up call from Harvard Business Review. Unconscious or unintended discrimination is still discrimination. “I did not know the gun was loaded,” shows lack of awareness; but that doesn't bring the victim back to life. Effort, not desire, we know that in AA and AA is a good example of putting in the effort to help those in need, so we can do this but taking inventory, honestly and thoroughly comes before the breakthrough.  We know AA is a happy place for white males--we are over represented here. So why aren't women, people of color and youth better represented? This isn't an impossible riddle. Not for us, we admit how and when we are wrong and and we make amends. What Harvard calls “problem awareness, and "root cause analysis” we call Step One and Step Four. this is the first of three sequential states: Condition. As our Safety in AA: Our Common Welfare recognizes:Safety in AA: “Problems found in the world can also make their way into A.A. … racial discrimination, sexual orientation or gender intolerance. … these experiences can affect whether someone feels safe to return to the group.”   The point is that recognizing the condition isn't the solution. Reading this every meeting will not end discrimination. Next is Concern. We need empathy (not sympathy). All of us have faced discrimination from the stigma of addiction, we need to listen and connect.  Here's an action Step. What if we asked that our local annual AA conference invite a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) panel each year to talk about their experience of discrimination in AA. The same could be done with gender in AA, a young people's or athiests panel. Once understood and then felt, Correction takes two efforts: Strategy and Sacrifice. “The real challenge for organizations is not figuring out ‘What can we do?’ but rather ‘Are we willing to do it?’” Pray for the willingness, exercise it, if we don't know, trial and correction, be committed, make a sacrifice. Is this critical, is this fair? I am asking what I am going to do; what I will ask my group to do. But each district and Area can do the same thing. As the saying goes, “If  you see something, say something.” I see that our membership survey tells us the truth; our Safety in AA is good work but we aren't there and I will not willfully turn away from our collective shortcomings; so I am saying something. Another improvement in the 2022 survey is that not only do we ask how long since your last drink, but also, how long have you been in recovery. Maybe that's a better measuring stick in a program that honors progress and not perfection.    when you first came to AA since your last drink Less than a year 13% 23% 1 - 5 years 155 20% 5 – 10 years 12% 13% 10 -  20 years 19% 16% More than 20 years 41% 28% AA isn't the only pathway pursued by most members - AA is a part of recovery for most, not the one and only intervention. 60% of us received counseling or treatment before coming to AA and 8/10 said that was significant. After coming to AA 56% of us are in counseling/treatment or we have been; 9/10 of us say our recovery process beyond AA is significant. Out of ten members two have no sponsor and eight do; one has no home group and nine do join and belong to a group.We have attributes we need/want from a meeting   54% of us say we need a group with “Members like Me.” 29% need a group in a certain language 22% need accessible meetings 25% need additional characteristics.   There was a time when the average age of AA members was getting smaller as more young people came and stayed sober. We're getting older every survey this century and now 52 years old is our average member. Under 21: is down to 0.2%, 21-30s: 9%, our 30s: 16%, 40s: 20%, 50s: 25%, 60s: 19% and over 71 = 11%I remember after I got sober the 1977 membership survey noted that under 30 years of age members doubled since the last survey. By 1980 one out of five members were under 30, 3% in our teens or twenties. 72% were under 50-years-old. We were much younger and growing - 35-40% were sober under a year and only 20-30% were sober 5 years or more.AA as a whole is not sitting on their hands; they see what we see, and they are taking action. We share some Public Service Announcements, super short but super targeting: Young people talking to young people, talking about in AA you can find - just as we told them we need in a meeting - to see and hear people just like us. BTW, you can view on YOUTUBE the slide deck and audio from that meeting at the Rebellion Dogs page.https://www.aa.org/membership-survey-2022https://www.aa.org/past-surveys  Thanks to those who serve AA as a whole. Be sure to answer GSO’s call for action to tell us all your story if you think you’re different. To get some idea about story length and feel, see the current DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DIFFERENT. And if you care about AA messaging and if we should preserve, replace or add to our literature, stop bitching and start typing. Remember the seven-question link allows a word doc download and your answers must be mailed (snail-mail) to:  Our musical feature is Ellis with the new song “Forever.” Discover Ellis    [i] https://growinginunderstandinggroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023-07-21-AA-as-a-CHORDIC-organization-Joe-C.pdf

It was the Fall of 2019, Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA by William Schaberg was about to be published and Joe C sat down with the author to talk about the soon-to-be-unveiled book born of eleven years of primary documentary research on Rebellion Dogs Radio, Episode 49. Four years later, more has been revealed and new insights gained. So listeners asked, “When are you two going to sit down again for a podcast?” Here it is.   This time around we look at new insights and speculation into early AA history. Bill and Joe share about their own recovery experience and reflect on changing AA culture through the years and what might inform the future of AA groups, members and culture.  We talk about The “God” Word: Agnostics and Atheists in AA We talk about the upcoming ZOOM October 7th/8th ICSAA (International Conference of Secular AA). We talk about the probable influence of the most popular New Thought books of the day and how this cultural phenomena informed our AA 12-Step suggested program of Recovery. Read “Bill W's secret bookshelf.”  We talk about the idea that and documentary evidence that supports the idea that Bill W thought he was done writing the Big Book--without the 12 steps or any step-by-step guide. We talk about Episode 49: when we first talked writing Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA (click to read/listen)       Rebellion Dogs Radio always features rebellious music. Episode 74 feature a Toronto band covering a recently lost British icon who died, too young, but sober: Goodnight Sunrise covers David Bowie's Space Oddity (Ground Control to Major Tom).  Rebellion Dogs thinks this Space Oddity cover is amazingly artistic and new sounding - it may send you clamoring back for your original psychedelic era version (and that's okay, too). Visit Goodnight Sunrise, view their campy look at the music industry today in their video WAIT FOR IT. See this band live if you get the chance.  

With or Without God: the latest Alcoholics Anonymous Membership Survey from Great Britain identifies how many members are religious vs. secular.  Episode 69 of Rebellion Dogs Radio  looks at our more enlightened understanding of AA members, at least a significant sample size surveyed this decade. The findings from the Great Britain 2020 AA Membership Survey + English Speaking Central Europe meetings have shared their experience and their understanding of how AA works for them. We look, more broadly, not only at this modernism movement that includes measurable assessment of AA members and AA life today, but we look at how progress is happening in AA. We look at AA maturity in the context of fundamentalism AND modernity, in AA. It is worth viewing both sides: what are the payoffs for those who embrace a strict orthodoxy and why and what do we need to change to better reach more of those who come to us with alcohol or other substance use disorder. Download or read a PDF transcript of Episode 69 of Rebellion Dogs Radio with links Every five years the Great Britain General Service Conferences surveys members to: carry the message to professionals, and  help inform the General Service Conference for future decision making. In 2020 members in Great Britain and English speaking Europe were asked: "Do you believe in a higher power?"Those who answered "yes" were asked: "Is your higher power religious or secular?" 35% of members hold a religious belief about higher power. 65% of members hold a secular belief about higher power. From there we ask how this might "inform the General Service Conference for future decision making," and how AA is doing overall in the first two decades of Century 21 in balancing the need to modernize AA and the resistance to change felt by fundamentalist AAs.   Our musical feature (Pictured Above) is a Toronto/NYC trio called ON, with their new song "Underdog."  Here are some links to items quoted and discussed.. A Newcomer Ask - second most read leaflet/pamphlet in all of AA originating in Great Britain https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/Members/2020-Survey  https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/Professionals/Interesting-Statistics  The 2020 Great Britain Membership survey YouGov 2020 survey of religiosity in Britain  Ernie Kurtz seven step program for research and reporting  Search back issues for group and member estimates (generally in Summer Issue each year of Box 459)  World Health Organization facts about alcohol 148 country comparison of religious adherence American belief in God through the years New York State Bill ensuring the right to irreligious drug/alcohol treatment The most recent USA/Canada membership survey Listen to "Overhaul?" from the December 2009 AA Grapevine CONCEPT V Throughout our world service structure, a traditional “Right of Appeal” ought to prevail, thus assuring us that minority opinion will be heard and that petitions for the redress of personal grievances will be carefully considered. p. 207  Generous Orthodoxy and AA with Jackie B from Varieties of Secular Experiences 2021 Religious Fundamentalism Modulates Neural Responses to Error-Related Words: The Role of Motivation Toward Closure  Fanaticism is a disease like alcoholism (Psychology Today) https://www.britannica.com/topic/fundamentalism  AA Efficacy from 1955 Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, p. XX  Updated language in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (p. 66, and p. 117) A longitudinal study of the comparative efficacy of Women for Sobriety LifeRing, SMART, 12-step groups for those with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) -  Sara E Zemore et al  Rebellion Dogs favorite reading: David Best, (2019) Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: the role of the social contagion of hope, Bristol, Policy Press  Marya Hornbacher (2011) Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power William Schaberg (2019) Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA  Bill Wilson's three years on know-how, Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 85  Fundamentalism is faith based in fear from The Daily Dish

  Rebellion Dog Radio (addiction/mental health and recovery) EPISODE 68 features our guest Carl Erik Fisher, Columbia University Psychiatrist, host of Flourishing After Addiction podcast, and author of THE URGE: OUR HISTORY of ADDICTION. Our musical feature on Episode 68 is Goodnight Sunrise with their song debuting 02 22 2022 "One Pill." Carl Erik Fisher’s search for answers about mental health and addiction hasn’t been satisfied by science and medicine; our trip with Carl takes us into a journey of history, art and philosophy. Sacred cows and wanting definitions and understandings be damned. The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions surrounding being human and care for (& connection with) one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge: Our History of Addiction reveals that the idea of disease and disorder are older than we think. A medical and community concern about (what we now call) substance use disorder) is not a 20th century construct... "In 1606 Parliament passed an 'Act for the Repressing of the Odious and Loathsome Sin of Drunkenness.' Religious writers of the seventeenth century had log been describing drunkenness as a problem of 'addiction': in 1609, the influential Puritan John Downame bemoaned the fates of those who 'addict themselves to much drinking' and lamented how 'many of our people of late, are so unmeasurably addicted to this vice.' Addiction was no longer just an action one did but also a condition: people actively 'addicted' themselves to something, but were also 'addicted' by something else acting on them - like, of course, gin. Medical writers during the Gin Craze drew on these developments and began using the word 'addicted' to explain the impaired choice of habitual drunkenness. However, it was far from a clear formulation. The word 'addicted' was usefully ambiguous and flexible..." Enjoy this interview with someone who I hope will be offering sobering insights into the dialogue of addiction and mental health then and now, for some time to come. The Music Goodnight Sunrise, one of the most theatrical and engaging live music acts in Toronto, is missing their time on stage but they're "Not Dead Yet," as their last pandemic song reminded us. We always close with something musical and today it's their 2022 02 22 release "One Pill." Some acts I see in a lot of festivals and clubs I go to, seem to find it difficult to replicate on stage what they created in the studio. Goodnight Sunrise might have the opposite challenge: putting in a mp3 what we experience with their live performance. "One Pill" may have cured that problem for them. The song, seems to me draw from another list song about mild-altering escape, Huey Lewis and "I want a new drug," Or like the retro-psychedelic mental health trip that might still be humming to the 1960's Grace Slick song, "White Rabbit. Here are the "One Pill" lyrics ... One pill to make you stronger One pill to wear you out One pill to make you wonder One pill to ease your doubts  We’re all just trying to get by Everybody’s on their own supply Doesn’t matter what you call it if it takes you higher  We’re all just living a lie Nobody gonna ask you why Doesn’t matter what you call it if it takes you higher  One pill to wake you up One pill to help you sleep One pill to hold you captive One pill to set you free  You’re looking in the wrong direction If you’re looking for something to find And if you keep on staring at the same reflection You might as well be blind  One pill to take you farther One pill to slow you down One pill to fuel the fire One pill to burn you out One pill to take you higher One pill to break the fall One pill to feel desire One pill to feel at all        Click the pic for more Goodnight Sunrise. And while you're clicking, Flourishing After Addiction is a podcast by Carl Erik Fisher that I have made a must-hear. I can't recommend it more; go bookmark it wherever you enjoy podcasts.  Enjoy a few sample pages of The Urge: Our History of Addiction Visit CarlErikFisher.com  

  Alcoholics Anonymous starts the year—January 1, 2022—in public controversy: TRANSCRIPT (Enjoy in PDF reading format) "The way our ‘worthy’ alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the ‘less worthy’ is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another!" Bill W. In the UK, AA’s General Service Office retaliation against it’s own group has created click-bait for media outlets. The Daily Mail and other news outlets are reporting that an AA “group is under threat after being censured for reciting the Lord’s Prayer,” and members of the group were “told by leaders it had become too Christian-focused and has been removed from the organization’s online directory.”  Of course, it’s only ten-years ago USA and Canada central offices were making news for discriminating against atheist and agnostics AA groups. There is the Goldilocks syndrome that explodes into AA groups being scapegoated for being way too liberal or way too conservative. Do AA meetings need to be “just right” not too this and not too that?   We look at the latest debacle in South Somerset UK, and how for 75 years AA Traditions, Concepts, and Warranties promising autonomy, love, and tolerance, could not prevent bleeding deacons from turning on fringe meetings and setting AA Tradition on fire.   In Big Book meetings, members can quote chapter, verse and page numbers from memory. If we had meetings where people could quote AA Concepts and Warranties, would we not avoid these self-inflicted public embarrassments? Could a focus on AA policy and history prevent the tyranny of the majority from their habitual acts of dis-unity? One headline now reads: “Are You Kidding Me? Cancel Culture Now Attacks Alcoholics Anonymous Group.”  In January 2022’s podcast we look at a history of AA’s promise to groups to let them conduct themselves independently and without governance on one side, and the AA deacons that pull the fire alarm and kick groups out for non-conformity, on the other side. This pattern habitually repeats itself in AA. Joni Mitchell’s song, “Circle Game,” comes ot mind:  And the seasons, they go round and round  And the painted ponies go up and down  We are captive on the carousel of time  We can’t return, we can only look  Behind from whence we came  Round and round and round in the circle game  We do not devote an hour to fault-finding or laying blame. That would be more circle game, we think. We’re trying to learn; taking inventory in a sense of how the mantra of love and tolerance of others as an explicit code, leads to these periodic and bouts of dis-unity. Can AA live up to its own principles or is it impossible to transcend a human tendency towards tribal conflict? This is worth talking about and today we do, with historical review of policy and how individuality and non-conformity trigger AA into behaving badly.       Our musical feature on Episode 67 is producer and singer/songwriter Conor Gains. His latest single is "Lightning" The single takes you through the ups and downs of being intensely in love and how it can strike like “Lightning." Connection and rejection, these are stormy forces in life too so I thought it might fit the mood of the episode. Bill Wilson wrote about our fear, our tribalism and how maybe we come through these storms, better for it: "Perhaps it means that we are losing all fear of those violent emotional storms which sometimes cross our alcoholic world; perhaps it bespeaks our confidence that every storm will be followed by a calm; a calm which is more understanding, more compassionate, more tolerant than any we ever knew before."  Connect to Conor Gains Apple Music, Conor Gains Spotify   TRANSCRIPT Follow along with Episode 67 or download a print copy PDF Episode 67, this blog/podcast is dedicated to the memory of AA Historian Arthur S, who died January 3, 2022. The loss of Arthur creates a void of love and service that I hope we can collectively fill. I didn’t really know Arthur like a regular at my own home group, but I relied heavily on his scholarly contribution to the continuing saga of AA and addiction recovery history. Arthur, while capable and prolific, was clear to not speak for AA, while asserting that he held a “personal interest in the history of AA and consider it imperative to correct historical inaccuracies and propagation of myth.” Among other cornerstones of AA history scholarship, I have often referenced, in 2008 along with Glenn C (also recently passed) and Tom E, compiled AA Recovery Outcome Rates—Contemporary Myths and Misinterpretations[i]. I have relied heavily on Art’s contribution to the AA Timeline[ii] and the 20,000 pages from the A.A. History Lovers sight. Glenn C had this to say: “Arthur continued to be the researcher we all depended on to give us a reasoned answer to hotly debated questions, backed up by impeccable sources.”[iii]  [i] https://rebelliondogspublishing.com/files/117299/2008-aa-population-and-ourcome-rates.pdf  [ii] https://silkworth.net/aa/research-study/a-narrative-of-timeline-of-a-a-history/?_ga=2.29500406.894343368.1605523578-845694432.1594890364  [iii] https://pointshistory.com/2018/02/08/reply-to-arthur-s-aa-history-and-aa-myth/  

Heard Around the Rooms:"We don't care if you're from Yale or jail, here." Jim Burwell (March 23, 1898 - September 8, 1974) "Action is the magic word; you can't get goosed by the spirit if you don't get off your duff!"Understandably, September 1974, I did not know who Jim Burwell was, or how his past would inform my future. September 8th, 1974 , that was a Saturday, easy for me to remember. As it turns out, Jim B and I would both awake in hospital beds: he in a palliative care unit in San Diego, and me on a gurney in the Emergency Room of the Lakeshore General Hospital in Montreal. Jim B was 36 years, two months, four days sober, an atheist, and one of the first few dozen to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. Jim B would die this day, outliving both official AA founders, Dr. Bob and Bill W.  Meanwhile, in Montreal, early morning Saturday, September 7th, 1974 - Jim would have been in the Veteran's Hospital that day as he died the next day - I was brought to the hospital by ambulance, having been found face up in my own vomit in the boys’ locker room of the Macdonald High School hockey rink, by the Zamboni driver. He was opening up the arena around dawn to prepare the ice and arena for the day’s scheduled programme. What I was told, is that he found me lying motionless, thought to be dead. Coming out of my first black out, I was in a busy Emergency Room hallway. I did not know where I was. The last memory I had was from 15 hours before, friends and me, passing a bottle around between the high school football field and the back-alley entrance the school. We were there for a Friday night dance. I had been drinking all day; I had not paced myself. The music was starting inside the school; it was time to go into the gymnasium. I collapsed to the ground and I couldn't get up. I remember hearing, “Come on Joe; it’s time to go; get up!” I could not respond. The last memory I have, paralyzed and speechless, I was drifting into—what I now understand to be—a blackout. Fading to black, my last memory was someone tugging on my feet, saying to our friends, “I’m tying his shoelaces to the bicycle rack. He’ll be fine here; let’s go inside.” My next conscious moment, I assumed I was in the school somewhere. But I didn't know where I was or how I got there; I didn't even know I was coming out of a blackout. Instinctively, I searched for clues. There was a window high on the wall by the ceiling of the hospital corridor. Sun was coming through. “That can’t be,” I thought, “It’s nighttime.” Of course it wasn’t night, anymore; I was discombobulated. I was sick and aching and struggled to get my wits about me. Soon, my toxicology report would be read to me by an unimpressed, unsympathetic doctor who had recently pumped my stomach. According to the good doctor and the mad science of 1974 toxicology was this news flash: Joe, you did cocaine for the first time in your life, sometime, somewhere in the lost hours of the night before. I was trying to process, get my shit together, I drew a blank on what happened from the time that I was ditched by my mates, about 7 PM Friday, and waking in alarm, hours later, miles away, in a hospital. No memory recollection or second-hand accounts since then, have revealed any details of the where, when, what, why and with whom of those lost hours of September 7th. I will say that coke was, for this teenager, generally out of my price range. I did not really hang out with coke-heads, I guess because they didn't seem to want to hang out with me. Still unknown to this date, what might I have done to get and take cocaine that night? It’s a mystery. I would be going to my first AA meeting—not that I thought I needed it—on Tuesday September 11th. Unbeknownst to me, my recovery journey was beginning. I don’t keep a journal, but I know I was one of the Grade 9s, crashing the Grade 8 dance, which is always the first Friday night after Labour Day. Two weeks earlier, August 25th, 1974, I turned 14-years-old. So that's how my September 8th was unfolding.Back in San Diego, widow Rosa Burwell and SoCal’s AA were preparing for their beloved Jim B’s funeral and memorial. I know this because I just found this recording that I am so pleased to share with you. This recording, the memorial service of Jim B, is for me, like finding a stash, a baggy of puzzle pieces of AA history. Many of Jimmy B’s sponsees speak. The meeting's chair is Al, 21 days from his 41st sober anniversary. It's 1974, minus 41 years of sobriety, that equals... oh my: Al got sober in 1933. Al was sober longer than Bill Wilson!Rosa Burwell, his widow was there of course. She has the distinction of being the first Southern California female delegate to the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous. Marge was only the second female California delegate; she was 11 years sober at the memorial and remembers being at Jim’s 25-year celebration, early in her sobriety. Roy recalls Jim bringing AA to Philadelphia. We will hear in this recording, just months before this memorial, a telegram would be received, informing Rosa and Jim that 1,150 AA members celebrated the anniversary of the group Jim B started in Philly. The telegram boasted that they could have sold 1,000 more tickets if they had room for them all.Eunice knew Jim from AA in Washington, saw him next, years later, reading the Steps in a meeting in San Diego. Eunice and Rosa became the best of friends. Sybil C got sober in LA March 21, 1941, the first AA woman West of the Mississippi River. From the lectern, Sybil shared about an early AA play about the 12 step program (Jackie B, did you already know this?!? Jackie’s written a play about AA history that features Sybil prominently). As the story is told by Sybil, the LA play featured an unabashed atheist from formative New York AA. During a local performance, Sybil will recall on this recording, she sneaked Jim B into the wings to come on stage, playing himself before an unsuspecting audience. The place went wild with enthusiasm. I just found this Jim B recording on a hard drive, by accident. What I was looking for were some documents for 2022 writing projects.  I am undertaking a brand-new book that looks at the plethora of 21st century recovery options. Concurrently, I am doing some updates for a third printing of Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life with a new Preface and a hard-cover print option. I am thinking and talking about translating Beyond Belief. So no, I had no plans for, nor sense of urgency for a new podcast when I sat down at my desk, however many hours ago that is now.Other writers will relate. When wrestling with the seemingly overwhelming weight of starting to write and keeping at it, any distraction will do—if fact the distraction always appears relevant and urgent, at the time. This Jimmy B recording was just such a distraction. At the time of writing this, it is 3:47 AM and seven or eight or nine hours since I was searching in earnest for files pertaining to my planned writing. Joe makes plans; And the muse laughs. Ha, ha, ha. Ernie Kurtz would describe being a person with addiction this way, "We must thirst; where will I direct that thirst?"I do not remember who gave me this recording I found today; if you are out there reading this blog, and you sent it to me, “Thank you and sorry I forgot all about it until now.” If you would be so kind to reveal yourself to me, I will happily give credit as—I must say—credit is due. This recording is amazing. To Arlene, my new friend from Zoom secular AA, sober since 1969, who was a member at Mission Hills group, that Jim and Rosa B attended. Where you at this memorial, Arlene? Tell me more; tell me more. (see below, Thanks Arlene)To my fellow historians, if you have more details about this cast of characters appearing in this recording, I am listening; do tell.If any of you are unfamiliar with this recording, I hope it helps fill your AA history puzzle. Let me know. It was very hard to listen to. I imported it into my editing suit and cleaned up the recording to the best of my ability. This is 1970s reel to reel audio tape, converted to cassette, left in a pile somewhere, until being converted to a compact disc wav file and then to the mp3 I have here. I have tweaked what I can. While the recorded content and quality of this blog/podcast will not change; this commentary you are reading is a work-in-progress, a living document. Any insights and additions, from anyone out there, would be much appreciated. Jim B died September 8th, 1974, and I did not—I could have died. Asphyxiation from one’s own vomit is and has been “Game Over” for some of my music heroes and uncounted fellow addicts that we never got a chance to know. So, I dodged a bullet; another bullet as the story goes, with more shots in the dark to come.My mother’s 34th birthday was the next day, just as it was every September 9th of her life. I wasn't thinking much about that. Mom was a few months sober, September of 1974, not something I paid much attention to, either. I had been invited to go to Alateen, during my mother's AA pink-cloud phase... Yeah right, as if!I wasn’t impressed by my mother's suggestion that maybe I should try an AA meeting. It was just another in a series of lectures of how to run my life. What would a 34-year-old lady know about young people?!? "I hope I die before I get old!" As a ploy, just to get her to shut up already, I said, “Okay; if it’s such a big deal for you, I’ll go to a stupid meeting!”Art picked me up Tuesday night and we both chain-smoked on our way to the Veteran’s hospital for my first meeting. We continued smoking through the meeting. I was not all that impressed. Right now, I would love to say the spirit of Jim jumped into my body or something like that (figuratively of course) and I was struck sober to carry the sobriety torch, handed off from him to me. Alas, I had a few more near-death experiences some of which would land me back in this same hospital, before I got sober, a couple of years later. The larger picture is that many people were dying or almost dying that same day, in hospitals and gutters around the world. Jim B and Joe C's stories aren't bound together any more than the days accounting of people dying or nearly dying, some "with" alcohol use disorder, some, fatally "from" alcohol use disorder.Jim B’s story “The Vicious Cycle” wasn’t included in the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. To the hundreds or thousands that would owe their sobriety—in part—to Jim B, it felt like the record was being set straight when Jim’s story was added to our Big Book’s Second Edition in 1955. "A Vicious Cycle" remains in today's Fourth Edition.In the 1968 AA Grapevine, 30 years sober, Jim tells his side of the story - first written about him, not by him in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous: “...the early meetings were quite religious, in both New York and Akron. There was always a Bible on hand, and the concept of God was all biblical. Into this fairly peaceful picture came I, their first self-proclaimed atheist, completely against all religions and conventions. I was the captain of my own ship (The only trouble was my ship was completely disabled and rudderless.) So naturally I started fighting nearly all the things Bill and the others stood for, especially religion, the ‘God bit.’ But I did want to stay sober, and I did love the understanding Fellowship. So I became quite a problem to that early group, with my constant haranguing against all spiritual angles.” Jim never started believing (in anything supernatural) but he did stop fighting. And in this 30-years-of-sobriety address, he offers to others on our recovery journey, his experience of secular AA sobriety:“The AA fellowship became my Higher Power for the first two years. Gradually, I came to believe that God and Good were synonymous and were found in all of us. And I found that meditating and trying to tune into my better self for guidance and answers became more comfortable and steady. © A.A. Grapevine, Inc. (May 1968)” Enjoy this trip down history’s memory lane and anyone with further insights... call me :-).For me, personally, this was the "life during wartime" phase of my addiction. This has been a heightened time of reflection for me, since this recording took me on an unexpected detour from my plans for the day.Looking back now, I didn't share any appreciation for the doctor who dealt with my stinky unconscious body, suffering from self-inflicted life-threatening wounds. He saved my life and I treated him like an inconvenience. I never looked up the Zamboni driver to thank him for his role in saving my life and cleaning up after me; I was too ashamed and embarrassed. What was Art getting out of taking this punk-ass kid to his regular meeting with his World War II veteran fellows. I never asked him about his story, his war trauma, how he came to AA or anything about him. I didn't want to go to the meeting, I was embarrassed to be in his company and I just wanted the day to be over.I certainly don't remember thanking my mother for picking me up from the hospital or expressing regret for her being awoken to, "Mrs. so-and-so? This is Lakeshore General Hospital calling. Do you have a son named Joe?" I don't know and don't have any memory of her birthday on the Sunday; did I say, "Happy Birthday mom; I really appreciate you." I am quite sure I was quite self-absorbed.I couldn't see kind acts, I saw these people as obstacles, as people who did not understand and witnesses to what felt to me like humiliation. I certainly did not appreciate the gravity of my situation or my role in my misfortune. I didn't identify as an "alcoholic." I saw myself as a victim of a series of bad breaks and serious misunderstandings. I expect they are all dead now. All I can do, is to hope that I can remember to pay it forward.People who need love the most, deserve it the least.I am a bad example, or a sample, of how true this expression is. Will I be ready for the next person who needs love the most and deserves it the least. I hope so.That's my story of common suffering as it was unfolding, September of 1994, at least a snapshot of my story. And this recording, from two Provinces and ten states away, three time zones and 4,668 km (2,900 miles) South and West of my tale, is another snapshot of our kinship of common suffering. I was no poster-child that "recovery is possible" in 1974. The Jim Burwell Memorial recording is a case history of how recovery is possible, and it's also contagious.   

“A person’s spirituality, then, is built on three internal processes:   the way we perceive the world about us,   how we feel about that world, and   the choices we make—conscious and unconscious—in response to our perceptions and our sensations. These three processes are intertwined and naturally reinforcing.”  Rev. Ward Ewing, Twelve Steps to Religionless Spirituality: The Power of Spirituality with or without God (2021)       Ward Ewing is non-alcoholic (Class-A) Alcoholics Anonymous trustee emeritus. In 2009 he was elected to chair the AA General Service Board. He's been a friend to AA since 1975 when he was looking for answers to alcoholism and it's effect on some of his congregants.  Non-alcoholics hold a unique role in AA. They can be the face of AA for media; there is no cloak of anonymity imposed on our non-alcoholic trustees. They offer expertise, experience and advice that our non-professional peer-to-peer fellowship benefits from: sometimes this expertise is in the area of communication, medicine, employee assistance, legal or finance expertise. Ward B Ewing was President and Dean of the General Theological Seminary in New York City when we was asked to consider serving as an AA trustee.  Ward has a new book: I like it, it find addresses some of the struggles 12-step communities and the larger community face; he looks at the growth appetite for spiritual values without religious dogma and in some cases, without gods. Ward Ewing spoke at We Agnostics and Freethinkers International AA Conference in Santa Monica in 2014, what became #ICSAA (International Conference of Secular AA).  Rebellion Dogs Radio's Joe C and Ward talk about his history with AA, about his idea of what "spirituality" is and is not, plus, what harm rigidity could bring to AA's future.  Our musical guest is Canadian indie band, Hotel Mira. The Eyes of You by Hotel Mira  You never knew  And the world is cruel  Put your heart away  Leave it somewhere safe   Away from hate  Then lighten up Listen to Hotel Mira on Spotify Visit Hotel Mira. Hotel Mira tours British Columbia in December 2021.   Check out Twelve Steps to Relionless Spirituality: The Power of Spirituality with or without God by Ward B. Ewing Hear Ward Ewing at Ireland Freethinkers Tus Nua group followed by Q&A Ward Ewing on You Tube:  Freethinkers Living Sober Varieties of Secular Experience November 28, 2021

A young fab-four asked, "Will you still want me; will you still need me, when I'm 64?" Episode 64 asks about addicts/alcoholics with low self-esteem, people who need empowerment--not ego deflation at depth. Beth Aich is here to talk about her new book, We're Not All Egomaniacs: Adopting the Twelve Steps for Alcoholics with Low Self-Esteem.  We have music for people with low self-esteem, too. Toronto indie band Yukon Blonde has a new song out, "Your Heart's My Home." SAMHSA has some new data looking at substance use and recovery in the USA - big numbers; what does it mean? Beth Aich has a bridge-building, gateway widening new book. We're Not All Egomaniacs: Adopting the Twelve Steps for Alcoholics with Low Self-Esteem busts the one-size-fits-all AA approach that assumes everyone in AA fits the narcissistic personality. Au contraire ; based on her personal experience an others first, people pleasing, never good enough, codependent just can't relate. Beth doesn't complain about Bill Wilson's view of the power-driving, yearning to to be top-man alcoholic archetype. But Beth she needed a way that worked for her.  "I spent many years trying to fit myself into the personality type of the alcoholic in the Big Book. I didn't know who I was so I went along with what they told me. But those words - selfish, self-centered, egomaniac - triggered me into a massive shame response. My training said selfishness is inexcusable and to always put other' needs ahead of my own. ... I had no sense of entitlement. I did not seek your praise or admiration. I just hoped you would tolerate me as long as I didn't bother you. That's why I'm writing this book - to help others like me build, not destroy their self-esteem. I hope AA won't be as uncomfortable for you after you read this." We're Not All Egomaniacs, pp 31-34 Is this the best time ever for exploring recovery from substance use disorder or process addiction? That can be an eating disorders, relationship or sex addiction, even too much screen time. I don’t know if technology or hyper-consumerism is creating more addictive booby-traps than back in day when we had to leave the house for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.        Episode 64 looks at Lived Experience Recovery Organizations or LEROs. We look at Dopamine Fasting.In a Harvard Health blog, Dr. Grinspoon points out that we may want to be  ’...less dominated by the unhealthy stimuli — the texts, the notifications, the beeps, the rings — that accompany living in a modern, technology-centric society. Instead of automatically responding to these reward-inducing cues, which provide us with an immediate but short-lived charge, we ought to allow our brains to take breaks and reset from this potentially addictive bombardment. The idea is that by allowing ourselves to feel lonely or bored, or to find pleasures in doing simpler and more natural activities, we will regain control over our lives and be better able to address compulsive behaviors that may be interfering with our happiness.  The six compulsive behaviors he cites as behaviors that may respond to a dopamine fast are:  emotional eating,  excessive internet usage and gaming,  gambling and shopping,  porn and masturbation,  thrill and novelty seeking, and  recreational drugs.  The article points out that dopamine isn’t to be avoided, or starved out of us, literally but it does need to be managed and we do need to take inventory of or step away from these activities that can give diminishing pleasure accomanied by compounding problemes.  We’ll add some links: A blog and a YouTube page. I know – isn’t that what they’re telling you to avoid. A change can be as good as a rest.  Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) reported out October 25th 2021 on their 2020 survey:  “Among the 29.2 million adults in 2020 who perceived that they ever had a substance use problem, 72.5 percent (or 21 million people) considered themselves to be in recovery or to have recovered from their alcohol or other drug use problem.” And Beth joined John S on Beyond Belief Sobriety and we will link to that page to; there’s some overlap but instead of telling you all about the book, We’re Not All Egomaniacs: Adopting the Twelve Steps  Alcoholics with Low Self-Esteem you can go there to hear more about Beth’s personal journey, how and why early AA might have been designed for the white, male privilege narcissist type of alcoholic and how childhood trauma can inform a more shattered self-esteem needing empowering – not “ego-deflation at depth.” So here we go right into my conversation with Beth Aich...  Beth we have been reading from your book at my home group. Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers AA group  meets three times a week. Thursday is our speaker-discussion, Saturday is topic-discussion and Monday is a secular Step and Tradition meeting. We read anything by anyone about the Twelve Steps and we’re read from about a dozen AA-member written, mostly secular approaches to AA recovery. So when I introduced your book, Beth we were on Step Nine and we have now gone around the clock, reading Twelve last week and Step One tonight. There happened to be a lot of newcomers and people who have been struggling in lived experience recovery organizations ... and tonight’s reading rung a few chords. We posted the link and at least three people said they ordered the book during the meeting. Oh the wonders of modern technology. As Beth mentioned it isn’t aimed at everyone – it’s audience is niche.... But tonight told me that there could be closet low-self-esteem members coming out from the shadows or out of the closet. We’ll see.  So I picked a song to fit the mood. Beth talked about co-dependency. From the internet I get this definition: "excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction." We are going to hear from Yukon Blonde. Indie bands or indie music I describe on my musical radio show as “the best music you’ve never heard!" Several years ago Yukon Blonde was a coming together of other existing emerging bands. It’s not a super-band like Cream was in the rock era, or you’d already know them. If you do, you’re a Toronto music scene connoisseur. Here’s some coda lyrics to sing to: I got hopes, i got dreams  But they seem so incomplete  Without you, my heart has no home  Your Heart is My Home, Your Heart is My Home   Links: We're Not All Egomaniacs: Adopting the Twelve Steps for Alcoholics with Low Self-Esteem by Beth Aich Dopamine fasting: Misunderstanding science spans a maladaptive fad (Harvard Medical 2020) Dopamine Fasting YouTube video: Overcoming addictions and regaining motivation SAMHSA https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/nsduh-national-survey-drug-use-and-health Yukon Blonde's 2021 Your Heart's My Home Hear more Beth Aich on Beyond Belief Sobriety podcast with John S

  Rebellion Dogs Radio # 63 features Dr. Allen Berger. Here is one of many gems from 12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety: Getting Your Recovery Unstuck:    “In our lives, emotional stability is achieved by becoming aware of our toxic beliefs and unenforceable rules, the idea that makes our emotional balance dependent on external conditions. We start to see how these ideas and rules emerge in our relationships with others (‘If you love me, you will do what I want you to do’) as well as in the lies we tell ourselves (‘The right person can rescue me from my troubles’).   Once we become aware of these unenforceable rules, we must surrender them. We need to move towards an attitude of ‘I’m okay even if this or that happens,’ and away from the idea that ‘I am okay only if this happens or that happens.’ This is emotional freedom.”   From Chapter 15 “Paddling Our Own Canoe”  This is the latest from Dr. Allen Berger, 12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety. Also on Episode 63, Dearly Beloved, Internationally enjoyed alternative rock band, but from Toronto Canada, provides our musical stimulation, going back to their 2016 Admissions album: Admissions is a great word... double meaning, getting honest or the gate keeper to be being let in... spooky. The 12 essentials, in point form only: 1. Waking from our sleepwalking, 2. Living life consciously, 3. Discerning our emotional dependency, 4. Knowing that it’s not personal, 5. Realizing that no one is coming, 6. Accepting what is, 7. Living life on life’s terms, 8. Discovering novel solutions, 9. Breaking the bonds of perfection, 10. Healing through forgiveness, 11. Living life with purpose & 12. Holding on to ourself in relationships. This 2021 offering is the next installment in what’s been a series of well-received books of sober second thought that we will discuss in this episode. Emotional Sobriety This one expands on something Bill W of AA wrote about in AA Grapevine, January of 1958, thirty+ years sober.  “Perhaps this will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA—the development of much more real maturity and balance...” The essay is called, “The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety.”  Allan and I got to know each other better as part of a foursome: Marya Hornbacher, John R of the Verde Valley Arizona Freethinker’s Living Sober group + Allen and I did a one-time Zoom Emotional Sobriety workshop, which became a five-part series with the four of us riffing off of each other and some great audience participation. That can still be enjoyed—if that’s what you’re into—at FreethinkersLivingSober.org (see below). Teamed up with long-time friend and colleague, psychotherapists and best-selling authors Thom Rutledge, Allen has his own podcast. This is the second series of podcasts with this duo and their friends. The first: Start Right Here was a series of 40 podcasts, still available to stream or download. The latest: Emotional Sobriety is a deeper dive into what we discussed here on Rebellion Dogs Radio. Find these podcasts on your Spotify, Podcast Addict, Apple Podcast app, or where you consume content. Or see our links below. In the spirit of “to be continued” rumors are now circulating that I will join Thom and Allen for an upcoming episode on their show, as their guest.  As "Rebellion dogs our every step," once again, we close with song. Music captures emotional range in ways Joe and Allen talk will not. Allen, I know you admire John Entwistle’s bass work in The Who. Our song and band today could be called a  21st century version of The Who’s establishment-challenging, pre-punk rock and roll. Dearly Beloved, with Rob Higgins on bass and harmonizing with co-vocalist Niva Chow, put out a 2016 album called, Admissions - available digitally, on disc or vinyl. The song I’ve chosen for bass, vocals and lyrical content that speaks to the bonds of emotional inebriety is “I Tried to Leave.”  I tried to leave, I tried to leave How can it be? I mean I had my doubts. Just when I think I’m free, I’m still in your house.  I tried to leave, I tried to leave. Dearly Beloved pictured from 2019 at the Bovine Sex Club, Queen Street W, Toronto. https://dearlybeloved.bandcamp.com/album/admission-2   https://www.dearlybelovedmusic.com/ Again, try as Allen and I may have done to articulate the challenges of regulating emotional wellness over an hour, we may be outdone by rock ‘n’ roll in 2 minutes 22 seconds. Enjoy this and more on Episode 63 of Rebellion Dogs Radio.        Other show notes/links CLICK HERE to view or review 12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety More Dr. Allen Berger, books, blogs, video, audio- https://abphd.com Emotional Sobriety Workshops https://es.freethinkerslivingsober.org/resources/videos/ Allen and Thom's Emotional Sobriety Podcast: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/emotional-sobriety-allen-berger-thom-rutledge-K-TwpHn8fv1/

Joe Nowinski is back in Rebellion Dogs Radio sights as we think his new book satisfies a previously unmet need. Recovery After Rehab: A Guide for the Newly Sober and their Loved Ones is like the owners manual to your new sober life. "So, I'm finished my stint in rehab; what do I do now? What do I do first?" For all the $$$ you spent and/or your health provider spent on your in (or out) patient care to treat alcohol use (or other drug) disorder, the $28 for this book will help improve outcome rates.Do you want a 40% change at sustained, engaging recovery for an 80% chance? Some of that will be informed by decision you make in the first days, months and year of sobriety.    For those of us in long-term recovery the book offers some hows and whys with reporting on studies that define what habits lead to better income rates? How many meetings a month do I have to attend? How long do I have to keep going? Well, now there's some data on this based on people a lot like us. Recovery After Rehab looks into Medically Assisted Recovery, mental health, creating a recovery lifestyle, relationship damage and how to move forward, slips and relapse. There is a catalogue of peer-to-peer recovery fellowships, explaining SMART, Women for Sobriety and varieties of AA and other 12-step options. This is Dr Joe's second visit. We cover his decades of clinical care and academic study of people with substance use disorder and how much more has been revealed so far this century. Recovery After Rehab from Amazon   Dr Joe Nowinski Website 

Episode 61 turns the microphone on  David G, host/producer of Here's Tom With The Weather podcast. What books would he read if stranded on a desert island? I know - finally, we find out. If you're out of the loop, this is a question asked of each guest on a show that invites everyone to table to critique, celebrate or contort AA's higher power steps. We get to know from sufis, scientists, gurus, rabbis, atheists, priests, writers, elders, scholars and other people in recovery, what book is their must-have if stranded on a desert island. And David future trips with Rebellion Dogs fans; how will history look back at turning points in AA history? Is online-becoming mainstream AA the dawn of a new era? Let's ask David who thinks this is it, baby: Zoom reduces barriers and connects people better than a, or "the" book ever could.           What will history record, as the biggest game-changer in peer2peer support for people with alcohol and other substance use disorders? Was it a Big Book, or something bigger?  Is the breakthrough in connecting the still suffering with effective mutual support to be defined by history as this era - the normalizing of online recovery meetings? What did the book Alcoholics Anonymous aim to do? Ostensibly the aim was to bring comfort to the inflicted when and where there is a barrier to personal connection between themselves and fellow sufferers.  The question posed today is, "Now that we are bringing peer2peer comfort - via AA and other online mutual-aid groups - does the Zoom meeting connect people better than a book, better than any book?  Host of Here’s Tom With The Weather Podcast, David G has written an article for Rebellion Dogs through the voices of connected alcoholics around the world about Zoom AA [click to read below]. On Episode 61 of Rebellion Dogs Radio, David talks about how the community centre meeting closures spurred by a pandemic, led to widespread replacement-meetings of Zoom AA. The alternative became normative and now AAs connect online for recovery. Now, we ask, "Is Online-AA here to stay; is it delivering Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment* to more, less or the same number of people? Are there fewer barriers, to finding connection online than from reading a books or face-to-face meetings that so many can't wait to get back to?  David’s Zoom journey has been global, clocking in the requisite 10,000+ hours. It's worth listening to what someone with unmatched experience has to say. In our hour together on Rebellion Dogs, around the globe trip, there’s a Nova Scotia reference; so today’s musical feature will be the East Coast’s Andre Pettipas and the Giants with their June 2021 pandemic release, “Homesick.”  For show notes and/or to download/reading/streaming read David G’s essay, “The Second Coming of Alcoholics Anonymous” *C.H.I.M.E. is an acronym referred to by David Best in Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: the role of the social contagion of hope previously covered in Rebellion Dogs Radio #48   Next up on Rebellion Dogs Radio, we hear again from Dr. Joe Nowinski. He has a new book, which we got to review in development,  Recovery AFTER Rehab: A Guide for the ewly Sober and Their Loved Ones. He wrote the book on 12-Step facilitation(TSF) for professionals helping people with addiction. This is like an owners manual to navigate recovery life with advice and science of what improves outcome rates.  We go out with music created in the Pandemic. David mentioned visiting an AA group in Eastern Canada on Zoom. This is Andre Pettipas and the Giant with a June 2021 release for all of you missing your f2f home-group; the song is "Homesick." And now we know... If all of David G's worldly possessions were sinking on a yacht and he could only grab one book, protect it in a zip-lock back and swim with it to a desert island to hope for and awaiting rescue, what book would David G want as his his lone companion? Well, he chose two: THE ROAD, No Country for Old Men author Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic America novel. David G just loves this man's reading.  I AM THAT, Nondualism (Shiva Advaita philosophy by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a Mumbai Hindu spiritual teacher who influenced many American pop-psychology icons. Finally, the whole context of "Here's Tom With the Weather by Bill Hicks: YOU TUBE

Welcome to Episode 60 of Rebellion Dogs Radio       Rebellion Dogs Radio, Episode 60 features a longtime friend, author/activist Deirdre Sinnott. July 6, 2021 marks the launch of The Third Mrs. Galway and we’re talking about writing, recovery and research into the adventures of Upstate New York’s underground railroad, closing in on 200 years ago. Warning... page turner, hard to put down for people who just can't say, "No." “Antislavery agitation is rocking Utica in 1835 when a young bride discovers an enslaved family hiding in her shed, setting in motion the exhumation of long-buried family secrets.”  Order on AMAZON from Rebellion Dogs bookstore Click the pic Akashic Books Kaylie Jones Books     'Tis the season for great Canadian pop/punk female bands. A new generation of music makers, now with the same irony and swagger and now with less rock-sock... Our musical feature is Montreal punk band, Les Shirley released their debut album Forever Is Now in March 2021. Trio Lisandre Bourdgages (Drums), Raphaelle Chouinard (Vocals/Guitar) & Sarah Dion (Bass) offer up their new song, “Fuck It I’m In Love” (a clean version is available for your mom, probation officer, accountability partner or sponsor, called “Forget It I’m In Love”).  Onrida County History Center is home to the hybrid Utica NY book launch Thursday July 8th, 2021 @ 6:30 PM EDT. Visit  https://www.deirdresinnott.com/  for more up-to-date info or contact.  Rebellion Dogs Radio is a contemporary look at 12-Step life, mental health, substance use disorder and the broader community of addiction and recovery including the people, science, history and storytelling that make up our community.

Rebellion Dogs Blog Summer 2021  In many ways, we are now in the era of Gen-Y stewardship of peer to peer recovery. Read the PDF full Episode 58 Summer 2021 Report CLICK HERE Thanks for your service Baby Boomers; time's up, it's a new era - The Millennial era. Rebellion Dogs Radio # 58, presents our annual collection of what’s new and what's coming, with AA and the larger addiction-recovery peer-to-peer world. This is the all-Zoom General Service Conference (USA/Canada), with AA World Services, AA Grapevine, et al; do you think this has a Millennial generation look and feel to it? Sure, the pandemic has sped up this changing of the guard but it is inevitable and, maybe the ship has already sailed - Baby Boomers have a secondary role in stewardship in the new era for peer-to-peer groups like AA, NA, all the other substance and process addiction 12-step fellowships,  Life Ring, She Recovers, Refuge/Dharma Recovery, SMART, SOS, et al.  Along with the USA/Canada conference the 26th World General Service Conference report is out... online, of course. We learn about AA outside the USA and Canada region. Is this a new time? Here are some factors: There is 2020 US Census data coming out, piecemeal. The tea leaves hint about a new reality and path for 21st century America. It describes the USA as this centuries "the old country" looking more like a retirement community than tomorrow's leader.  Millennials, quietly started turning 40-years-old last year—say what? The youngest Millennial is 25 this year. I know, we’re all getting older. Gen-Y is the largest adult population in America now. Generation Y have come of age and they have numbers. This Zoom meeting – zoom conference thing isn’t freaking them out. It’s greener, more time efficient, encourages team work, costs less, they can order shoes and clothing for home deliver during the meeting ... This is right up their alley. AA grew in membership numbers in the era of online AA. This disrupts the argument that online is second-rate AA connection. AA is changing the AA language including out-of-date Bill W language. The never-changes are now the minority in AA. A more accessible, more contemporary AA direction is now shared by the majority of AA's "group conscience." Silent Generation and GenX, you're not being forgotten (dissed). We will be talking about you, too. Most of our 50+ years of sobriety is with our 80+ generation who have first hand experience in the AA whereby Bill W was alive and involved. GenX - you're the middle-child generation you're right in the middle of our recovery story. Self-reliant, critical thinkers, flexible, independent, resistance to being defined, some of you are 50 years old now, the age of the average AA member.  So, you thought AA would never change? Whether that made you glad or sad, we were wrong. This isn’t the 20th century and a new generation's tone and style is hard to ignore in our meetings and our more inclusive, less dogmatic AA language.  Download and/or stream Episode #58, and our last Rebellion Dogs Radio too, and/or share on your site or social media, too... John L cautions us about  identifying ourselves as “12-step members in a 12-step fellowship.” John’s 53 years sober from alcohol and other mind-altering drugs and his 2014 book, A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous[i], describes his AA program as one-day at a time, staying away from the first drink, fellowship, honesty, service, etc., but nothing about being defective, powerless or being morally corrupt... nothing 12-step-ish at all. John L doesn't thing the Steps represent the real AA. Our podcast will give you a taste of changes that happened as this year's AA decision making at conference are changing how we do recovery. Our PDF Summer 2021 has all that and more including details of changes to AA literature agreed up and under discussion, demographic facts and where AA is growing and shrinking. One of the ways COVID and the move to online recovery has democratized mutual aid, every meeting is just one click away, making everything equally accessible: Women for Sobriety, SMART Recovery NA, GA, SLAA, all-the-other-A's... all these meetings are as easy to find for newcomers or adventurous and curious 12-steppers.   The World Service Meeting met virtually in 2020, represented 109 countries. Under the “I” for example, Iceland, India, Iran and Ireland are represented. Our World Service Meeting happens later in the year, needs more translation, hence, the 2020 Final Report just came out in 2021.    The most popular topics at the World Service Meeting included:  Safety in AA  Encouraging Women in General Service  Young people in AA  Anonymity and the age of online AA  Jan K, of the Czech Republic, spoke on “What Are We Doing To Attract Young People?” The following excerpt is from the 26th World Service Meeting 2020 A Virtual Event.[ii] Czechs are the third least theistic people in the world. In China, 90% of people are atheist and/or are not religious. Then it’s Sweden at76% and Czech Republic at 75% who don’t believe in a creator, interventionist higher power. How attractive could “How It Works” be in 1939 American language, in a room where ¾ of the people there read, “There is one who has all power, that one is God; may you find Him now!” as superstitious belief? Jan K is concerned that fundamentalism and god-talk frustrated her countries ability to attract young people, or anyone else, for that matter. Jan asks AA to make The "God" Word: Agnostics and Atheists in AA available in more languages.    SO FAR THIS MILLENNIUM    AA is growing in America and in decline everywhere else. Special Purpose meetings are growing gang-busters, worldwide with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and secular AA expanding rapidly, making AA more inclusive and more imaginative. Hmnn, is that the Millennial influence? We always end with some of the best music you’ve never heard, borrowed from my IndieCan Radio work.  Ken Tizzard and Friends has a new record that dropped May 18, 2021 on vinyl or digital called, All Together Now –an epic project involving 44 guest musicians contributing parts from all over the continent.  “When I let the news out, people started responding – ‘hey, if there’s anything I can do to help?’,” Ken recalls. “Then the idea just hit me. Make it an open call to everybody. That was my next Facebook post, inviting anybody who wanted to be involved. ‘If you have any way to record and if you like any of these songs, email me and we’ll talk about what you can do.’ The response just snowballed!”  Tizzard posted a list of the 13 songs he had in mind for the record, and then, he explains, “I started putting the puzzle together. I got a big sheet of paper, listing the songs, the guests, what instruments they played, and started assembling it.” CLICK HERE FOR MORE KEN TIZZARD Read the PDF full Episode 58 Summer 2021 Report CLICK HERE     [i] A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous, John Lauritsen, 2014 https://amzn.to/3yvGErX  [ii] https://aa.org/assets/en_US/f-150_26th_WSM_finalreport_2020.pdf  [iii] The All-Scandinavian Convention of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous http://www.scancypaa.org/  [iv] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-84_manypathstospirituality.pdf Bill W’s speech at the 30th anniversary, Toronto International AA Convention (1965).  [v] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-86_theGodWord.pdf  [vi] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/14/map-these-are-the-worlds-least-religious-countries/  [vii] https://drugfree.org/newsroom/news-item/survey-ten-percent-of-american-adults-report-being-in-recovery-from-substance-abuse-or-addiction/  [viii] P-48 - 2014 Membership Survey (aa.org)

Can Higher Palooza save the world. No sweat, but help is needed.... yeah: you and me, that's who they're looking at :-P  I can never refuse a Higher Palooza!  While there's so much to dislike about a global pandemic, the Zoom-effect on AA, AA's subcultures and the greater peer2peer community as a whole, will likely mark this turning point in our history - for those who survive the pandemic - as ground breaking in the way connection can be maintained online while we're locked down at home.  One of the hand-down, no argument Five-Star bonuses from a year of living pandemically, is that Higher Palooza is here now, and maybe here to stay. Today we talk to a fraction of the helpful contributors to Higher Palooza #1 through #8:  Thanks to Terry, Annie, Tracy, Bobby and Sally. This was fabulous.  Five from HP, via zoom from Dublin to Cleveland, we hear about the Palooza past and Higher Palooza future is put squarely at your feet - yep, you and me. Self-supporting is more than we who participate in AA pay our way; it also means we share the duties of involved in running meetings, events and outreach. Higher Palooza isn't just the cost of a Zoom account and website; it's time and talent, too. You got talent? You got time? Higher Palooza could use ya!  See, I rhymed something with "palooza" twice. That's talent, right? Higher Palooza needs people to find other people to share, hosts and co-hosts, poster makers and web away at website websitery.  But enough about the call to action, for now. Listen to, and enjoy and/or share, the podcast. Visit Freethinkers Cleveland for more Paloozing more of the time: 20 recordings to help you get through this day and the days ahead. It's like a mental/emotional and intellectual check up, from the neck up.       https://www.ftcleveland.com/higher-palooza HP I though VIII (at time of posting), you’ll find over 20 recordings to download or stream for free and information on upcoming events that promise to be more Higher and more Paloozer.  Every episode we serve up a dose of music-medicine, borrowing from IndieCan Radio's pool of the best music you've never heard. This week, it's Toronto's Sean Watson Graham and song we mutual-aid types will raise a coffee mug to: Your Life Is a Story

The Years of Living Sober(ly): A personal look at how AA was different in our early years and conference agenda items for 2021 on AA literature  Podcast: Join Joe C and his lock-down co-host Algo Rhythm (not a real name or real person - you'll see, it's how a show host amuses themselves during COVID-19) for a look at today's "stuff" and our musical feature, As Waters. PDF  to read or download here       Rebellion Dogs Radio · Rebellion Dogs 56 Relatability And Accessibility In the time-cycle of this report Alcoholics Anonymous prepares for the April General Service Conference. The program—at the time of writing—is now circulated, and Literature has a few items including a modification to Big Book text. There is a video accessible to members of groups (and anyone) who knows a General Service Representative. Our fellowship, right now, is looking at the book’s relatability and literacy as it relates to today’s newcomer. If you want to know the issues, we will share the link/video with you. If you have a connection to the original text, you are being invited to review the concerns shared by fellow members and weigh in. Issues of literacy an accessibility are being researched. Societal changes that might leave the book’s current wording offending or alienating today’s newcomers are being considered.  Edition Two of Alcoholics Anonymous came out in 1955, 20 years into AA. In 1976 the Third Edition was released and in 2001, our current, Edition Four came out. That was 20-years-ago. According to custom, it is time to talk about a new edition. The video by the General Service Office outlines concerns today, sometimes borrowing from our founder’s own thought about AA:  “Since the audience for the book is likely to be newcomers, anything from the point of view of content or style that might offend or alienate those who are not familiar with the program should be carefully eliminated,” Bill W in consideration of the Second Edition.  Sexist language, the book’s current literacy level and religious bias are worldwide concerns right now. For those who find Living Sober more relevant changes are afoot here as well.  The last blog/Rebellion Dogs Radio episode looked at, how during my sobriety, AA society morphed from what was largely transmitting and maintaining sobriety through sharing our stories to a model today, largely following the authority of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. In our last episode, we broke AA’s history to-date into two equal halves, starting in 1935, it being 2021 today, the ½ way point being 1978. In comparing AA “then” and AA “now,” AA was never all one way at one time or another way, later. I am not suggesting that people didn’t learn from reading in the first 43 years of AA (1935-1978, the first ½ of AA history to-date). Nor am I saying that we have lost the art of storytelling in the most recent  43 years. The point is this; I was introduced to a mid-1970’s AA culture that then relied more on an oral tradition (one alcoholic talking to another) and in the second ½ of AA, I am recognizing the primacy of Big Book AA today. AA culture will more than likely change again. We are dynamic.  Is one way better? Is one way worse? That depends on who you ask because we have members that swear by each style of conveying the AA message. I suspect that diversity in AA does not blur the message and in fact, expands AA’s usefulness and reach. Vive la différence; humility and tolerance is found in our AA code somewhere, orthodoxy and competitiveness—not so much. Still, we hear member decrees that it “should be” this or that. Spoiler alert—I will own that I am anti-fundamentalism. I am all for enthusiasm for more of what worked for you or for me but I see reification (a hardening and unbending of ways of doing things) as being harmful for any society and AA is no exception. I don’t like to be anti-anything, but can I be pro-AA and not be against, what I perceive to be, threats to our overall health. Remember, this musing is one person’s views and observations—not a manifesto.  AA isn’t homogeneous. There were members/groups that read the book together way back when, and today there are some groups that rely on no conference-approved reading at all, or any readings, for that matter. Why would what one alcoholic wrote 80 years ago be more healing or enlightening than what any alcoholic—anywhere—would share with another, today? How it Works for one but not another, and Why? Let’s step away for a moment, from this AA way vs. that AA way myopia. What have we learned more broadly about recovery and how and why someone gets it and someone else does not—sometimes when both have tried the same method. Broadly speaking, we all have recovery capital and there is now a scale that can help rank our recovery capital index against others score or our previous score.  Individual A in recovery from addiction has mostly supportive relationships, financial stability, and access to physical and mental health resources that they routinely take advantage of.  Individual B has a life-partner that sees addiction as a moral weakness and reminds the whole family how much savings were wasted on the addict’s rehab costs. B has debt, a mood disorder, extra-marital entanglements, and comes from generational dysfunction and addiction.  Two individuals, two results? Maybe? For both, recovery capital is predictably enhanced from a peer-to-peer group setting, becoming educated about addiction, a commitment to a structured regimen of recovery process (12-step or any other). Combined, these are a few of the external factors of recovery capital. The same regimen will not be  suitable for every recovery candidate.  One could have “high problem severity.” But, they may also have high recovery capital which makes mastering chaos possible. Someone else has low recovery capital but also “low problem severity”—their natural environment is supportive of their recovery and conducive to healthy living—they stay sober without meetings, working steps or service work. The more problem severity the greater amount of recovery capital is required to sustain recovery through life’s challenges. The fall comes when someone has higher problem severity in life and lower recovery capital; that’s a situation prime for relapse and/or replacement addictions.  For more about recovery capital view/download a William White initiated effort called, ReCAPS (Recovery Capital Assessment Plan and Scale).  We have also talked about the mental health model borrowed by David Best and others called, CHIME. Here, five variables influence the probability of self-sustaining long-term sobriety: Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment.[i]  CHIME enhancement can be found in a 12-Step model but they can also be found in any peer-to-peer model and some of us, more than others, develop these five foundational factors outside or without rehab or peer-to-peer. As David Best says, people find long-term sobriety different ways; but no one does it alone. There is always a community or support network for every success story. But not all of these stories play out by working the Twelve Steps exactly as described in the Big Book, with the aid of a Big Book sponsor.  Some get the same good results from Women for Sobriety or Life Ring or a support group at their place of religious worship.  Some, treat their recovery community like regular, lifelong trips to the gym to keep their sobriety in shape. Others go for a period, achieve sustainable recovery, and fully integrate into family/work/community. Others read a book, make a commitment, enjoy the support of family and healthcare providers, without any mutual-aid group or in-patient care.  Taking all this recovery capital context into account and looking at varieties of AA experience—as an example—we see how two people who read Living Sober and go to a few meetings a week can have different outcomes. Likewise, two people who go to 90 meetings in 90 days and work with a Big Book sponsor can have different outcomes. What their natural environment offers in terms of recovery capital and what catastrophic events happen in their days ahead will be a factor. Together, there is a way to measure one’s recovery capital and have a sense of how much chaos and trauma that their recovery capital can endure.  This is predictive and was unavailable in the 1930s that birthed AA, but a recovery capital index score is no guarantee. A recovery capital score offers greater clarity of our wellness or risk factors. Without measurement of some kind, we are prone to superstition. I did A, then B happened; B was caused by A may be true and it may not. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine, calls this human tendency, “patternicity,” maybe a more generous word than “superstitious.” Seeing patterns is a human tendency of both scientific and religious people. In scientific inquiry, double-blind or randomized trials protect results from the observer’s unavoidable biases and predisposition towards assigning causality to correlation.  I’ve been around for six different decades of sobriety now (the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, ‘10s, ‘20s). Personally and through observation of others, I see lots of this “because I did A and then B happened, ‘proving’ A caused B,” potential errors in attribution. Even if A was a strong indicator of B resulting, there were likely other material factors.  Last episode we let AA book sales tell a story of a changing AA over the years.  Fun facts (from Episode 55 of Rebellion Dogs Radio):  The Big Book was not a best-seller out of the gate. It took 34 years to sell one million copies of Alcoholics Anonymous. This milestone did not happen until the year 1974, three years after Bill—the book’s author—died.  A Third edition sparked new interest in 1976 and four years from the one-million mark, we hit two million cumulative sales (1978).  By 1987 AA World Services started selling one million Big Books every year.  The summation from Episode 55 paints Big Book AA as not always being a thing, everywhere. The phenomena of increased book sales (the growing domination/ saturation of one AA book over all others) correlate with the book’s impact in meetings and as part of our member’s meetings and recovery regimen. Today we will look at life in AA back in 1974 to 1990 before so many members were quoting chapter and verse with storytelling instead of last month’s statistical analysis.  A reliable argument for fundamentalist AA—following the instructions laid out in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, exactly as written—is based on a folktale that this is what my generation and the generation before me did. The story is that following Big Book instruction is how people get and stay sober; this is how AA can/will be more successful. Anything else is watered-down AA that cannot help real alcoholics get and stay sober. Here’s a possible example of the, “I did A, then B happened so B was caused by A,” hypothesis. It becomes a contagious and hopeful story , parroted by others, without empirical evidence.   The model they are describing is: more Big Books and more Big Book sponsors sparking more spiritual awakenings and recovered alcoholics, helping more still-suffering alcoholics. The proof would be plain to see in a growing AA membership, each year.  Buying and following more Big Books doesn’t seem to have caused AA growth. AA did all of our growing during an era of greater diversity of AA approaches. Some approaches included Big Book and some centered around other readings, while still others included little or no tag-team book-learning. Using 1990 as a turning point, three years into selling one million Big Books a year, let’s capture a before and after picture. Starting with “before,” from the 1970s when I was introduced to AA until 1990, AA membership milestones included hitting ½ a million and then doubling to one million and again to two million. Since the 1990s, we have stayed the same size. AA isn’t growing everywhere that Big Book weekends are hosted. Some regions see AA shrinking. Overall our population has stayed flat for 30 years, since the Big Book-mania (1,000,000 book sales per year). So, some of our “watered down” AA was practiced in a time of AA membership growth. Thumpers will say, “Sure, you can stay sober without the Big Book if you’re a heavy drinker but for a real alcoholic, there’s no other way.”  Well that’s an interesting premise.  Of course we are all free to self-identify as we see fit. But should we be labeling each other? “That’s a real alcoholic over there and a heavy drinker, there.” As uncle Bill said about the absurdity of one alcoholic’s judgement of another:  ”The way our ‘worthy’ alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the ‘less worthy’ is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another!”[ii]  Here’s a new “fun fact.” I do not know how long this has been available but I’m calling this a news-flash: Living Sober in PDF can be read in whole on https://aa.org. The booklet is broken into sections, you can read or download for sharing in your Zoom meeting, here: https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/living-sober-pdf-format  I recently read on social media a member praising the book Living Sober for its role in his sobriety. “Living Sober is my AA 31-step program, and it’s helped me enjoy sobriety and avoid pitfalls, for decades now.”  A great endorsement of Living Sober as a stand-alone program of AA recovery is John Lauritsen’s A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous. He dismissed the Steps as superstitious nonsense. His program of happy, joyous, free AA is found in the Living Sober booklet. I saw on Facebook, John turned 53 years sober, this month. So, if you are wondering, “Is it AA if you don’t work the Steps?” read John’s book. He’s not telling you what to do but he is an example of Step-less AA.   I remember this first Living Sober books arriving in AA meetings in their very 1970’s earth-tone yellow and brown cover. As a novelty, Living Sober was the most likely book to be quoted or read from in a discussion group. I mentioned last episode that Living Sober is no best-seller. Today, it sells 20,000 to 50,000 copies each year, under the impressive shadow of Big Book sales, still over 800,000 copies a year. Here are samples of the 31-step program. You do not need to memorize anything or practice the ideas all at once. Use as needed.  Chapter 11 “Availing Yourself of a sponsor”  An A.A. sponsor is not a professional caseworker, counselor, a medical expert, nor qualified to give religious, legal, domestic, or psychiatric advice, although a good sponsor is usually willing to discuss such matters confidentially, and often can suggest where the appropriate professional assistance can be obtained. A sponsor is simply a sober alcoholic who can help solve only one problem: how to stay sober. And the sponsor has only one tool to use—personal experience, not scientific wisdom. Sponsors have been there, and they often have more concern, hope, compassion, and confidence for us than we have for ourselves. They certainly have had more experience.  Chapter 27 “Letting go of old ideas”  The ideas that got so deeply embedded in our lives during drinking do not all disappear quickly, as if by magic.... What we try to achieve is a feeling of being relaxed and freed from the bonds of our old thinking. Many of our former habits of thought, and the ideas they produced, limit our freedom. They just weigh us down and are of no use—so it turns out when we look them over with a fresh eye. We don’t have to hang on to them any longer unless, upon examination, they prove valid and still truly fruitful. We can now measure the present-day usefulness and truthfulness of a thought against a highly specific standard. We can say to ourselves, “Now, that is exactly what I used to think, in the drinking days. Does that kind of thinking help me stay sober? Is it good enough for me today?” Many of our old ideas—especially those about alcohol, about drinking, about getting drunk, and about alcoholism (or problem drinking, if you prefer that term)—prove either worthless or actually self-destructive for us, and it is a great relief to get rid of them. Maybe a few examples will suffice to illustrate our willingness to throw out our old, useless ideas.  The chapter goes on to list some common blind spots we arrive at the doors of AA with about drinking and about recovery.  Chapter 31 “Finding your own way”  Most of us have seen death close up. We have known suffering. But we also have known the sort of hope that makes the heart sing. And we hope this booklet has conveyed to you more encouragement than pain. If you are a problem drinker, you already know enough about pain and loneliness. We’d like you to find some of the peace and joy we have found in meeting the reality of life’s ups and downs with a clear head and a steady heart.  No doubt, we have made just a bare beginning in the business of living sober. Time and again, we learn additional ideas that can help. As you stay sober, you are sure to think of new ideas not recorded here. We hope so. We also hope that when you do come up with fresh ideas on this subject, you will pass them on. Please do share. (You’ll recall that the act of sharing can itself be helpful to you.)  Some of us go back to drinking a time or so before we get a real foothold on sobriety. If that happens to you, don’t despair. Many of us have done this and have finally come through to successful sobriety.  AA as a whole and/or by design, is not Big Book-centric. Book fanaticism is popular, but that, in no ways, delegitimizes other groups and other members doing their own thing. “Finding your own way,” the title of Chapter 31 of Living Sober is conference-approved, so this do-it-your-way approach is legit. Our drinking tales are not identical and our paths to contented sobriety aren’t identical, either.  Other people’s sobriety experiences is proof to me that Big Book enthusiasm is effective—for the people who have done it and are still sober. But I believe fundamentalism—the idea that this is one true AA way—is holding AA back.  With more of Fourth Edition Big Book-talk of course, comes more God-talk.  In a Yahoo.com question about how many times the AA god is mentioned in Alcoholics Anonymous, this was one offering:  “God is specifically mentioned 277 times, reference to God by the use of pronouns such He, Him, Himself, and His is mentioned 107 time; counting the times God is referred to by Creator, Maker, Father, and Spirit totals more than 400 times God is mentioned in the Big Book of AA.”[iii]  Because there is more quoting from the book, faith-based approaches to sobriety dominate a lot of AA discussions: 2.4 times per page, if we’re in a Big Book meeting. The developed world is becoming less theistic. In light of this new reality, how can praying and God-talk portray AA as relevant to many of today’s newcomers that it might of for the 1950’s crowd? Should we stop AA members from talking about God or quoting the Big Book in meetings? First we can’t; secondly, we ought not to.  But we are in a season of change. AA recognized the heteronormative, gender and religious bias of our Big, Old Book. This is where AA democracy comes in. Our copyright is held in trust by AA World Services for our fellowship as a whole. Where we can find substantial unanimity, the members – not the General Service Office decides what changes, what is preserved, what is eliminated, what is added.  On the theism of AA, the possibility of a supernatural man-with-a-plan in the sky will, I expect,  continue to be popular to AAs; so have at it, believers. Literalists say the single purpose of AA is to achieve a conscious contact with God—as you imagine him/her/it/them. This connection with the supernatural comes about from working the Twelve Steps. While I considered the possibility of all this being true, in the spirit of open-mindedness, I found no evidence of supernatural influence in my life. What seemed more reasonable was that this Judeo/Christian explanation of the AA effect was just how 1930 middle god-fearing middle-America talked. Imagine a time of no google, no Yahoo, no Siri or Alexa. So I’m more inclined towards rational, mindful approaches to my AA. I follow my own moral compass and I almost never talk in higher-power terms except when I’m trying to explain myself in the language of other AAs.   So no fourth dimension, no Divine intervention and if awakening was somehow spiritual, I missed it. I have a conscious but delicate grasp of reality. That is awesome enough for me.  I think that if more meetings encourage a practical expression of AA sobriety, we would reach and help a larger number of people who feel their alcohol consumption is problematic. Today’s discussion of our literature opens the door to additive and/or subtractive measures to increase reliability and accessibility. If nothing changes in our text, that doesn’t shut the door to my group or group taking our own steps to find readings and topics that resonate with our newer and long-timer members.  Some nonbelievers find the antiquated language insulting, or anti-intellectual or an inauthentic way to speak, themselves. Not every atheist dreams of more irreligious AA. Some nonbelievers happily translate God-talk into useable actions and concepts. Living with the reality of residing in God-fearing America, or practicing a program informed by that environment, we make allowances.  Feminists, LGBTQ+ members or anyone who finds the 1930 America stereotypes a barrier will find our current dialogue promising. Everyone is invited to have their say. Of course, not everyone will get their way. Others, like some AA atheists, aren’t held back by 1930’s language. Some of us can, more easily than others, look past the language for the meaning, the message and they don’t fight with the antiquated language.    Using the book Living Sober in more meetings would/could articulate the AA experience in an irreligious voice of AA sobriety. The original manuscript was written by a gay, urban member in the 1970s who had been in AA since the 1940s, borrowing from various offerings from the half a million members of the day. Of course there is lots of 21st century literature written by AA members about 12-step life. Some groups avoid the language barrier and read from more modern books.  An upside to Living Sober  is it clearly connects the group to AA as a whole—not that reading other secular 12-step literature is un-AA. Living Sober may not be as popular, today, as the 12&12 or Alcoholics Anonymous but it is legitimate AA. And with Living Sober available online, it is easy to save a PDF and screen-share a chapter for your Zoom or face-to-face AA meeting.  AA culture is in constant flux; meetings are added, closed, and changed regularly. If you see AA as being a certain way, it may be different somewhere else, and it most certainly will be different sometime in the future.  The availability of Living Sober access online presents a wider gateway of AA. Now that AA.org is offering the entirety of Living Sober online as your own eBook or paperback for purchase, or for reading online for free,  I will be posting the link to download Living Sober in the chat at meetings. I’ve always enjoyed Living Sober meetings – each chapter is a good conversation starter. It’s almost always spot-on for newcomers and relevant for all of us. So that is my one-man plan for AA’s future—I did so last Thursday, so it begins.  My story—a blast from AA’s Past  He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, Takin' ev'ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home. There's a lotta wrong directions on that lonely way back home (Kris Kristofferson)  I did want/need to do the Steps. For some people quitting drinking solves all their problems. Their work or school improves, they behave better and relationships right themselves, and their health returns. Why would anyone on a winning streak work Steps... at least the writing-all-that-stuff-down Steps? I still feel that way, today.  Sobriety didn’t solve my problems—it exposed the problems that were masked by alcohol and other drugs. I was raw, unglued and vulnerable to the world. Let’s just say, I came to the conclusion that the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous were the best therapy available to me at the time, in my price range. And there was no shortage of people with first-hand experience with them, so exploring the Steps was a fit for my circumstances... especially those writing it all down Steps.  This is the same way that I learned guitar, financial planning, being a dad, and pretty much everything else. Ask people who know; model people you admire. Get ideas from anyone and everyone who would share what they know. So fellow AA’s became my teacher and a sounding board.  Today, the average sobriety is 10 years[iv]—there’s more old-timers than newcomers, today. In part, this is because AA works; long-time sobriety is a testament to AA effectiveness. But the high percentage of long timers is also because AA isn’t growing; we are maturing as a fellowship. The same two million members for the last 30-years suggests that for everyone that joins AA, someone leaves or dies. A stagnant AA is the AA experience of everyone who has gotten sober this century.  In the 1970s, AA was always growing. I remember when we became 500,000 (1974). Someone read about it in Box 4-5-9: News and Notes from G.S.O. or AA Grapevine. As mentioned in my sixth year, we were a million (1982) sober drunks and then, two million (1990). I thought AA would always be growing. 1991 was fifteen years of continuous sobriety. I was a father now for a second time. My daughter was born the day Nirvana were playing Toronto’s Opera House (800 audience capacity). I thought AA would never stop growing and some other day I could see Nirvana. Wrong on both accounts!  Back when membership was accelerating from less than ½ a million to the first million, the average sobriety was between two and four years. This lower number (compared to 2021) is not because AA didn’t work as well as it does today; the low average was because ½ of us had just gotten here, so many people with so little sobriety brought the average down. AA was growing. So people with four months were helping people with four days. There was no such thing as a Big Book meeting in the region I got sober in. We transmitted the AA message by way of AA’s time-tested storytelling model, one-alcoholic-talking-to-another.  Today, you may well belong to a Big Book meeting, or attend Cocaine Anonymous. Your sponsor took you to Big Book study weekends and you take your sponsees to Big Book study weekends; that’s how it goes now. I know that works; your sobriety is proof enough to me. But the folklore about how this is how the first hundred did and they taught it to the next thousand and so on—that’s not factually accurate.  This treating the book, Alcoholics Anonymous like an instruction manual is a fairly new phenomena and it is not how AA came to be. I am sure some towns and some people did behave in a way that resembles the Big Book sponsorship, today; not in my town; not anywhere I saw in my first ten to fifteen years of sobriety.  I just have one story, and this is mine, an AA culture indifferent to the 164 page instruction manual that would have been called, le Gros Livre in Montréal, if spoken about at all.   And I know how regional AA is, too. I moved to Calgary Alberta for a summer, from Montreal in 1979. It was a culture shock—both inside and outside AA meetings. I was sober two and a half years and while I planned on being there a few months, I stayed for five years and never returned to live in Montréal. That surprised me; but life is what happens when I’m making other plans—thank you John Lennon. Where the prairies meet the Rockies, AA was different from the, “Je ne sais pas quoi” of Montréal. Calgary was a smaller city;  I got a job that had me traveling to even smaller towns. Meetings were smaller. Speaker meetings were few and far between. Discussions and 12&12 meetings were the norm. I wondered how they stayed sober with these rituals, unfamiliar to me. I was a homer—I though my home-town AA was the best in the world—but no one said, “Joe, we are so glad to see you; please tell us—show us—how to do AA right, like the Montréal way.” No, I had to adapt to them; they seemed to be growing and staying sober, their way. Adjusting is always awkward and mechanical. For me, already set in my ways at 18-years-old, this Calgary AA lacked the Joie de vivre of a large, liberated bilingual city.  And my next move was to Toronto, which I again thought was temporary; that was 1985 and I’m still here. Toronto was different again from Western Canada, so again it was me adapting; not AA bending to me. Toronto, only a six-hour drive away, is quite different than Montreal. Montreal is Euro; Toronto is a “Thank God it’s Monday,” town.  T.O., or The 6ix as urban music fans call it now, is very career, accomplishment, protestant work-ethic, corporate climbing, rule abiding goodness.  The AA in Toronto started on time and ended exactly an hour from start time. Business meetings employed Robert’s Rules of Order and being a cool kid meant you could identify AA Traditions violations, point a finger, and quote the Tradition, verbatim. “Conform or be cast out” was a Rush lyric ( a Toronto band suggesting that some of the problems of AA where also problems beyond our meeting doors). At least, for me, I started to sense meta-rules in Toronto AA, rules about the rules or rules about the unspoken in crowd and privileges that came with and from joining in on the right AA-ese of language. For me, nine-year sober 25-year-old, in 1985, that’s how it seemed.  I would celebrate 10 years and, as a gift from my group, I would be given Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A. A. Message Reached the World. I would never have asked for it and I would never have bought it for myself, but I saw it as a thoughtful gesture. I remember when Living Sober was brand new and it was kind of fun, so I’d give this brand-new book a try.  I didn’t read Pass It On right away, but I had gained something in my tenth year of sobriety that I didn’t have when I was new---an attention span. I could read, now. Maybe the Calgary and other Western Canada meetings taught this dyslexic autodidact how to focus and learn to settle down enough to read.  I was—as I had been in Montreal and Calgary before—engaged with the Young People’s AA crowd in Toronto. We ran conferences with themes like, “Do It Sober, Eh!” and “Stark Raving Sober.” There was an irreverence and some playfulness to it. Even for young people, addiction is as serious as a house fire, but “we are not a glum lot.” We organized dances and live concerts, we joined each other’s bands and played song to each other, or worked out together or went camping. Some of us were artists with day-jobs. Others were motorcyclists, students or climbing the corporate latter. I tried all of that, more or less. We carpooled to other cities on a whim, looking up conferences from the back of AA Grapevine  in cities we had never been to. I was in a band—a sober band—and this was way more important to me than reading about AA history. We covered Prince, Talking Heads, Aretha Franklin, The Ramones, Jefferson Airplane, originals by a band mate Cathy S including her song called “Rebellion Dogs” and we did a parody of "Wild Thing" called, "Mild Thing" that had a very sexual punk-rock finale. Below, Sober Skid Row playing "Chain of Fools" @ Toronto Young People's Conference "Stark Raving Sober" 1986 at Ryerson University But the rainy day came that I set my 10th year anniversary book aside for. I did get to Pass It On. The old stories were as interesting as contemporary stories in meetings about newcomers freebasing cocaine in executive washrooms or punk-rock bars. Pass It On captivated me, and it gave birth to an interest in the Big Book—not as a way to get sober or how to work the Steps—as a historical place-marker. And it was a good thing, too. I was thinking past my best-before date as a peer in AA’s Young People’s circles. I was going to be 30 eventually and I was feeling old(ish). I was resigned to making a place for myself inside a mainstream AA that was so much more conservative than the rooms and community that got me sober. And there was going to be a lot more Big Book AA in my future.  Book-based AA became stiflingly boring. After my first lap of the first 164 pages, I didn’t understand, “What, we’re going to start over and read it again?” I asked. “Isn’t there something else we can read?”  Joe & Charlie AA workshops was what new people did instead of crashing conferences in new cities. CA, muckers, Primary Purpose and Back to Basics replaced our garage bands and coffeeshop AA. “Make AA Great Again,” themed AA was a shared dreamland of a mythical “long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” AA of better times whereby everyone got sober who really tried, back in the day, and groups all got along, fine. As the fairy-tale went, that was all before the big, bad, treatment centers poisoned and diluted AA with contemporary language and talk about the role of childhood trauma and the need to empowering alcoholics and addicts. This, in a meaningful way, a perceived existential threat to AA traditionalists, gave birth to AA fundamentalism, I didn’t grasp it at the time, but I was witness to it in real time. It wasn’t one cause; as the primacy of the Big Book as the one and only sacred text of AA (but for the grace of God, y'all), there came cult-lite charismatic leaders (Big Book “teachers”) and an increased theism in the AA narrative that comes with 1930’s doctrine. I saw it as comical.  You see, even at sixteen in 1970’s Montreal AA, I would hear “How it Works” read and see the language as too silly to take seriously. My turn to read, “How It Works,” came sometimes. I performed it. I came from acting-as-if as a survival tool. In High School, I had been Orlando in As You Like It. So what’s the difference between Bill S (William Shakespeare) and Bill W wordsmithery?  Live a little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little.  If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers.  For my sake be comfortable; hold death awhile at the arm's end.  I will here be with thee presently; and if I bring thee not something to eat,  I will give thee leave to die; but if thou diest before I come, thou art  a mocker of my labour. Well said! thou look'st cheerly; and I'll be  with thee quickly. Yet thou liest in the bleak air. Come,  I will bear thee to some shelter; and thou shalt not die for lack  of a dinner, if there live anything in this desert.  Dramatic prose from Bill S, Circa: 1599. So, three hundred and 30 years later Bill W takes his turn at dramatic poetry:  “At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier  Softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command  We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us  Have tried to hold onto our old ideas and the result was nil until  we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning,  baffling, powerful! Without help it is to much for us. But  there is One who has all power; that One is Oden, May you  Find him now! Half measures availed us nothing. Stood we,  At the turning point. We asketh  His protection and care with  Complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested...”     Reading “How It Works” was a ritual at enough AA meetings that I learned from meetings that used it, dramatic pauses, enunciation and tempo from fellow amateur performers. The right costume or prop gimmick could earn points from the judges; straightening the knot of one’s tie, I didn’t have one, but rolling up sleeves or a well-timed sip of coffee for dramatic pause, there was no Academy Award up for grabs, but this was sobriety—what else was I going to do for fun. I didn’t think about the meaning of the words any more than songs I sung, about riding with a truck driver in the rain to Bâton Rouge Louisiana.  I played along, as I would with scripts for drama class. Reading AA was getting into character. The words didn’t matter because they didn’t represent me—they represented the character I was portraying as I read my lines. I never thought that other people took them too seriously... certainly, not literally: “God could and would if He were sought?” Who says that with a straight face? It could only be the babbling of the insane, or the poetic license of literature.  Rule 62, I would come to learn from coffee, before or after meetings,  is from a story in Tradition Four in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.[v] The rule is a lesson for AA, “Don’t take yourself too damn seriously.” Sober kids are not the cool kids; AA is not the hot spot—not my group and not yours.  So, I am a case study in inaccessible or unrelatable AA language and this is 45 years ago. As was the case in, As You Like It, my tale is a romantic comedy, not a tragedy. I didn’t die from this tragic flaw. We can ask, how did the ironic distancing, the playing along to get along corrupt my recovery path. There is a dark and troubling side to my tale which involves mental health and process addiction problems that were not averted by my AA process. AA offered me a new life (of new suffering at times). The spiral in long-term sobriety was something I also survived, but it has left a mark. A crack where the light shines in if we want to keep a brave face but could better, more relatable literature have helped me dive into the deep end of AA gleaning more healing? Could I have avoided suffering and inflicting suffering on others? Those are some big “what ifs?” More consequentially, what about the scores of tragedies that didn’t work out as well as my checkered story; how many came and left, felt the microaggression, felt excluded, humiliated or insulted by AA. How many would be in AA today if we could or had done more to live up to our always inclusive, never exclusive sales pitch?  Time to reflect; time to be heard Well enough about the past; we are on the dawn of a new era. Will we stand idly by? Will we take action with others as an informed, empathic society, honoring our differences and finding ways for everyone to get what they need and want from AA.  The adventure continues. I’m game. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about it; let’s listen to others, listen to understand, listen to what’s not being said, if we can. Let’s engage others. Let’s have our vote counted.  PDF  to read or download here Rebellion Dogs is not AA or affiliated with any 12-step fellowship. However our constituents, largely, is the community of people within 12-step culture. I make this distinction because I post this link for AA members and groups. The following document/video, at the request of AA General Service Office, is for AA members and groups only. Please do not re-post on non-private social media pages such as YouTube pages that aren’t private or Facebook pages accessible to the general public.  The Big Book Researching Issues, Possible Tools and Accessibility video: The hope is to share this with the widest reach of AA attendees/members for their information and consideration. Our concerns and experiences, with the topic at hand, are sought and welcome. CLICK to view AA Video ReCAPS (Recovery Capital Assessment Plan & Scale (click) John L: A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous  Feature Song/Artist is  Hollywood Ending by As Waters  @tristanavakian  YouTube Link  Twitter Link Support AA by buying a copy of Living Sober as eBook or paperback [i] https://aaagnostica.org/2021/01/17/pathways-to-recovery-and-desistance/  [ii] https://aaagnostica.org/2021/01/17/pathways-to-recovery-and-desistance/ [iii] Thank you, Paul B: https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070726090755AAwkXeQ  [iv] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-48_membershipsurvey.pdf  [v] http://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/en_tradition4.pdf

Is AA a fellowship of storytelling? Or is AA a publisher? Is AA recovery told, heard, read or written? I was asked "Should the Big Book of AA be re-written. It has been; did you miss it? We'll tell you where to find it. It's in plain view. Print or read a PDF of Episode 55 Rebellion Dogs Radio HERE On January 1, 2021 I was a guest on the podcast, "Here's Tom With The Weather!" Thanks David, thanks Anne for having me. I was asked, "Should AA re-write the Big Book?" Well they did; no one really cared, it didn't really matter and no one today really noticed. In 1939, Bill W and some others shared everything AA knew by trial and error after 3 1/2 years of a mish-mash of treatments for alcoholism. Alcoholics Anonymous: How More than One Hundred Men Recovered from Alcoholism was published. That was what we had experienced in the best way we knew how to explain what AA is and how we help each other get and stay free from addiction. Then with the 40-years of experience of over 1/2 a million people, we re-wrote the collective experiences and know how in a book... actually we separated it into two books. One was a practical, secular book of ways AAs got and stayed sober; 31 dishes on the take-what-you-like menu. And in the other book, we wrote all the higher power, supernatural intervention style of recovery AA stuff that some people just love. So we called these volumes, in no particular order, Living Sober and Came to Believe. Now that we had ten times the know-how and 5000 times the success stories we thought we should get the news out. Ah, no one cared - or more accurately, no one got too excited about it. AA members didn't get carried away by the first book and the second set of books was met with positive but muted response. You see it was the 1970s and the first 1/2 of AA's history we weren't much of a book-based society. Some of us read and liked to learn about sobriety that way... but nothing in the order of millions of us. AA, for most of us then, was social, personal, interactive, it was storytelling: sharing with others and being heard by others. AA kept growing; in fact we doubled in size and doubled and doubled again. Then we really got into our book--not the new ones, the old one. And we stopped growing. We haven't grown our membership in 30 years... but we sell a shit load of books. It pays for an office in New York City. Isn't that special? Bill wasn't a millionaire because he wrote some books. But he died, and we liked what he had to say much more when he was dead. His widow, Lois W, she made $10million dollars just for sticking it out. She didn't write anything. But we weren't a book-based society when her husband was around. But oh man, did we buy us some books after he died. We didn't grow but we made Lois a multi-millionaire. It's funny how you can stick it out with a drunk husband for years, he can get sober and still not make any money but you stick it out and it works out, it works out great. In the 1970s when I got sober, it never occurred to me to read how to get sober from what some dead men had written before I was born. I mean why, I lived in Montreal and there were thousands of alcoholics who were happy to tell me how they got sober, what worked and what didn't. I tried some of the ideas they shared and it worked pretty good for me, too. That was just how we got sober for the first decades. AA was shared in an oral tradition--one alcoholic talking to another. I didn't even know if anyone I knew read any of those AA books; no one talked about it; we all talked about ourselves, our alcoholism and our recovery. Later, AA became book learning. I don't know that one way is better and one is worse. I guess it depends a lot on how you like to learn and what you believe. AA's storytelling tradition never went away, but there were these book learners that showed up in the second 1/2 of AA and they love their books. Not the new books so much, but they sure love AA's old one about explaining alcoholism and recovery. We have two million members and 40-million books. Isn't that great. The book learners today told the rest of us that book learning is how every one in AA got sober, every real alcoholic. We don't remember that; but that's what we're told. Even if it's not true, it's a really good story that people like to tell and others love to hear. Everyone is happy in AA today. Here's how things have changed through the years. Here is how we transitioned from a society of oral tradition  to one a book-based fellowship, mostly. And no, not all our books, just that first one, with the spelling mistakes and the way people wrote before televisions, air-travel and internet. But it's good this way, we're told by those who read and learn. AA has sold so many books since they got here, we have 20 old books each now, so we'll never drink again. And we're going to buy another million this year just to feel safe.   Hear Episode 55 on SoundCloud Rebellion Dogs Radio · Rebellion Dogs 55 A New Big Book And if you like (doing) lines more than columns of numbers we can help out there, too. See below. A call to action: Making Living Sober more accessible  For the sake of alcoholics, in and outside of AA, our books Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions can be read in their entirety from our aa.org web page. You or I can also read AA’s Daily Reflections (one page per day)  Wouldn’t it be helpful for more secular-minded AA members and others to have Living Sober in PDF available to read for free right beside our other helpful AA literature? Whatever the reasons we have the Big Book,  the 12&12 and all our pamphlets accessible to all, we should have Living Sober available as well.  I don’t know how long you’ve been in AA but many in the secular community, once the British General Service Conference created an agnostic/atheist leaflet (The “God” Word), groups in Canada and the USA brought motions to our districts to ask our Area delegates to express our interest in the General Service Conference (USA/Canada) in adopting and adapting (English, French, Spanish) the pamphlet for use worldwide. By going through regular channels our need and our interest was heard and the conference voted to do so with substantial unanimity. We could do it again. We could ask our district to support our request that:  “We ask our Area delegate to recommend to this year’s General Service Conference that Living Sober (in PDF) be made available on https://aa.org alongside The Big Book and our 12 & 12. For the same reasons we make these two books and all of our pamphlets accessible to read online for the benefit of AA members and the still-suffering alcoholic, we feel deeply—for our own purposes, and those yet to join us—aa.org could be even more helpful by making Living Sober available also, in the same way.”  How could they say, “No;” why would they say “No?”  The next conference meets in April and our Area assemblies are coming up, to talk about the 2021 General Service Conference agenda.  We could express what role this booklet played in our recovery. Our book Living Sober, while not the best-seller that the Big Book is, is a door opener for many—for secular-minded alcoholics and for sober-curious visitors. Living Sober is a collection of practical AA experience that has helped millions of AA members, sober today. “There is no prescribed A.A. ‘right’ way or ‘wrong’ way. Each of us uses what is best for himself or herself—without closing the door to other kinds of help we may find valuable at another time. And each of us tries to respect others’ rights to do things differently.  Sometimes, an A.A. member will talk about taking the various parts of the program in cafeteria style—selecting what he likes and leaving alone what he does not want...”(Living Sober, p2)   As always, we have some music with the medicine. For Episode 55, we feature Toronto, Canada's Locklyn. You'll hear her her 2021 single, Energy. We will have more links, including a PDF of a transcript of Episode 55 of Rebellion Dogs Radio and other fun stuff for the month of January. See you at Higher Palooza VII HERE (11 AM PST, 2 PM EST, 7 PM GMT, Sunday January 17) Print or read a PDF of Episode 55 Rebellion Dogs Radio HERE  

Rebellion Dogs Radio, Episode 54, looks at the evidence of mutual aid’s efficacy - through the latest scientific review, and and through the latest art. READ or VIEW on PDF The highlight of Episode 54 are: Discussion with Susanne, a dancer and choreographer from Susie McHugh Dance[1] who uses her art form to express her first two years of continued sobriety. (sketch of "seven three zero" at LaRussa Outdoor Festival by artist Nick Greenwald Instagram @heylookthunder) Looking at a 2020 Cochrane Systematic Review of AA, Twelve Step Facilitation and the efficacy of mutual aid in general.  We start from Berkley University, shaking yet another erroneous conclusion: “It’s all in my mind; My recovery if founded on reason, and reason alone,”:  “Stories are told in the body. It does not seem that way. We tend to think of stories as emerging from consciousness — from dreams or fantasies — and traveling through words or images to other minds. We see them outside of us, on paper or on screen, never under the skin.”[i]  This is how Berkley University blogger Jeremy Adam Smith starts, The Science of the Story.  Stories are told in the body? Really? Well, how do we talk about it?  “I feel it in my guts,”  “My heart fluttered,”  “I feel sick to my stomach to tell you this, but...”  Not only do we receive messages through the body, dancer, choreographer Susanne McHugh will talk to us about how stories can be masterfully told with the body. We hook you up to a YouTube video to see and hear what I’m talking about.  The Berkley University blog about Stories and our body reveals how present-day scientists sees sharing stories and experiencing or storing them in our body. According to Berkley U:  “Experiencing a story alters our neurochemical processes, and stories are a powerful force in shaping human behavior. In this way, stories are not just instruments of connection and entertainment but also of control.  We don’t need the science of storytelling to tell a story. We do, however, need science if we want to understand the roots of our storytelling instinct and how tales shape beliefs and behavior, often below conscious awareness. ...  As Neil Gaiman writes in his novel Coraline: ‘Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten’.”  Stories, even fables are “more than true?” When a newcomer hears another addict’s story of being overwhelmed by the dragon that is addiction, but then overcoming the challenge, this story of heroism is “more than true” for the storyteller. It is helpful and hopeful for the listener. If her addiction-dragon can be beaten, maybe my dragon can be conquered, too".  Here’s one more scientific look at storytelling: Last month, I heard on Adina Silvestri’s Atheists in Recovery Podcast #64[ii] that:  “When we hear people share vulnerable stories, we get an oxytocin release. And when we share our own vulnerable stories, and we’re listened to, we get serotonin.”  This is the reporting from Valley Haggard, the show’s guest who has faced and overcome addiction in her life, she’s a writer and founder of Life in 10 Minutes Lit Magazine.  Today’s podcast, will review a Harvard PhDs review of AA efficacy, as an intervention to alcohol and other substance use disorder. Our mutual-aid groups, our quaint talk-therapy, while appreciated by some, has been the brunt of ridicule from others. We see how today’s academics and science, looking at today’s evidence, may rescue our credibility for attributing positive outcomes from AA or Women for Sobriety or LifeRing, SMART Recovery or Refuge Recovery. Or, Dharma Recovery, She Recovers or the whole alphabet soup of mutual-aid: CA, DA, GA, MA, NA, OA, TA, AAA, ACA, CMA, FAA, SLAA, OLGA, Al-Anon, On-and-On-amous[2]. Scientific inquiry does not evaluating mutual aid against doing nothing or going it alone; AA and Twelve Step Facilitation is being compared to other more professional and expensive interventions.  Oh, mutual aid meetings vs therapy; I’m listening. Early this century, the great criticism of peer to peer, by academics and barstool or coffeeshop experts, is that AA, for example, lacked statistics, data, and evidence regarding outcome rates. In the absence of evidence, mutual-aid groups are easily dismissed as placebo effects, no more effective than spontaneous remission.  If the term, “spontaneous remission” is unfamiliar, this describes someone with a negative habit (crime, smoking, meth amphetamines, over-consumption of pornography or chocolate, gaming, romantic fantasy, body-image issues or screen-time), quitting on their own. Sometimes we recognize the negative impact of habits; we stop, all by ourselves. I went to AA for alcohol and other drug issues and I quit smoking all by myself. My clean and sober date required peer to peer intervention by way of meetings. Nothing else had worked so far; not therapy not fear of jail, death, or abandonment. Only engagement with other of common suffering broke my cycle. However, cigarette cessation came from spontaneous remission.  People who stop negative habits without intervention (the spontaneous remission group), can act as a baseline – a control group. How many people stop a negative activity without intervention? How does that compare to intervening with XYZ approach? Juveniles who have committed crime, some of them stop doing the anti-social behavior on their own. They outgrow it, they apply themselves, they lose the bad-influences and enablers that make it easy to “do the wrong thing.”  A USA National Institute of Justice report looks at persistence, desistance, and onset.  “Studies agree that 40 to 60 percent of juvenile delinquents stop offending by early adulthood. For those who do persist, the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a period of increasing severity of offenses and an increase in lethal violence.”[iii]  Some youth crime wanes, some gets worse. Kids who commit crimes before the age of 12, take longer to desist from their crime. Property crime, drug trafficking and violent crimes all have different patterns. Economic opportunity influences outcome rates, too.  So if 40 to 60% desistence is a baseline for juvenile offenders, measuring intervention—jailing, therapy, community support—we don’t just measure one outcome rate to others in the study. Using those who naturally outgrow crime, as a baseline, can measure how effective different interventions are. If we measure the impact of harsher punishment or community-based supports, testing their effectiveness ought to be compared to a control group of juvenile offenders who outgrow crime through spontaneous desistance. Society benefits from this natural occurring phenomenon and it does not cost $1, or use up other resources. Testing an intervention into youth crime, let’s say a study reveals 70% of young adults in the study, leave crime behind. Questions arise from the findings: is 70% good or bad? Doing nothing got 40-60% positive outcome rates. If 70% positive outcome rates, for all the energy and money we threw at it, is only 10 to 30% better than the spontaneous desistance that result from doing and spending nothing, what is the cost/benefit analysis for this 10% to 30% better desistance rate? Is that a notable increase or inconsequential?  Let me bring it back to sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll before I lose some of you.  Scientific evidence differs from the anecdotal evidence that many of us in recovery rely on. Here is how many of us, who have used mutual aid, evaluate our mutual aid efficacy: we tell our substance use story and how we continued use despite harmful consequences, and things got worse. Then, we found recovery and while it was hard at first, it’s so worth it now, and we feel so much better than before. This is anecdotal evidence. Our evidence is our personal experience and/or testimony from others. We compare our stable recovery to all previous interventions that failed and here we are: clean and sober. Our impression is reinforced by the number of other successful stories we hear at our increased time spent at meetings. This reasonable conclusion relies on informal observations and the stories of others. I am comparing sobriety now to how bad it was then. My recovery rate was 100% effective. I was stuck; I nearly died; I am sober now while others die from alcohol and other drug use, obviously AA (or whatever remedy we use) worked! Obviously, it’s effective; it took a seemingly hopeless case like me transformed me into what is a life of challenges-yes, but a meaningful life with a sense of competency and/or mastery in my recovery and other life activities. This is high recovery capital, enough money, enough love, enough positive reinforcement, enough satisfaction. My XYZ program (whatever I did or combination of interventions) is a winner.  Science isn’t as likely to measure the new me against my old me, the way I naturally do. Science may look at people in recovery from substance use disorders who join a fellowship, vs people who stop drinking on their own. The scientific method may measure a group of people like me against a group of people exposed to a different intervention, for comparison.  If you can please, keep a pin in that idea and I’ll get back to it soon. But to go back a bit; you may have seen it/maybe not. Episode Four of Rebellion Dogs Radio looked at some of the AA critics who were vocal at the time of that podcast. Lance Dodes, airs his grievances in print. In The Sober truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-step Programs and the Rehab Industry ...  “Most people with a scientific bent would agree that science is based on evidence. Without strong supporting corroborations, we would have no way to distinguish between a gut feeling and a solid result, and no way to separate personal bias from objective fact. But the value of evidence depends entirely on whether the data is meaningful—whether it is valid  ... No field, from the hardest statistical science to the ‘softest’ sociology, is immune to abuse of the word ‘evidence’; some just do a better job of hiding their foundational biases than others. ... addiction studies covering 12-step treatment fail to pass basic threshold standards ...Yet these flawed methodologies are not always apparent to the lay reviewer...“[3]  The book is over 160 pages of criticism. He does not offer his own evidence supporting or disputing the efficacy of the AA model. He has not undertaken any scientific testing of his own to demonstrate if AA is more helpful or more counterproductive. Dodes does conclude people are better off seeing a therapist, to which he is one and to which he gleans an income from, but to which he offers no evidence that his hourly rate has a better outcome rate than the two bucks someone gives to their mutual aid group through Pay Pal.  Stanton Peele boasts, “#1 world leading online Addiction Recovery”[4] to describe his own Life Process Plan. He’s a go-to talking head for 12-step criticism. If I sound like l am putting these voices of recovery down, I am not. I continue to listen to what both of these men have to say—we do need better evaluation and improved methods for overcoming substance use problems. But there is a big difference between finding fault like there is a reward for it and pioneering a better way. I think a “yes - and” approach is better than a dick-swinging, antagonistic winner-take-all approach to healthcare. AA, and rehabs that embrace AA activities or philosophy, are the targets or this aforementioned gentlemanly criticism. Fine. But first, do new research instead of bemoaning the research’s deficiencies. Secondly, every example of what they believe AA to be—some uniformed process, controlled by a central authority, anything they pick on, the Steps for instance or the primacy of a supernatural worldview, this gross generalization of what AA is doesn’t describe my AA group at all. Maybe not yours, either. The broad swath of variation of AA is ignored in this characterization. Also, take any one these so called characteristics of what all AA members supposedly do, and I can show you another mutual aid group that does no such thing. The critics like picking on AA because it’s the biggest but lots of people who leave AA don’t die of alcoholism. They shop around. Some go to Secular Organizations for Sobriety or She Recovers where they practice starkly different rituals. All of these (Women for Sobriety, Life Ring, Refuge Recovery, Smart Recovery) have positive outcome rates... no better than AA, but each one is getting suffers of substance use back on their feet again (listen to Tracy Chabala[5] on Episode 37 of Rebellion Dogs Radio, talking about comparative study[6]. Or read The Journal of Substance Abuse Therapy, Sarah E. Zemore[7].  Entertainers, Penn & Teller get in on the act with their Showtime part comedy/part journalism hybrid show called Bullshit that myth-busts horoscopes, reflexology, fortune tellers and the Dalai Lama. These comedian truth-tellers called Bullshit on AA, too. Penn Jillette’s LinkedIn profile does not hold him out to be a statistician; he’s a magician. Objective truth is not Penn and Teller currency; misdirection is the mastery of magicians. Oh, you have to see this episode of Bullshit; it’s very funny. For a review of this critical look at AA that won’t throw you into a YouTube looping bender for a weekend, as mentioned earlier, visit Episode 4 of Rebellion Dogs Radio.[8] AA or mutual aid or self-help is all fair game for skepticism. But as Dodes put it earlier, it is a challenge to any of us “to separate personal bias from objective fact” and no one “is immune to abuse of the word ‘evidence.’”  Stanton Peele and Lance Dodes are legitimately qualified to question if AA is effective. Back in 2006, Cochrane Library makes a claim that there wasn’t sufficient scientific data to corroborate the effectiveness of 12-Step approaches to substance use disorder (addiction).” Was this widely disseminated finding properly understood? Well what exactly was said?  What was reported in the Cochrane Database of Systemic Review in 2006 was this:  “No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF [Twelve Step Facilitation] approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems.”[9]  Is the lack of evidence of effectiveness proof of a lack of effectiveness? The report revealed a lack of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of AA. Lack of evidence of efficacy is not proof of ineffectiveness.  The Cochrane Data Base Systemic Review of 2006 compared studies available at the time. These comparative studies looked at the following:  To assess the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step Facilitation (TSF) programmes in reducing alcohol intake, achieving abstinence, maintaining abstinence, improving the quality of life of affected people and their families, reducing alcohol associated accidents and health problems.  The following interventions will be compared:  twelve‐step programmes versus no intervention;  twelve‐step programmes versus other interventions (e.g. Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), Cognitive‐behavioral coping skills training (CBT), Relapse Prevention Therapy (RPT));  twelve‐step programmes versus Twelve‐Step programme variants (e.g. spiritual, non‐spiritual, professionally led, lay led).  So, the 2006 report, understood correctly was a call out for more research. This call to action was met: 14 years later... wait for it... “more has been revealed.”  The lead author of the 2020 Cochrane Library review is Dr John Kelly Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine, Harvard Medical School and director of Massachusetts General Hospital Recovery Research Institute. Dr. Kelly points out a shortfall in the 2006 review because in part... “based on only 8 studies and included just a few thousand participants. The quality of the evidence at that time was not strong. This updated review is based on 27 rigorous comparative investigations and included around 11,000 participants, as well as economic analyses. Thus, both the quantity and quality of the research has increased substantially in the intervening years prompting this new summary.”  The punchline is this:  “When compared to other well-established commonly delivered treatments for alcohol use disorder, AA/TSF [Twelve Step Facilitation] generally performs as well as other interventions on most clinical outcomes, except for abstinence, where it does quite a bit better - particularly true for helping many more patients achieve sustained abstinence and remission. The review also found that AA/TSF reduced health care costs substantially while simultaneously improving patient’s abstinence relative to other treatments.  The quality of the evidence for the abstinence and economic outcomes was moderate to high indicating there is generally a high degree of confidence that can be placed in these new findings.”[10]  Kelly refers to 27 studies including over 10,500 participants. This is not the totality of study done since 2006. It’s not cherry picking either. The Cochrane methodology is considered the gold standard of meta-analysis and this study filtered over 12,700 files in the last 14 years to the most rigorous and detailed. leaving 21 randomized controlled trials, five quasi-RCT and one purely economic study comparing the cost of AA intervention to CBT, MET and other therapies. The Cochrane Library aims to be highly conservative, being picky to avoid Type-1 errors (conclusions that something works when it really doesn’t). The Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs for alcohol use disorder was published March 11, 2020[11]  Results of these studies of studies were not limited to “does AA work” but looked at the success characteristics of AA engagement that included but were not limited to:  identifying and problem-solving high-risk situations  cognitive and behavioral coping skills  goal setting  self-efficacy  building social networks, and  increasing healthy activities.  So AA is not quackery. AA is more than a placebo and not only is mutual aid better than spontaneous remission, engagement in peer-to-peer groups is shown to be more effective and more cost-effective than the expensive alternatives and their waiting lists (have you ever seen a sold out AA meeting?): Relapse prevention, Motivational Enhancement Therapy and other clinical therapeutic interventions. This isn’t to say, “Hey, stop all this other rubbish!” The best results come from a personalized, individual recovery plan. Some can go to NA or Dharma Recovery first, never drink, drug or act out again. Others will need more—therapy, detox, in or outpatient care, multiple tries for sustainable long-term sobriety to take. Others need less; some people do quit on their own. Just like some get involved with their mutual aid group and stay for life where others dig in, get what they need and get back to a life that has sufficient recovery capital whereby lifelong 12-step or other mutual aid engagement isn’t needed. Others may be introverted or for some reason non-responsive to home groups and weekend retreats and conferences and advocacy.  After you have read/listened to all this Rebellion Dogs report, go back if you’re a keener and look at these studies and listen to some of the criticisms from the past. You will hear legitimate criticisms of 12-step (or other) groups. But you will also see some of the flaws in the criticism. Many say AA demands religious adherence. We know that works for some but it’s not true that someone whose secular needs to convert to a supernatural worldview. Some criticisms point to AA’s being meeting dependent or engaged in learned helplessness attached to the ball and chain of “powerlessness.” We all know AA success stories whereby the powerless construct is rejected or the Steps in their entirety, for that matter. Steps are suggested; for some, suggested equals optional. Not all AAs agree on what the secret ingredient is? Is it meetings? Some stop going to meetings. Is it and intervening God? Secular AA may be the fastest growing subculture in mutual aid. Is it a religiously based step by step process, exactly as described in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous? Well some re-write the Steps in an irreligious language and as we’ve mentioned, some don’t need or want the 12-step experience. They may get those needs met elsewhere or get everything they need from the community, purpose, and identity of being part of a fellowship.  Besides whatever we think is the AA thing that is the secret sauce, there’s some other mutual aid group that does not have that ingredient but their community of recovering addicts is growing also. So what is it? What all these recovery communities have in common is CHIME: Community, Hope, Identity, Meaning, Empowerment. Step, noble truths, behavioral modification, all of these processes and groups manifest this CHIME[12] result.  How it works: For some, there’s a Twelve Step process, some an 8-fold path, for others, it’s something else. We started off talking about what some scientists are coming up with: Recovery happens in storytelling inside the body, or the telling and listening of vulnerable autobiographies rewire neurotransmitters. The Big Book thumpers may or may not be channeling the grace of Gods but their repetitive process or reading and being read to seems to have the same bonding and stimulating impact of parents and children bonding over lullabies and nursery rhymes. I’m just thinking out-loud here but if I was testing a theory, I’d start with pediatric psychologists. That love and bonding between parent and child, reading the same stories over and over again. It sooths and nurtures. It wouldn’t shock me that many alcoholics, who we know frequently come from dysfunctional homes, these AA’s may have suffered deprivation from the wholesomeness of the same stories being heard and read over and over again, in a safe environment. Or maybe some of us did have all that goodness before shit got real and the goth circus that was our addiction came to town and signed us up as part of it’s side show. Maybe some of us reconnect with a long-missed wholesomeness when we sit in church basement couches and read 1939 fables about addiction and recovery and higher powers and a sacred book that save the day.  The same certainty that Big Book fundamentalists have about how—and why—it works may be true for most of us. We play back our story, see that after failed attempts success comes, so we think we recognize a pattern—correlation is interpreted as causation. Because we know the chronology of what happened, does that mean we know why it happened? The patterns of failure and success can make us superstitious as we conclude A leads to B. In mutual aid meetings some of us call the it-factor meetings, some call it a program, some call it Yahweh.  I write songs. I podcast, I interview and research. That’s how it works for me. Let’s get to the highlight of this podcast, Susanne McHugh who dances. At time of recording, we are closing out on November 2020, second COVID-19 wave; most performance arts have been curtailed—or have they? Songwriters are live-streaming and dancers are going virtual and indoor stages are going outside for socially distanced audience and artist meet ups.  Let’s hear about how one dancer found recovery and expressed her challenges and individual approach not through storytelling in a verbal sense but storytelling through motion. Recovery stories can be experienced in the body and the body can be the vehicle for telling the story. We will talk about how Seven Three Zero not only shares the experience of one member’s first two years of recovery, but this dance was chosen for Dance Bloc II at Dixon Place... something Susanne didn’t know when we spoke over Zoom, earlier in the month. How exciting. Let’s hear more about it...  Let’s hear about how one dancer found recovery and expressed her challenges and individual approach not through storytelling in a verbal sense but storytelling through motion. Recovery stories can be experienced in the body and the body can be the vehicle for telling the story. We will talk about how Seven Three Zero not only shares the experience of one member’s first two years of recovery, but this dance was chosen for Dance Bloc II at Dixon Place... something Susanne didn’t know when we spoke over Zoom, earlier in the month. How exciting. Here are interview highlights from the Zoom call:  Susanne said she was nervous—nervous about talking. I questioned her about how someone could be so vulnerable dancing for all to see, and then find talking nerve racking. “I have bared my soul so many times on stage, but as soon as I have to open my mouth, it’s terrifying. I don’t really know why. There is something I love about being so exposed on stage but it feels like home [the stage] feels safe. I feel like I have more control. When I have to talk, I get nervous and I ramble. The way I feel emotions is so intense; its hard for me to explain them. It’s almost like there are no words to explain them, but in movement, I can explain it.”  We talked about how meeting our heroes can be something that worries us; what if they don’t live up to our image of them on a pedestal? “That’s super valid,’ Susanne adds. Her hero is film maker, Tim Burton. “But I just really want to see what he’s like. It’s crazy but I am willing to take the chance; if he’s boring, I would be mad. I would often say, ‘I want to be the Tim Burton of the dance world.’ I’m a lunatic, I don’t know.”  I asked Susanne about life with addiction. “I believe my issues with alcohol solely have to do with my mental illnesses. I am diagnosed Bipolar 2, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder]. Alcohol became this magical elixir that would take away all the strains from those illnesses. It was an escape from the brain of Susanne McHugh, you know. And that was nice, for a while, until it wasn’t. I was the kind of alcoholic, I didn’t necessarily drink every day but when I did drink, I could not stop. I always thought that the idea of having just one glass of wine with dinner didn’t make sense to me. I was drinking for a purpose. Of course it gave me confidence and took my anxiety away but it was also part of my creative purpose. It was kind of like reaching the cathartic level, pouring out my soul a little bit. I kind of took that and used it to get sober, in a way. When I first got sober, I was in AA for three or four months. And then, well, I’m an atheist and it was traditional AA. I live in New York City but at the time I was unaware of secular meetings. Of course, you know, we got to the higher power business and I couldn’t do it.  So many people would say, ‘It’s a God of your understanding. It doesn’t have to be Jesus.’ But I couldn’t subscribe to this. There is a certain way of speaking in AA and the slogans that were, for lack of a better term eerie to me, to be honest. So I kind of like stopped going. I did not relapse; I stayed sober; but I stopped going to AA. What I mean when I say I sort used that cathartic feeling that once was initiated by alcohol, I used that to stay sober in a way, using the cathartic feeling for my art. My whole life I have been dedicated to dance. But instead of just dancing in my room, drunk, all passionate or whatever, I now made a dance company. Instead of dancing alone in my room, I was dancing in a rehearsal space with five or six dancers. I was going to residencies, applying for grants and I really just—in a sense like a workaholic type of deal—but it was through my art so that was awesome.  That’s what really kept me sober. It gave me meaning and it gave me purpose.   .  I can’t speak for all alcoholics of course, but my addiction with alcohol was about me struggling with those things. It was, and it still is, I say dance is the reason I’m alive. It is extremely healing. Part of that is the subject matters I choose for my art.”  We talked about COVID and how Susanne creates art with the stage in mind, but now it’s about video and films, “That’s out of my comfort zone,” she says. “Part of it is exciting because it’s a challenge. COVID is initiating a lot of collaboration between different types of artists and fields which is great. But do I think it’s sad that we can’t go see shows? Well, yeah. It’s sad.”  Susanne shared about working on outdoor stages and the challenges of dancing in a mask, not to mention the financial struggles and scariness of COVID-19. She had to adapt her dancing style. “I have a very specific aesthetic. It’s the way I move. People in college used to say, ‘Oh, Susie-style.’ It’s very dramatic. I like contorted positions. I never want anyone to call any one of my pieces, ‘pretty.’ I would rather they hate it than say, ‘Yeah, that was pretty.’ That would be an insult to me. I like things a little weird, a little dark—the Tim Burton of dance.”  Let’s talk about “Seven Three Zero,” I asked.  “Okay, well 730 is like two years and I have two years of sobriety. It’s a very straight forward piece. It’s about, you know, my struggle with the higher power aspect of AA, really. And feeling like, ‘Could I stay sober without one? Would I be forced to subscribe to the thing and just questioning all that. Then, finally realizing that I don’t have to. I am very passionate about that; I really don’t have to believe in something that I don’t believe, in order to stay sober, I think there are other avenues. And part of that was because I had found the secular Zoom AA meetings, while I was making this solo. Because that was very much on my mind like a wake up; oh my goodness, there’s a whole world of people who think like me. That was a very big relief. The piece is about both. It’s about presenting the issues that I had but also about the relief—yeah I can do this without a higher power.”  Letting go of God?  “Yeah, my dad didn’t like it but other people did. I was talking to my boyfriend today and I was saying that, with my art, I don’t mind ruffling a few feathers, which is sort of interesting that I can’t talk. I don’t mind recreating a panic-attack on stage, but I can’t have a conversation. In that solo I said, ‘I’m an alcoholic. I don’t believe in God and I have issues with traditional AA,’ all in one solo, in front of an audience. And that’s not the easiest thing to do.  As an artist I would rather have a target on my back and initiate a conversation, than be forgotten, or be pretty, or blend in. I want people to think, afterwards. On some level, I am sure it may be disturbing to some  people; but also it could be comforting to a lot of people in the way the secular [AA] rooms were comforting to me. To find out that you’re not the only one struggling with that idea in AA, or any emotion in life, to be honest, kind of my M.O. in my work is to make people feel like they are less alone.” We have a link below to Susie McHugh Dance’s video from La Russa Studio (Queens NY). Log on, have a look; if you’re like me, look again. It’s like a great song. Who wants to hear a great song only once?  There is so much going on, on Zoom in secular AA. Visit Rebellion Dogs Radio for upcoming zoom stuff.  And as we speak, the likes of John F. Kelly and other academics are studying us substance use problem-cases and how it’s going for us on zoom. Brandon G. Bergman and John Kelly in Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (October 4, 2020) have a study called Online digital recovery support services: An overview of the science and their potential to help individuals with substance use disorder during COVID-19 and beyond.[13]  Attention: We are proud to announce, we have a new acronym: digital recovery support services, now called D-RSS    “Telemedicine and online, digital recovery support services (D-RSS) have taken center stage as potential solutions for individuals who are increasingly unable to access SUD [substance use disorder] treatment and recovery support services in person. Given the expansive reach of D-RSS, greater understanding of whether, and for whom, they are helpful may enhance the field's public health response to SUD more broadly.  At any given time, many millions of Americans with substance use problems depend on recovery support services that leverage peer-to-peer connection. Attendance at mutual-help organizations (MHOs), such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and SMART Recovery, is the most common form of help-seeking for all professional and nonprofessional services among individuals with current SUD as well as those who have resolved a substance use problem...”  The whole paper is worth a read but from what I read about advantages and draw backs I would like to draw out three talking points.  Do some outreach. The paper, directed at professionals, is pro-our-Zoom-meetings; addiction and mental health caregivers are being encouraged to refer clients to our D-RSS (AKA, our meetings), which may, in part, account for what seems to be increased attendance. Think about your own local treatment center, detox, half-way house, hospital, mental health center. Do they know how to find your zoom meeting online? I don’t think so. In the local Greater Toronto Area Intergroup office, committee activity is almost dormant; Public Information, Cooperation with the Professional Community, Hospitals and Institutions have been slower than groups at shifting gears for a new digital reality. That leaves our groups with the job of outreach. Call your own doctor if you’re comfortable, tell her AA (for any patients who are having trouble during the pandemic) is online now. Or what about sober living places that people periodically came from to check out your face-to-face meeting? Tell your meeting’s old landlord that your group is still here, pass on the login information and maybe send them a digital link to a beginner’s pamphlet if they hear from anyone looking for us.  “Digital spaces may not allow for the implicit perception of non-verbal cues that people use to guide their behavior and decision-making in social interaction.” Let’s be gentle with each other. Any of us could say something that might have been funny in our old meeting hall but comes across as crass or insensitive online. It is easier to misunderstand each other online. It’s easier to miss cues and stick our foot in our mouth. So, if we can be less inclined to jump all over each other and if we’re not sure what someone meant by what they said, we can PM them or ask for clarification if/when it is appropriate.  “D-RSS may not facilitate active recovery involvement as well as in-person groups. This active involvement generally produces greater substance use benefits compared to attendance alone.” The meeting after the meeting, going for coffee or a meal, or to a movie, concert or watching the game—these might have more to do with my recovery than what was said in the meeting. This social interaction isn’t as prevalent in the zoom meetings I’m attending as it was in my face-to-face community. We’re not playing pool together or jamming or going to karaoke or the gym together. Can our groups do more informal stuff—watch parties with online movies or shows, hanging out on social media while we’re all watching the game. Watching a Ted Talk together and texting back and forth.  I say the responsibility declaration at the end of a lot of meetings. But “the hand of AA” or whatever fellowship you or I attend, is more than putting on a virtual meeting. At least it can be and this would give people who need a little extra some comradery and either some laughs or a deeper, “can we talk” moment that meetings don’t allow for.  Anyway, I’m confessing out loud; I’m not preaching. These are things I’m going to think about more. Our group always had greeters at the literature table that we would direct newcomers to for questions and free printed resources. How can we replicate this on Zoom? The point is this: People are still studying us, online, the whole recovery system relies on us and we might not be as connected with the community as we were, pre-pandemic. I for one am going to try a couple of little things. Our group met in the University classroom. We would get faculty, med-school, nursing, and social work students visiting. I’m going to let them know that U of T curious minds are welcome at our open AA meetings and I’ll let them know how to find Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers AA meeting.  Under “this just in!” I am part of a new podcast that is just in the building stages. It is for the International Society of Excellence in Recovery Management. Dr. Ray Baker and I were working on a book together. That got stalled about ¾ the way through. It may still get done; but we’re doing a podcast together. I’m quite excited; stay tuned.  We’re going out with song. This is from friends of mine, David and Vanessa more associated with my other radio: IndieCan Radio, this is a Toronto band who opened for Bon Jovi in a Toronto Arena once but I usually see them playing at 1 or 2 AM in a Toronto Queen Street west indie club. They are called, Goodnight Sunrise[iv]. This song was actually written at the start of the pandemic, but it’s a good anthem any time in life. The song is called, “We’re Not Dead Yet.”  Don’t forget to click the link to watch Susie McHugh Dance’s Seven Three Zero[14] from Salvatore LaRussa Dance Theatre and other show notes. Let’s be gentle with each other out there. We’re all in this together.  READ/VIEW a PDF [1] https://www.susiemchughdance.com/  [2] Cocaine Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Marijuana Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Tech Anonymous, All Addictions Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous, Food Addicts Anonymous, Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous, OnLine Gamers Anonymous, Al-Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics On-and-on-amous (just a joke)  [3] Dodes, Lance, Dodes Zachary, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Boston: Beacon Press (2014) p. 151  [4] https://www.peele.net/  [5][5] http://www.tracychabala.com/  [6] https://rebelliondogspublishing.com/blogs/rebellion-dog-radio-episodes/posts/tracy-chabala-from-thefix-on-rebellion-dogs-radio-37  [7] https://www.journalofsubstanceabusetreatment.com/article/S0740-5472(17)30490-7/fulltext  [8] https://rebelliondogspublishing.com/rebellious-radio/blog/rebellion-dogs-radio-4-50-years-of-a-a-critics-and-cynics-facts-and-bs  [9] https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD005032.pub2/  [10] https://www.cochrane.org/news/author-interview-alcoholics-anonymous-and-other-12-step-programs-alcohol-use-disorder  [11] https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012880.pub2/full  [12] Best, David, Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: The role of the social contagion of hope, Bristol: Policy Press, 2019, pp. 7-8  [13] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547220304098?dgcid=author#s0005  [14] https://fb.watch/1Vw66NoWKJ/ YouTube Seven Three Zero by Susie McHugh Dance  [i] https://news.berkeley.edu/berkeley_blog/the-science-of-the-story/  [ii] https://adinasilvestri.com/episode-64-writing-as-a-vehicle-for-truth-telling-healing-and-recovery/  [iii] https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/juvenile-delinquency-young-adult-offending  [iv] https://gnsr.bandcamp.com/

A “Welcome” letter to people new  to secular recovery.  Have you notices that secular AA zoom meetings have a lot more participants lately? Me too. Episode 53 of Rebellion Dogs Radio welcomes people new to our irreligious brand of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Some of these new participants are new to AA: sober curious. If this is you, you’re not so sure about signing up for a life-time AA membership. Either you’re confronting—or someone else is confronting you about—your alcohol (or other substance) use disorder. Be skeptical; check it out. Try ten or twelve meetings before you make up your mind. We hope you like us. But that's not what's important right now. Addiction isn't in lock-down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Either does recovery. Welcome.  Maybe you know all about AA. Some of you went—or go—to meetings. Maybe you like the recovery community. But you outgrew the "Just let go and let God," talk, or you never really bought into it. You have thought about or already left AA a while ago, feeling you couldn't relate to the idea of a prayer-answering, sobriety granting higher power. And now - like the rest of us - you have some time on your hands. And you're secular-curious... if you don’t mind the label. Maybe you’re wondering, “What have these Godless heathens done with the AA you grew up on?” Well, welcome, one and all. This show covers the basics of AA recovery without subscribing to the idea of a prayer-answering, sobriety-granting higher power. We read Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America. It's a survey and report about life for atheists and agnostics in the Christian nation of the USA. The survey reports that, people needed to be closeted about their beliefs, even with loved ones. People got asked to go along with religious rituals and asked not to rock-the-boat... awkward. People were belittled, ignored or discriminated against. Does this sound anything like AA stories about nonbelievers getting the fish eye or cold shoulder? Episode 53 looks at this study and some recent AA history and how members are adapting. AA members are creating groups and writing literature to foster the community of AA without god or gods. Recovery is more accessible than ever for a growing non-religious population who prefer a practical approach to faith-based recovery. It's not better, it's not revolutionary but it's legitimate and has a long, long track record. In 1965 Bill W was talking about now AA ought to get more accustomed to both atheists and non-Christian believers who were accounting for much of AA's growth. In San Francisco, Dr. Earle of "Physician Heal Thyself" infamy was writing Steps and opening the door people who weren't interested in Divine intervention and also to newcomers with drug problems other than alcoholism. AA was changing. AA was growing. Today, on zoom, there over a dozen secular AA meetings throughout any given day where people can find recovery without having to accept anyone else's beliefs nor having to deny their own.   For the latest from Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America and for a brief how, why and history of secular AA, please press Play and welcome. We're glad you're here. Yes, we have music. The Montreal punk band, NOBRO has a new song out - a theme song for our pandemic... It's called, "Don't Die."         Rebellion Dogs Radio · 53 Rebellion Dogs Hi I'm New Here To This Pandemic Read along (PDF) while you're listening. CLICK HERE Check out the Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America survey - great stuff. CLICK HERE Visit NOBRO the Montreal Punk Band featured with their new song, "Don't Die." CLICK HERE Picture Credit from IndieCan.com by Wendy L Rombogh Photography       Sarah E. Zemore, Lee Anne Kaskutas et al. (2018) https://www.journalofsubstanceabusetreatment.com/article/S0740-5472(17)30490-7/fulltext  https://www.cochrane.org/news/new-cochrane-review-finds-alcoholics-anonymous-and-12-step-facilitation-programs-help-people  https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-secular-life/201406/why-americans-hate-atheists  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d824da4727dfb5bd9e59d0c/t/5eb0468b23f39b65de7ddb23/1588610795388/Reality+Check+-+Being+Nonreligious+in+America  https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-24_anewcomerask.pdf  More on Dr. Earle M: https://rebelliondogspublishing.com/home/blog/musings-from-san-francisco-march-2019-rebellon-dogs-blog  AAWS, Our Great Responsibility: A Selection of Bill W.’s General Service Conference Talks 1951—1970, New York: 2019   https://rebelliondogspublishing.com/reading-room  https://secularaa.org  https://aaagnostica.org/  https://aabeyondbelief.org  http://www.naagnostica.org/ https://www.aatorontoagnostics.com/zoom-meetings.html   https://nobroband.com/

Episode 52 of Rebellion Dogs Radio (April 2020) looks at mutual-aid groups in a social-distance world. Peer-to-peer groups, navigating substance use disorder and mental health--which notoriously isolated us--are now navigating recovery without the face-to-face support. Our home group has gotten us through personal or collective uncertainty and grief, before. Hello, AA, NA, SMART Recovery, Life Ring, Dharma Recovery, SOS, Women For Sobriety and countless other self-help/mutual-aid fellowships.Our more marginalized community members have long-embraced online alternatives, accommodating social anxiety, shift-work or travel, or because  shut-in is a daily reality because of the health or mobility issues they--or a loved one--face. Many long-term recovery peers minimize social media, podcasts, YouTube and phone or video recovery as a fill-in for "real" human contact but never as good as the real thing. That's just not universally true. From pen-pals in the mail to telephone therapy to self-help that is more "self" by necessity, while gathering together a prearranged times in prearranged places is popular, what proof is there that it's better? 2020's COVID-19 pandemic may answer some of these questions. My own home group, Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers AA group was nudged into the Zoom online meeting platform to maintain one alcoholic talking to another and like anything, some take to it better than others. So, if you hear your sponsor's voice, "online activity does not replace face-to-face meetings," now this folk-wisdom is being put to the test. April's podcast will feature guests. Like AA itself, experience -more so than expertise - is our currency of Episode 52. Our Peer-to-Peer in a Pandemic Zoom round table isn't right about everything we're talking about; this is our  experience, in our own words. Courtney S is Information Technology Services Chair for SecularAA.org. Willow F, helps host her group's Many Path's secular online AA meeting in urban Washington State. Marina, from the Sober She-Devils a long-running online secular women's AA meeting, joins us from her phone on the road, in the middle of deliveries. Angela B, from the Boise Atheists, Agnostics and all Others AA groups is also Inreach Chair for the Board that stewards the biennial International Secular Conference of AA (ICSAA). We round off with John S of We Agnostics, Kansas City, also a SecularAA board member. John's best know to online community as host of both My Secular Sobriety and AA Beyond Belief. With the  popularity of Zoom meetings, Zoom-bombing has emerged: unwanted intruders and pranksters who disrupt the meeting with vulgarity, pornography and morbid images or in some cases, attempt to install malware or data-mine. This is more than a nuisance;  Zoom-bombing is illegal. Zoom provides security features to reduce, frustrate or eliminate these Zoom-bombers.  We'll talk about our experiences with these threats and counter-measures available.   Here's some borrowed Coles Notes to get you started: from IGNY: Inter-Group Association of A.A. of New York PDF running an AA meetings on Zoom basics: Click Here PDF safety and security measures on Zoom for groups, hosts, co-hosts (chairing a meeting): Click Here From Zoom.us Zoom is enabling the password setting: require a password for Personal Meeting ID (PMI). Zoom will also be enabling the following password settings which are on by default, but previously could have been disabled:  Require a password when scheduling new meetings (which also applies to webinars)  Require a password for instant meetings  Require password for participants joining by phone  [My limited experience is already scheduled meeting don't have passwords imposed on them--you can create a new invite and Zoom will do that if you want. Also, in Edit Meeting, you can customize the password to numbers or letters. Numbers of course can be used for everyone from home computers to landlline phones.] These settings are designed to prevent unwanted participants from joining your meeting or webinar. For previously scheduled meetings or webinars with a unique one-time meeting ID, there is no need to enter a password when joining or resend the invitation. These meetings and webinars will not be impacted. For meetings previously scheduled with a calendar integration, you will need to resend the invitation or share the password with the participants. Invitations will not be automatically updated. All newly scheduled meetings and webinars, regardless of using PMI or a one-time meeting ID, will require a password by default. This password will be included in the invitation. If a participant manually enters the meeting/webinar ID, they will be prompted to enter the password.  Manually entering a meeting/webinar ID will always prompt the user to enter the password. Zoom is also enabling the Waiting Room feature by default. Waiting Room allows the host to control when a participant joins the meeting. Waiting Room is one of the best ways to control who’s entering your Zoom meeting by giving you the option to admit participants individually or all at once. We highly recommend using this feature to secure your meetings and prevent unwanted participants if a link is shared outside of the intended participants. Learn more about Waiting Room.  If you do not want to use Waiting Room, you can disable it for your own meetings, an individual group on your account, or the entire account. Waiting Room can also be enabled or disabled at the time of scheduling and during a meeting. This change will not impact any of your previously scheduled meetings. Our round-table podcast on Episode 52 of Rebellion Dogs Radio will include: # 1) The basics: Zoom meetings on home computers seem to have the most functionality. Everyone can download the Zoom app or enter a meeting from a browser. Landlines can phone in and punch in the Meeting ID (and password). For phone participants: Press *6 to mute or un-mute. Press *9 to alert the host you would like to share. #2) We talk about ZOOM-boming: internet trolls and present-day pranksters #3) Old habits & New opportunities  - what's the silver lining of one addict talking to another over the internet? #4) The meeting: Purpose and Means.  The newcomer  The tech-phobe  Outreach to the community  Business meetings and cooperation within service structures.  Other gatherings—roundups, conferences, workshops, retreats  #5) Zoom Security measures Passwords Waitng Rooms  Lock Meeting  Host controls... "Open the door and let 'em in" - to allow members to gather before or after without the meeting host? Meettng before the meeting? Meeting after the meeting?  Articles: “You think Zoom bombing is funny? Let’s see how funny it is after you get arrested,” Matthew Schneider, the US Attorney for the Eastern Michigan district, said in a statement. “If you interfere with a teleconference or public meeting in Michigan, you could have federal, state, or local law enforcement knocking at your door.” The Verge.com  As large numbers of people turn to video-teleconferencing (VTC) platforms to stay connected in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, reports of VTC hijacking (also called “Zoom-bombing”) are emerging nationwide. www.fbi.gov Zoom videos Waiting Rooms Zoom Passwords and Security (April 2020) SPREADSHEET Zoom Meeting Links (a work in progress - updated everyday Not to be too AA-centric, here is a link to SAMHSA Virtual Recovery Resources with links to Life Ring, NA, Self-Management and Recovery Trainting (SMART), Sobergrid, Reddit Recovery, Reguge Recovery, Marijuana Anonymous and more Every end-of-days pandemic needs a soundtrack. Rebellion Dogs Radio (complements of IndieCan Radio) tries to find mood music to meet the situation. Enjoy, "Who's Your Maker" by Toronto's A Primitive Evolution (Toronto). What seems like a lifetime ago, I wonder now if their March concert at Lee's Palace with ON, Phantom High and Sulpher (UK) was the last Rock 'n' Roll show on earth...    

Widows-In-Law - a chat with author Michele W. Miller about her new book(s), writing and recovery  :-) Episode 51 of Rebellion Dogs Radio: Widows-In-Law by Michele W. Miller  Clean and sober for 30 years, author Michele W. Miller has been on our radar since her 2013 zombie apocalypse travelogue, The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery. Zombies aren’t my favorite flavor of dystopia, but this book tickled my funny bone and charmed me with it’s sideways commentary of the 12-Step recovery culture in an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it plot line.  I saw on Twitter that Michele's latest, Widows-In-Law was coming out on paperback this week and I though—what a great opportunity to catch up with this New York city writer. I got the book, binge read it, loved it and what we have here is our little chat about the recovery community in New York City over the last three decades, her inspiration and writing style, and of course, her new book. Sometime in 2021 keep an eye out for the next offering from Michele - something to look forward to.   Our musical guest is Toronto Indie artist Sarah Siddiqui who I caught up with at Indie Week in a West-end Toronto club on a November afternoon in 2019. She shares her title track for her new record, No More Waiting Rooms. Click the pic to stream or buy music. Visit Michele W Miller website HERE  Widows-in-Law Buy or view eBook, Paperback, Hard Cover or Audio Book on Amazon Now. Check out Michele W Miller's The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery (Click pic) Also mentioned in this episode: Zoe Heller's The Believers By the way... for number crunchers, Michele and I talk about 12-Step recovery effectiveness - how many people try meetings/program and find lasting sobriety. Here's some numbers for your note pad. In 2008, Arthur S, Tom E and Glenn C wrote a report called, AA Recovery Outcomes: Contemporary Myth and Misconception. This study was based on AA triennial surveys (available to anyone at AA Archives at the General Service Office of AA in New York, NY). Comparing surveys from 1977 to 1989 the report notes that 50% of alcoholics who stay three months are still sober at one year.  In Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: the role of the social contagion of hope(2019), Professor David Best reports, “...reviewing the evidence around the prevalence of recovery; with the strongest supporting evidence coming form a review for the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) by Sheedy and Whitter (2009). They concluded that of all those who experience a lifetime substance dependence, 58% will achieve stable recovery. Although White’s (2012) review of 415 papers researched a more conservative conclusion that just over half of those with a lifetime substance disorder will eventually achieve recovery.” Best also reports of a pessimism among front line workers. Before presenting his recent research, and the findings of others, to treatment workers, an audience was asked, “What percentage of clients do you predict eventually find sustainable recovery?” The average given was 7%. So there is a popular negative bias about outcome rates and expectations from people caring for persons with addiction.    

 Rebellion Dogs Radio Episode #50 – January 2020 Download a PDF if you like (click here) “Carry the message” beyond the meeting  Warm wishes to you for 2020, Happy New Year, happy new decade, happy one-day-at-a-time. Episode #50 of Rebellion Dogs Radio and this corresponding blog is/was composed in the early days of the new year and a new decade.  We’re going to reflect a wee bit on what’s happened in the last ten years and pontificate a bit on what our next decade may hold in store.  “Sea change or sea-change is an English idiomatic expression which denotes a substantial change in perspective, especially one which affects a group or society at large, on a particular issue (Wikipedia).”  For members of secular AA, we may be both the “group” and the “issue” mentioned in this sea-change definition. Secular AA has grown but we are not well known. How can we bring our message out of the closet and into the mainstream?  Maybe secular AA isn’t a secret shame of recovery advocates, but we would likely fail a “brand-identification” test if we surveyed caregivers who help alcoholics: Employee Assistance Program workers, correctional and law-enforcement workers, treatment professionals and other medical workers. Our obscurity isn’t anyone’s fault, but our lack of outreach won’t correct without “a program of action.”  Can we look at the first twenty years of the millennium as the growth-stage of secular AA groups? The 20-year growth has been remarkable.  As far as the number of meeting times for AA atheists and agnostics goes, in the year 2000, under 50 secular AA meeting times were offered worldwide. At the end of the first decade of Century-21, we doubled to about 100 meeting times of atheist/agnostic AA groups. In the last decade, wow: according to secularaa.org we freethinkers meet 524 times a week worldwide in secular AA meetings.  At a natural time of reflection such as this, a five-fold growth over a decade is something to think about.  There was no International Conference of Secular AA in 2010. There were limited books, blogs and podcasts for nonbelievers.  This past decade has seen a proliferation of content for and from secular-minded AA members. The God Word: Agnostics and Atheists in AA is one of the newest pamphlets available for the literature table and the Grapevine’s One Big Tent: Atheist and Agnostic members share their Experience, Strength and Hope had the most pre-orders of any new Grapevine book.  Many of us depend on secular recovery podcasts that didn’t exist in 2010. There may have been zero dating back to 2000. Not all secular 12-Step literature is “conference approved.” Many AA’s are writing memoirs and secular 12-Step books, stories and collections of stories. The “reading room” page of RebellionDogsPublishing.com has—while not every great offerings---dozens of great godless recovery literature written, in many cases by AA members who don’t believe in a sobriety-granting, prayer-answering higher power. In fact, the Rebellion Dogs website didn’t exist in 2010. Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life was being written but would not be published until January of 2013.    I don’t mean to single out Beyond Belief; it is one of many books that have altered the 12-Step and greater-recovery community. There was no way to know these remarkable books would mean so much to so many.  At this new-decade time of reflection, I am humbled by your reaction to our book of musings. Beyond Belief crossed over the 16,000 copies mark. This volume of sales is not game-changer material as far as the publishing biz is concerned. AA’s own Daily Reflections sells 150,000 copies every year. Other daily devotionals outsell AA’s own. If I wanted to sell more books, I would have written a daily reflection book for the theistically inclined. That market is bigger, hungrier and spends their way to spirituality. But I wrote a book that I wanted, that I needed, but could not find in the marketplace. I wrote a book because there seemed to be an unmet need.  I didn’t know if it would appeal to dozens or thousands; that wasn’t the point. I don’t know 16,000 people - but you do. The books success has been due to fans who buy many and give them away or recommend books to loved ones. Thanks to booksellers and book lovers because I know you are sharing your enthusiasm. This isn’t what I wanted to blog about today, but at this time of reflection I just wanted to say, “Thanks.” Here is one letter I got this week—no last name or location is used. I don’t mean to embarrass anyone, but I want to say thanks to Pat H and all of you. I love introducing loved ones to books and music. You have made it clear that I’m not alone. Here’s what Pat wrote this week:  Dear Joe C,  Today I read the daily reading from Beyond Belief knowing that tomorrow I will start at the beginning for the fifth time. The book is a bit grubby now but still so important to my recovery.  I go to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting in Anonymous-town, England and have got at least three more people in my group reading Beyond Belief, all of us appreciating it very much.  So a great big thank you for this most important and helpful resource.  I wish you well in 2020. It is a good work you and your team do there at Rebellion Dogs. Thank you.  With all good wishes, Pat H  Good wishes to you too, Pat. And thanks to everyone who shares what they read and also, those who share what they write. I am inspired by so many of you. That concludes this blog’s look in the rearview mirror.  There is no prescribed AA “right” way or “wrong” way. Each of us uses what is best for ourselves—without closing the door to other kinds of help we may find valuable at another time. And each of us tries to respect others’ rights to do things differently.  Living Sober © A.A World Service   Let’s talk about what might be next for secular AA and the larger addiction/ recovery community. Not everyone is a reader and that’s where AA meetings come in. Secular AA meetings offer that human connection that AA is infamous for and bypasses one of the classic objections to AA: “But isn’t AA religious?”  This Living Sober passage was 30+ years of AA’s collective experience, at the time of printing. This remains to be true in AA; I see many examples of AA pathways that work; we all do. Let’s talk about the value of secular AA gatherings and how we can transform from being the best kept secret in recovery to becoming common knowledge in recovery.  We aren’t starting at zero. Some healthcare professionals already include agnostic/atheists AA groups (along with other special purpose AA groups) as a tool in what Joe Nowinski calls, developing “an individualized health plan.” Dr. Nowinski writes in his handbook, Twelve Step Facilitation: A Therapeutic Approach to Treatment and Recovery (Revised 2017)  Diversity and Democracy: Anyone wishing to implement TSF [Twelve Step Facilitation] should be aware of the great diversity that exists within the Twelve Step culture, as this awareness can add to the effectiveness of the program. Today, it is easy, especially in urban centers, to find fellowship groups specifically for women, for men, for the LGBTQ community, for young people, for older people, for clergy, for agnostics and atheists, for nurses or doctors, and so on. There are also Twelve Step groups for any number of cultural and ethnic groups. Looking at the official literature of Twelve Step fellowships reveals themes common to addiction and recovery, but meetings themselves are run differently and vary greatly. This is one reason why newcomers to Twelve Step fellowships are encourages to ‘try out’ a number of meetings—to explore and find one or more groups where they will feel most comfortable (p 21).  Other scholarly findings…  “Some atheists and agnostic clients reported AA-related benefit … there are multiple pathways for behavior change in AA, not all of which rely on spiritual beliefs and practices.”  Journal of Studies on Alcohol (2002)[i]   “A.A. is so decentralized that in a very real sense, there really is no such single entity as “Alcoholics Anonymous”—only A.A. members and local A.A. groups that reflect a broad and ever-increasing variety of A.A. experience. ... The number of registered secular AA meetings in the U.S. has grown from a few dozen in the early 2000s to more than 400, and two international conventions of atheist and agnostic AA members have been held to date.”  William L. White (with Ernest Kurtz, PhD)[ii]  This decade, NAADAC (National Association of Addiction Professionals) amended their Code of Ethics reflecting the duty to accommodate a more diverse clientele. Here is a sample of the NAADAC Code of Ethics language:  Principle IV: Working in a Culturally Diverse World  Addiction Professionals shall be knowledgeable and aware of cultural, individual, societal, and role differences amongst the clients they serve. Providers shall offer services that demonstrate appropriate respect for the fundamental rights, dignity and worth of all clients.   So, the message—a responsive AA that speaks a contemporary language that we believe will better resonate with today’s newcomer to recovery—won’t fall on deaf ears. Professionals who come in contact with persons with alcohol and other addictions are looking for more arrows in their quiver to individualize service and meet changing client/patient needs.  This is a good time for members of the secular AA community and professionals to chat. Can the helping professionals find us; how easy are we to find? Is the time and location of your secular AA group, or mine,  known to all professionals making referrals to our fellows who are currently suffering from alcohol use disorder?  AA is a household name but in the outreach I do, it’s news to many that meetings are available that cater to potential members that prefer an irreligious meeting format. You and I know that today, while there isn’t a secular AA meeting within a thirty-minute drive of everyone yet, most urban centers have one or more secular AA meetings and new meetings continue to get started. Online meetings are growing in popularity, too and filling the gaps where geography is still an issue.  In the first two decades we’ve gone from less than 50 to over 500 meeting times. Maybe the next decade, the 2020’s, will be looked back as the getting-the-word-out era. You and I have a role to play in our local community. Small efforts can lead to substantial results.  I chair an outreach committee as part of my duties on Secular AA, the board stewards our biennial ICSAA. We have some other duties and AA service to do, between our International Conference dates. Not all the outreach committee members are board members. Anyone can join the committee if you’d like to be the local outreach contact for your area, or if you’d like to work behind the scenes—not everyone that helps with outreach has to be a public face of AA. Maybe, you are aligned with a professional organization; some of our committee are in health care or work in the legal system. Right now, we’re working a few initiatives in both healthcare and the criminal-justice system. We are working on literature and guides for local and national efforts.  Like the larger AA service structure, we’re not top-down. You can do your own thing independently and you don’t need permission. But if there’s anything we can do to help, [email protected] is a good way to start a conversation.  So, getting involved in this committee is one way to get proactive. We have no geographic boundaries. Current committee members are from Canada and USA, but this is just as a result of who has stepped up, so far.  Hate committee meetings? I understand. Here is an incomplete list of things you or I can do personally, or with the support of our home group’s business meeting.  Be more active in your existing General Service Structure by volunteering in putting on meetings in hospitals and institutions or joining your local PI, CPC or treatment committees.  Plan a special open-house meeting at your group and call it, “invite a professional.” If members are comfortable discretely disclosing their own membership in AA with your family doctor or treatment counselor or lawyer, once a year, your group could put on an open-house meeting with a speaker or two and an abridged meeting format that includes some short description of what AA is and how we operate and how secular AA fits within AA-as-a-whole.  Your group can create its own business card, postcard or trifold as a hand-out. If you’re comfortable, have a contact name or email for anyone wishing to refer a client/patient to your meeting.    Attend a community health fair and speak with people at the various booths. After you’ve been to your first local health fair, you may discuss the idea with your group of having your own booth at the next health fair. If AA is already there, volunteer your group members to do shifts to be available for anyone who has questions about AA for atheists and agnostics.  Create a webpage, social media page and/or blog to help potential members find you, along with those who refer us to meetings. If you already have a website, consider a ‘for professionals’ page.  Speak to your meeting landlord. Are you in a community center, a school, a Unitarian Universalist Congregation? Maybe they would welcome a poster or notice in the next newsletter or have a couple of you come to a speaking engagement at one of their events.  Write a blog or newspaper article about secular AA.  Ask a local treatment center if they would like your group to host a service meeting for their clients.  Your home group or mine could design, fund and run a Google or Facebook ad informing interested parties of where and when our group meets. Yeah, AA has always been in telephone directories or ran small ads in the personal section of local newspapers. Such a public information effort is still attraction, rather than promotion.  Here’s some guidelines from our General Service Office…  The Public Information (P.I.) Handbook[iii] addresses Why? and How?  “We carry the message by getting in touch with and responding to the media, schools, industry, and other organizations which can report on the nature and purpose of A.A. and what it can do for alcoholics.  This workbook will guide you through the Public Information process. The pages that follow suggest ways individuals can organize and perform P.I. work, as well as activities that have been successful for local P.I. committees.  Those undertaking P.I. work for the first time, whether it be at the area, district, group, or intergroup/central office level, are encouraged to read and take guidance from the information contained here. It is suggested that members taking part in P.I. work should have several years of continuous sobriety.  The first Public Information committee in A.A. was formed by the General Service Board in 1956. At that time, the following statement of ‘A.A.’s movement-wide public information policy’ was written and approved by the General Service Conference:  In all public relations, A.A.’s sole objective is to help the still suffering alcoholic. Always mindful of the importance of personal anonymity we believe this can be done by making known to him, and to those who may be interested in his problems, our own experience as individuals and as a Fellowship in learning to live without alcohol. We believe that our experience should be made available freely to all who express sincere interest. We believe further that all efforts in this field should always reflect our gratitude for the gift of sobriety and our awareness that many outside A.A. are equally concerned with the serious problem of alcoholism.  As our co-founder, Bill W., wrote: Public Information takes many forms — the simple sign outside a meeting place that says ‘A.A. meeting tonight;’ listing in local phone directories; distribution of A.A. literature; and radio and television shows using sophisticated media techniques. Whatever the form, it comes down to one drunk carrying the message to another drunk, whether through personal contact or through the use of third parties and the media. The needs and experiences of people in your own area, large or small, urban or rural, will affect what you decide to do. The suggestions in this workbook are just that — suggestions — to spark your thinking on how best to work at carrying the message.”  PI has been around longer than Cooperation with the Professional Community (CPC) which was an offshoot of PI started in 1970. The CPC Committee Manual[iv] goes on to say:  “A.A. has always valued friends in the professional fields. These associations have been mutually beneficial and completely in keeping with the A.A. Traditions.”  As a practical matter, check these manuals for guidelines about Traditions (anonymity, attraction – not promotion, etc.), and suggested goals for you and/or your CPC committees. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel; most of what AA-as-a-whole has learned over the years can be applied to any efforts that you or I embark on to inform the public about secular AA meetings. We are like any of AA’s special purpose groups. There is a role for women’s meetings to outreach to women’s shelters or treatment centers, young people’s groups are best suited to outreach to teen/youth social services, LGBTQ+ positive group members will speak as peers, talking about AA in the queer community and the AA role in addiction and recovery. For the same reason, who better to talk about a secular approach to AA that atheist and agnostic members.  The pamphlet Speaking at Non-AA Meetings[v] is a good guide, too. What a group of nursing or psychiatry students need/want to know about AA is different than the details you might go into with a newcomer. In part, it reads:  “One question frequently asked is, ‘Should I tell my story?’ Those who have had experience in speaking to nonalcoholic audiences have learned that the average person wants to know what Alcoholics Anonymous is, what it does, and what he or she can do to cooperate, rather than to hear the personal-history type of talk that a member might give at an A.A. meeting.  On the other hand, experienced speakers have found that it is helpful to relate incidents from their own drinking history to illustrate a point. Citing the progressive nature of alcoholism or summarizing your case history can lend conviction to the rest of your talk.  Starting on page 15 of this pamphlet, you will find a list of questions that are usually asked by non-A.A. audiences. These are based on the results of a survey made by your General Service Office among groups and individuals in different parts of the United States and other countries. The number of questions you cover will depend on the speaking time you are allotted and whether there will be a question-and-answer period after your talk.  The topics that you will select for discussion may also depend, to some degree, on the particular audience that you are addressing…”  I first started talking about AA in high schools in 1977 along with a more experienced AA because I was a teenager. The other member would explain what AA was and wasn’t, anonymity, how we cooperate with professionals, how our peer-to-peer structure differs from medical intervention, how to find meetings, what an open or closed meeting means, our relationship with Al-Anon and Alateen, etc. When I spoke, I would share what it was like, how I came to AA, what life’s like now.  While there is no right or wrong way give a Public Information (or CPC) talk, I’ve seen a few things over the years that I felt left room for improvement. I have seen people do talks to  high school, police academy or medical students and the speaker goes into  details about their own step-work, about AA being spiritual, not religious and personal details that would interest a prospective AA member but I don’t think focuses on what the public wants to know. Professionals aren’t overly enamoured with what Bill W said in 1935 or 1965. AA members are interested in the personal journey; professionals want to know how AA members found out about AA, how many meetings they go to, the demographics, the variations in meeting styles/formats, etc. The A.A. Membership Survey[vi] is specifically designed by the PI trustees’ committee to answer the kind of questions the public wants to know. Referring to it as a guide for outreach can be very helpful.   I remember a great song writing teacher who had years of music production and been in many bands. About song writing, he would say, “My father taught me that if you want to catch fish, think like the fish.” What he meant is as a fisherman, he might like a certain part of the lake or being out on the water at a certain time of day. He might have a favorite lure or bait. But for best results, pick the location, time and lures that fish prefer.  The message to songwriters was to not write the music and lyrics that meet your own needs—write what the listener on the other end of the radio wants to hear. If you think listeners want to hear how you feel, maybe some do. But for hit songs, you better show listeners that you know how they feel.  The lesson from song writing applies to AA outreach; know your audience and gear your communications accordingly. What they want/need to know will be different from what you or I want to hear when we’re at a meeting.  Doing outreach work specifically about secular AA, I would explain briefly about special purpose meetings in general, how long AA for atheist and agnostics groups have been around, how some of our members attend other AA meetings, or participate in other mutual-aid or therapeutic care, while some of us find everything we need at our atheist/agnostic group,  literature and/or secular AA conferences.  We can create our own flyers, pamphlets, postcards or websites. A lot of existing AA outreach material is fairly secular already.  The pamphlet, AA as a Resource for the Healthcare Professional[vii] won’t make claims like “real alcoholics can’t recover from alcoholism without conscious contact with God.” The pamphlet states, “But no belief in God is necessary; atheists and agnostics find plenty of company in A.A.”  So have a look at what’s already available and if you need to, or prefer to, create your own handouts or internet-messaging.  A General Service newsletter to professionals, currently available, is called, About AA[viii] In a recent issue (Summer 2019), we hear from Nancy McCarthy one of our nonalcoholic (Class A) trustees. Her expertise is as a corrections professional who has worked in the criminal justice system within the greater St. Louis area in addition to working with Florida State University on new models for individuals coming in and out of prisons.  “Nancy highlights a recent article titled ‘Public Intoxication: Sobering Centers as an Alternative to Incarceration, Houston, 2010–2017,’ in the American Journal of Public Health, in which the authors conclude the following: ‘misuse of substances has a significant impact on public health, directly contributing to crime, health issues, and lost productivity.’ Starting in 2000, several cities in California, Texas and elsewhere established ‘sobering centers’ as a form of public-health intervention. …This past spring, Leslie Backus (another nonalcoholic trustee), a health treatment provider and CEO at a rehab facility located in Savannah, Georgia, attended the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) gathering in Orlando, Florida. Over 2,300 attendees participated in this conference, and over 200 visitors stopped by the booth, asking questions and collecting in-formation about A.A. ‘It was a great opportunity to assist local A.A. committees to meet and communicate with professionals.’”  I always find something new in these newsletters and just as two alcoholics talking together can relate best, professionals, hearing about AA from other professionals bridges the knowledge gap, effectively. Previous About AA newsletters focused on AA for the older alcoholic, the armed forces and common misconceptions about AA. From Spring of 2017:  “‘Medication-assisted therapy is big in the treatment community and there is a misconception that A.A is somehow against medication; This is not true. A.A. as such has no opinion on what medication is appropriate for an individual. While it is true that some people may substitute addictions — pills for alcohol, say — many A.A. members truly need medication, and Alcoholics Anonymous does not offer medical advice. This is spelled out in the pamphlet The A.A. Member — Medication and Other Drugs, which clearly shares our experience of both situations — the possibility of alcoholics abusing other substances and the clear reality that some A.A. members need prescribed medications. It also suggests that it is the responsibility of our members to be honest with their doctors about their alcoholism and how medication affects them, and that all medical advice should come from a qualified health professional. I have shown this pamphlet to treatment professionals who seem surprised to see it. They have said: ‘That must be a brand-new pamphlet.’ But, no, it has been around since 1984 and was updated in 2011.’”  If ever there was a time to be talking to professionals about secular AA, isn’t it now?  Here’s what is, was, and will be in the news in the year ahead and will be on the minds of professionals who come in contact with persons suffering from alcohol use disorder:  Pew Research[ix] “the share of “nones” – religiously unaffiliated adults who describe their religion as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has reached 26%, up from 17% a decade ago.”  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation[x] “Atheist nurse wins fight to end mandatory 12-step addiction treatment for health staff in Vancouver.”  Legal Professional Blog[xi] “Treatment Obligation Violates Religious Rights: [James] Lindon raises the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in his objection to the condition that he re-engage with OLAP [Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program] … Lindon states that he is an atheist and that OLAP programs are substantially based on Alcoholics Anonymous, and similar programs that have a religious aspect to them. He notes that AA’s 12-step program includes prayers and recitations from the Bible.”  In our outreach efforts we may wish to avoid engaging or appearing to be engaged in the salacious public controversy. But with these type of stories in the news, there is no better time to communicate the role of secular AA and how we fit into AA-as-a-whole.  There are more options than ever before available for irreligious approaches to recovery from addiction. AA would neither endorse nor oppose Life Ring, SMART, Women for Sobriety nor any other secular approaches to recovery. We aren’t in competition for a limited supply of alcoholics. What we AA’s have going for us is that AA is ubiquitous; we’d be hard pressed today to find someone who’s never heard of AA. The added knowledge about AA “without a prayer” ought to be well-received by caregivers in 2020. Professionals will already have come across studies and data endorsing AA as improving outcome rates. What we can add is that secular AA offers these benefits without fear of clients/patients being influenced to embrace prayer and theological philosophy.  Our current AA literature can help carry the message. Here’s just a few excerpts:   “I came into the Fellowship seven years ago as a self-proclaimed atheist. … I get what I need from the members of this Fellowship and the tools of the Twelve Step program; I can give this healing process a chance.” Sheila’s Story, The ‘God’ Word  “In Step Two, the ‘power greater than ourselves’ meant A.A., but not just the members I knew. It meant all of us, everywhere, sharing a concern for one another and thereby creating a spiritual resource stronger than any one of us could provide.” Jan, (agnostic) alcoholic from Do You Think You’re Different?   “I don’t need God to have a higher purpose in my life and to practice the principles of the Steps. I simply need to believe that with help from the Fellowship and my inner resources I can change my own attitude and actions and continue to enjoy the enormous benefit that change has brought into my life.” Alex M., Grapevine, October 2016  If your new year includes a resolution and that resolution includes getting active in service work, maybe you’ll consider spending some time and energy in carrying the message about secular AA in our communities.  In the last year, I have been a guest on podcasts, been referred to a journalist for the Canadian Atheist Magazine, spoke at United Church congregation run by an atheist minister, I volunteer at a treatment center, talked to the director of the Physicians Assistance Program in Ontario, attended the Recovery Capital Conference in Vancouver and Toronto and started a draft for a secular AA outreach handbook. Once I got going, other people referred me, and opportunities present themselves. I like service work in mainstream AA. I find service work has less religious talk than Big Book meetings; go figure?  There is so much more I’d like to do. Our group is at U of Toronto; they teach doctors, psychologists and teachers. We should really have an annual information day for students and faculty.  Not everyone who loves AA will be happy or comfortable doing outreach. Just coming to meetings on time and welcoming newcomers is such important work. Some people are hyper-cautious about being seen in public talking as an addict. Stigma is real and some of us stay behind the scenes. There are both front-of-stage and back-room roles for outreach work in AA. So, think about it. Talk about it at your business meeting. Let’s see what we can do to help the still-suffering alcoholic, deploying the tools and opportunities available in 2020.  Join the conversation. If you’re already making headway, please share; if you wonder how you can help and where to start, get in touch. You can reach me at [email protected] and/or [email protected]  Music on today's show is from Toronto indie artist, Jeremy Voltz. Visit his website HERE Download a PDF if you like (click here) [i] J. Scott Tonigan, W.R. Miller, Carol Schermer, “Atheists, Agnostics and Alcoholics Anonymous” Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 9/2002  [ii] http://www.williamwhitepapers.com/blog/2018/03/the-secular-wing-of-aa.html  [iii] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/M-27i_PubInfWorkbk.pdf  [iv] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/m-41i_CPCWorkbook.pdf  [v] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-40_speaknonAAmeet.pdf  [vi] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-48_membershipsurvey.pdf  [vii] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-23_aaasaresourceforhcp1.pdf  [viii] https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/about-aa-newsletter-for-professionals  [ix] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/13/19-striking-findings-from-2019/  [x] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-byron-wood-nurse-12-step-religious-discrimination-settlement-1.5391650  [xi] https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2019/09/ohio-considers-atheism-defense-and-sex-with-client-in-two-bar-cases.html

Have you ever seen someone pick up The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous and say, "How did I get sober? The same way as the first 100 members did, working the Twelve Steps, exactly as written in this book!" Fun fact - or more accurately, fun facts about what we believe to be "facts." This narrative above is a compelling story; convincing, especially if you hear it repeatedly. In so many words, I've heard this, from the podium, from across the table, in coffee shops. The speaker is sincere; I don't doubt that this is how they got sober - working the Twelve Steps, as outlined in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. But is that how the original 100 got or stayed sober? Well, we're going to talk about that on Rebellion Dogs Radio.       It's been 40 years since a scholarly account of early history was made available to us. It was Not God: The History of Alcoholics Anonymous by Ernie Kurtz. As of November 5th, the latest, Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A.A. by William Schaberg revisits early AA by comparing the stories we've all heard against contemporaneous records, letters, documents and the Lois Wilson , Bill W's wife, all tucked away in different archives.   I’m a rare-book dealer,” William Schaberg tells us. “I bought a Multilith copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous which was printed two months before the book was published. I needed to know the rarity of what I held in my hands, so I went searching to find out how many copies were printed. I got mixed information; some said 100 copies, 200, 300, Bill Wilson himself once said there were 400 copies circulated. I applied to the General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous archives to do some research. In one of the 1940 AA reports it said that it cost $165 to print the copies so I was looking for the invoice to show me how many copies they got for their one hundred and sixty-five bucks.  I never found the invoice. It’s not to be found in GSO in New York or in Stepping Stones (Bill and Lois Wilson’s home in Bedford NY). Looking at the back story, what I did find were documents from 1939, 1938 and going back further, 1937. So much of what I was reading contradicted what I had heard over the years, what Bill Wilson himself had said in recounting the early years of AA. I was fascinated with the fact that these documents didn’t stack up with what I thought to be AA’s history. I thought I’d write a book about it. I thought it would be a 250-page book, focused on just an 18-month period from the book’s conception, October of 1937, to April 1939 when it was printed. Now it turned out to be a very big book—600 pages of text; that’s because there was so much raw data from primary documents, I just couldn’t drive by some of that stuff.” On Rebellion Dogs Radio Episode 49, author William Schaberg takes us through his great reveals of eleven years of primary document research. Schaberg challenges what many have been told about the “running blind” days of AA. He’s not fault-finding; he’s fact-finding. "The truth will set us free," right? Some of AA's most re-told stories are accurate and some of it is parables, the essence of what happened but not exactly factual; in some cases, mythical.  Ernie Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham, wrote in 2014:  “What is the relationship between narrative and myth? Myth often presents itself as narrative… Does that somehow invalidate it? Perhaps, for some individuals. But if we remember that ‘a myth is something that never happened because it is always happening,’ the narrative wrapping may be deep truth’s best alias. There is something about how people hear such stories.”[i]  So, I believe the person who tells how they got sober, while waving The Big Book in their hand. I believe what they mean - but not all of what they say. Following the Steps, as laid out in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, that was their salvation. About that: this dutiful adherence to Big Book instructions as roadmap to recovery may be truer of our most recent 100 AA members than it was of our first 100. However, "by the book" isn't my story; it isn't every AA story of recovery. I worked the AA program to the best of my ability. I never read the Big Book or heard it quoted as borrowed authority by 1970s Montreal AA members, where I came from. We AAs talked about AA and the Steps in their own words based on our own worldview. I was sober over ten years and living in Toronto before I ever owned or read, Alcoholics Anonymous. Hearing this pervasive chorus of "as described in the Big Book" over and over again for the last 30 years, it sometimes made me wonder if there wasn't something wrong with me or how I got sober. Was there a place in AA for me? Was I so strange?  Was my sobriety on shaky ground?  Wait until you listen to Episode 49 for the rest of this story. You'll hear AA mythology tested against what documents reveal about the going on of 1937 to 1939 AA. Bill Schaberg unpacks some of our persistent myths: Myth # 1) the Big Book - a collective writing. Why have we been told that Bill W was "the umpire" as all of AA was petitioning for their own slant on the the book? It's not a conspiracy; it's the normal way storytelling is shaped. “Victory has many fathers; failure is an orphan.” Count Galezzo Ciano, 1942[ii]  Myth #2, the genesis of the Twelve Steps of AA. Myth #3, the co-founder myth, still makes Schaberg crazy when he hears these stories repeated. We'll let him tell you all about it. William Schaberg reflects, "The idea that we have to read the first 2 ½ pages of “How It Works” at every meeting-if you’re going to four or five meetings every week it becomes blah, blah, blah-I’ve been to meetings where people just skip the first ten minutes of the meeting because it’s the same stuff being read every meeting. So why are we doing that?  AA is a mystery, and I’m happy that it’s a mystery. But as long as AA keeps evolving and I hope this book is at least a small element in the way AA evolves over the next 20 or 30 years—hopefully. We need to start opening up and talking. Whether you like this book or you don’t, if you rail against the heresy of it, and I’m sure there will be people who do that, we need to start talking about this stuff. We need to get to a place where we can survive. The longer we go; the longer the time distance from 1939 when The Big Book was first published, the more incomprehensible it is to people, the less relevant it is to people." Fact Check/Correction: Around 55 minutes into the podcast I misquoted AA's own statistics from GSR. I was referring back to a blog "Founders, Followers and Flounderers," when I talked about how AA has grown in America this century and we've suffered losses in Canada and Internationally. I said "there are less groups in Canada and Internationally today, compared to the turn of the century. To correct, it's 16% less members in Canada and 31% less members Internationally (non-USA/Canada). HOT OFF THE PRESS: William Schaberg Q&A on TheFix.com Order Writing the Book Visit WritingTheBigBook.com [i] Kurtz, Ketcham, Experiencing Spirituality: Finding Meaning Through Storytelling (2014), p 156  [ii] Italian diplomat Count Ciano quoted this local proverb in 1942. JFK, in a 1961 reaction the Bay of Pigs also said, “Victory has 100 fathers, defeat is an orphan.”      

 Rebellion Dogs Radio Episode #48 – October 2019 View/Download as a PDF CLICK HERE Recovery Capital Conference “chimes” in with the latest in recovery policy and practices  ”Hello, from the New Westminster 2019 Recovery Capital Conference main-stage,” Pictured here are Dr. Ray Baker and Jessica Cooksey talking about Recovery Oriented Systems of Care to treatment professionals, policy makers and harm reduction care givers.  A warm shout-out to my NAADAC friends (American Association of Addiction Treatment Professionals) who met in Orlando for the 2019 annual conference. Sorry I couldn’t make it this year – I have been lurking at social media and presentation materials on the http://www.naadac.org site. It looked from We The North like another great year.  Last year, at Recovery Capital Conference in Canada, we talked with Giuseppe Ganci (Conference Chairperson) of Last Door Recovery Society about this conference. The feeling among organizers was that we get together to talk about addiction a lot; how about a conference to explore, study, brainstorm about recovery? That’s what the Recovery Capital brand is all about. Dr. Ray Baker will join me on Rebellion Dogs Radio for a recap of his Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Halifax and Toronto stops for the tour. Jessica Cooksey and he were on the program at every stop.  But first, Step One: let’s talk about the state of addiction or more broadly substance use, today. Here’s some findings from the 2018 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) study of drug use and health[i].  Here’s some big numbers for context: This is just substance use, so it includes recreational use as well as addiction. 60% of people surveyed use alcohol, tobacco and prescription or street drugs. So, there is 109 million who didn’t use anything in the last month – 109 million sober people – so much for excuse #1: Everyone’s doing it. Of 165 million people who use mind/mood altering substances, alcohol is #1 with almost 140 million Americans drinking, 60 million smoke tobacco and 28 million smoke weed. The misuse of pain relief medicine make up 3 million and another 1.7 million misused prescribed stimulants. Two million’s drug of (no) choice was cocaine. Then the numbers go down for methamphetamine, hallucinogens and heroin at the bottom with 354,000 Americans who used in the last month.  News pegs are all about opioids and tobacco but booze is #1. Let’s get into our area of interest where alcohol is concerned and these numbers may play out for other substances, too.  Of 140 million drinkers, 67 million are binge drinkers (48%). “Heavy alcohol users” are estimated at 16.6 million – that’s 25% of any of the binge drinkers and 11.8% of all users.  Here are some noteworthy findings:  The percentage of people with Alcohol Use Disorder in the past year has declined from 2002 to 2018. 18 to 25-year-olds are the most likely to have AUD than any other age group. For people “aged 12 or older with a past year substance use disorder”, 15 million Americans have an alcohol disorder, 8 million are affected by illicit drugs, 4 million with marijuana, 1.7 million with pain reliever-misuse. Total past-year Substance Use Disorder (SUD) cases adds up to 20.3 million people. “Double winners,” people with both alcohol and illicit drug use disorder are 2.7 million people.  My point here, before we turn to talk about recovery, is to identify the clear and present need for people who may be trying to transition from substance use disorder to recovery.  And recovery is working. Psychiatry.org reported that while we’re going to meetings, they are taking notes and compiling data:  A new meta-analysis examines 20 randomized controlled studies of spiritual or religious based programs for substance use problems. Previous research has identified spirituality and religiosity as having important roles as a protective factor against substance use and in recovery from substance use disorders. Spiritual/religious based interventions, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), are commonly part of treatment for substance use problems. This study is the first systematic review and meta-analysis looking at the efficacy of spiritual/religious based interventions for substance use problems.  This report recognizes AA/NA, etc. as religious. That might not be your experience or my experience, especially if you mainly go to secular 12-Step meetings but as Joe Nowinski, author of If You Work It, It Works!: The Science Behind 12 Step Recovery report: studies show that, while atheist/agnostics are less likely to attend 12-Step meetings, those who do attend, respond and do as well as our more religious members.  The Psychiatry.org report from this fall[ii] goes on to say:  The researchers looked at two types of outcomes – substance use reduction/abstinence and improvements in psycho-social-spiritual outcomes (such as spiritual coping, depression, anxiety, employment, relationships).  Most of the studies in the meta-analysis involved Twelve Step Facilitation programs. These programs involve a series of counseling sessions with a professional counselor based on principles of 12-step fellowships such as AA and NA… Based on their analysis of these programs, the research authors conclude that … spiritual/religious based programs were more effective at reducing or eliminating substance use and equally as effective as other programs on broader measure of wellness and function.  Separate studies compare 12-Step approaches to SMART, Women for Recovery and Life Ring and these studies find that a “group of drunks” by any other name, gleans the same positive outcomes.  Episode # 48 includes Dr. Ray Baker, chatting with you about this year’s conference. Ray is a retired addiction medicine doctor and soon-to-be author. Ray (doing most of the work) and me (coaching and publishing) are working on a book together that will be new for 2020 about Recovery Capital. Along with Jessica Cooksey, he was speaking to people about “What is Recovery Capital and what is a Recovery Oriented System of Care?”    I joined Ray and the whole New Westminster BC (Vancouver if you don’t know the Lower Mainland of British Columbia) for the 2019 kick off two-day event. A highlight was the presentation of recent research by David Best, Professor of Criminology in the Department of Law and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University and global expert relating to the addiction recovery field and for the Recovery Movements in the UK and Australia. David Best is the author of nearly 200 peer-reviewed academic papers and another 70 technical reports. This Fall, his new book comes out: Pathways to Desistance and Recovery: The Social Contagion of Hope. I can’t wait.  David Best argues—based largely from his findings—that recovery includes identity change, and four other factors. Research shows that for people emerging from rehab and/or detox, if they know just one person in recovery, this significantly improves outcome rates. From a 2011 British Journal of Psychiatry, David Best reveals the five CHIME “charms” that enable recovery: Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment.    David Best aims to advance a social identity model as a mechanism for understanding the journey to recovery or desistance and the centrality of reintegration into communities for a coherent model and public policy around addiction recovery,[iii] to quote him directly.  I’ll get the exact details that follow wrong and I am undertaking to arrange an interview with this guy to assure I get the facts straight, but I am confident I’m in the ballpark. A study was done—Maybe the UK, USA and Australia—as an extensive longitudinal study that identifies, of persons with substance use disorder who reach out for help, what percentage will be living in recovery five years later—or was it attained five consecutive years—that’s why I need this book, and Dr. Best, if you’re out there—call me; let’s talk. But the percent that met this standard of this study was 58% making it. So, you have a problem with alcohol or other drugs and want help? Chances are it will work; you have better than a 50-50 odds at recovery over addiction.  These same researchers went to, or back to, treatment professionals who helped facilitate these findings. People who treat us were asked, “What percent of people transitioning from addiction to recovery will make it five years?”  Frontline workers were asked how they thought we’d do, and their answer was—on average—7%.  That’s pessimistic. Professionals have a negative bias when they start their day at our detoxes and treatment centers each day. Now in part, this is forgivable; they deal with the chronic recidivism, the retreads that keep cycling through the system. Addiction counselors don’t work with people who are quickly transformed to high scores of recovery capital. These people don’t need ongoing or recurring care.  Best sees optimum care as being three stages: Measure, plan and engage. The presentation was a dose of sober second thought and I will endeavor to have David Best as a guest soon.  But we have Dr. Ray Baker on Rebellion Dogs Radio this show; so “One day at a time!” From beautiful downtown Toronto, Ray will give us a city by city comparison of the problems each area is facing and the audience that attended, plus we’ll talk a bit about his presentation, our upcoming book and where to search the web for resources—and how to guard against mis-information.  Being a do-it-yourself independent publisher, we try to draw attention to indie musical artists, too. Episode 48  ends with a tune from Toronto songstress, Lily Frost with here song, “Red Flag,” a sort of codependent’s anthem about what to do with cheats and addicts like us. This his from her 2017 recording, Rebound.   Find out more:  William White Papers  Lily Frost music  Recovery Capital Conference  [i][i] https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-reports/NSDUHffrBriefingSlides2018_w-final-cover.pdf  [ii] https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2019/09/twelve-step-based-programs-effective-for-substance-use-problems  [iii] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/16066359.2016.1185661 f

VIew or Download as PDF HERE Since 2012, Rebellion Dogs has brought to light some interesting recovery ideas along with the challenges and turmoil facing AA. This includes divergent factions in AA, each of whom feel their view of AA is what’s best for AA; and those others—they’re closed minded and dangerous to newcomers and AA’s future. Today, we ask if our more liberal and conservative extremes, both eyeing the other with suspicion, aren’t nourishing AA instead of tearing us apart. Body temperature requires homeostasis mechanisms to maintain balance when we get cold or warm. Let’s see if Twelve Step/Twelve Tradition societies suffer from, or thrive on, equal and opposite forces.  The sun sets on another June; another Founders Day: June 10, the earmarked symbol that would mark, Bill W helping Dr Bob to get sober and in so doing, saving himself from the craving of drink, as well. That infamous June of 1935 was 84 years ago now. We enter our 85th year as Alcoholics Anonymous which caps off with the Motor City (Detroit) quinquennial self-congratulatory gathering, June of 2020. I expect I’ll be there. Hope to see you. We will look back. We call the pioneers of AA, “founders.” Dead now, we tip our hat to founders, recognizing the efficacy of their leadership. Simply stated, the fellowship they left behind, remains, today. Bill W, in his self-effacing way, referred to himself at public appearances as a co-flounderer. This dismissive language got a laugh but also fended off efforts of others to put him on a pedestal.  When I was a small-business person, mentors said to me, “The quality of your leadership can be best measured by how well your business runs when you’re not there to run it.” That sounds smart and snappy; if it’s true, Bob and Bill are gone and we can look at their roles as leaders, or founders. Stewardship of AA is forevermore in the hands of AA followers, not our founders. Googling “pioneers” and “followers” online, we will see that qualities and personality traits of leaders and followers differ from each other. How does the AA leadership of us followers, differ from the days of all the “big trouble” being brought to the attention of AA pioneers? AA’s cultural makeup matured, from two or three fledgling groups, to groups with a few pamphlets and a book. Rules were added, these same rules would be revoked, Traditions later protected members and groups from rules and subordination.  The style that the founders left the fellowship to us in is called cultural determinism. A tendency, as a society ages is a longing for cultural imposition.  We’ll look at the differences, their relative merits and ponder what may serve AA best. Keep in mind, is our role as stewards to preserve AA exactly as it was in the 1940s? Is our duty to better prepare AA for the newcomer still to come? Are these approaches oppositional? Or does this yin vs. yang create homeostasis, or an equilibrium that makes us stronger?  AA was a teenager in years and Dr. Bob was dying with Cancer. Before succumbing to illness in November of 1950, Bill and Bob talked about turning AA over to the membership; what would look like and what guidance might be available to lean on in times of real (or seeming) crisis? Jimmy B was an early AA archivist and history-speaker. He recalled how the old-timers learned to get out of the way and leave the operations of AA to the two-to-five-year (sober) members. Here’s a bit from Bill W in New York, writing to Rosa and Jimmy B., who lived in San Diego, August 23, 1949:  “What you say is not surprising for we old-timers, nearly all of us, are getting frightfully stale. I know that’s very true of me. I have worked far too long in the trouble department of AA. Anybody who does enough of that will finally go sour or crack up entirely. It is so everywhere. The oldtimers situation is getting to be a real problem. In a sense, it means we all have to start over again and get back to first principles. I am glad to see at the group and intergroup levels that our service affairs are in the hands of two to five year old people. Moreover, these folks wer not so badly burned as we oldsters. As a class they are not so screwy.”  “The spirit of rotation” was learned from experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. There are pamphlets, Grapevine articles and Twelve Tradition essays about these very issues. Rotating leadership (service) is now part of 12-Step/12-Tradition ethos.    But… you’re waiting for a but, aren’t you?  A leaderless society is not without risk. Pioneers have a higher risk tolerance than their followers. Vision is a key motivator to pioneers; fear—fear of change, as an example—is a key motivator for followers. Innovators, certainly AA founders, are not proprietorial – imitators and adaptors don’t threaten or offend leaders. Here is just such an example.    The first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous was a big red book. Another visionary, Ed W wrote The Little Red Book a study guide to the Big (red) Book. There was no conference to approve or disapprove such new initiatives when The Little Red Book was written; there was an idea of group conscience but certainly no Traditions or Concepts of World Service. This Little Red Book was still shared around with and by some members, when I came around in the 1970s. I hear it quoted and see it passed around less today, but it’s still around. Hazelden currently publishes it. It’s grown into a franchise by those devoted to it. Bill P wrote a study guide (to the study guide) in 1998. Karen Casey and (another) Bill W in 2004 wrote, The Little Red Book For Women.  How were such things handled and what was felt about these unsanctioned side projects by the stakeholders (the royalty recipients) of our Big Book? Here’s what Bob and Bill had to say about this new “kid on the block,” The Little Red Book[i]  Bill W November 1946: “Everybody who has read it seems to like it very much—which of course was to be expected!”  Dr. Bob December 1946: “I have enjoyed your little book very much and know that it will prove to be a lot of help to many.”  Pioneers, for the most part, welcome more pioneering. While followers might be more inclined to reify work, canonize founders and dismiss new approaches, founders are hungry for better outcome rates and new ways of doing things. The importance of the cause and not the credit is what motivates many innovators. Ed had identified a need, whereby some might want a more cohesive Step by Step narrative—for it’s day. Pioneer Bill showed no inclination to supress Ed’s efforts. Bob and Bill never said, “Nice book; but it has no place in an AA meeting!” or “Don’t call it AA.”  Written accounts reveal Bill W’s concern for the suffering alcoholics, that we failed to satisfy in the AA of the day. Why would he be insulted or threatened by Ed, and presumably others? In fact, maybe Bill was inspired by Ed. Some time after Ed’s book, Bill’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (1953), was published. At the time, the Twelve Traditions was what Bill really wanted to advance but who would buy, read, or pass around a book about Twelve Traditions? It wouldn’t be a best-seller.  When was the last Traditions meeting you attended? Anyone out there: have you been to even one Twelve Tradition meeting in the last month? It’s been more than a month for me.  How much of Bill’s thought process to start the book off with essays on the Steps was informed by the warm reception enjoyed by The Little Book? We only know what Bill wrote, “Everybody who has read it seems to like it very much—which of course was to be expected!”  Now, this idea of turning any fellowship over to the members is a visionary’s idea, that’s for sure. Is it the right thing to do and if it is, what are shortcomings we need to look out for?  Let’s go back to the business comparison. The head of a capitalist concern doesn’t turn the power over to the employees. Instead, leaders find another visionary to take over the reins. The new visionary doesn’t follow the first leader’s rule book; they forge a new path. Over years and decades a company is led by a succession of visionaries. The rank and file employees make slight adjustment to the leader as she or he adapts to, or anticipates, a changing marketplace.  What if Henry Ford turned his car company over to the employees?  Ford may have been honored for his nonconformity, maybe even been canonized. The anniversary of the first time assembly-line production were matched with automotive production, might be celebrated by employees, worldwide, every five years. And… with follower's love for preservation, the Ford Motor Company might still be exclusively making and selling Model T’s.  “If it ain't broke, don't fix it!” the Ford group-think of today would assert. “We’re going to preserve the legacy of Ford, whose work was inspired by the hand of God.”  Followers don’t have vision—not to the extent that pioneers do. Pioneers aim is on a moving target. Followers see a still image.  This is some of what caused organizational reification. Bill W would continue asking how can we alter or improve. We who followed, cast his message into an enduring—and unyeilding—monument.  Circa: 1953… Bob S has died and AA’s General Service Conference (GSC) is three years old. The Fellowship is indeed in the hands of the next generation. Bill W and other early adapters are on hand, when called upon. But the voting delegates, trustees and staff will carry the day.  Context: In 1953 there were nearly 6,000 groups attended by 128,000 AA members—twice the members and three times the groups since five years prior. With growth comes promise… along with alarm and growing pains.  To the 75 delegates from USA and Canada, Bill opened the Third GSC with: “We are standing on the threshold of maturity… No one can say in truth that we are really mature yet. This process of maturing will go on as long as we last.”  The GSC would consider 40 new suggestions, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, was hot off the press and conference attendees had business to deal with including new trustees, Grapevine, other literature and financial issues. One of two hotter issues of the day that Bill was asked to address was about variations of the Steps and Traditions among members and groups.  AA members of the day weren’t adhering the the Twelve Steps exactly as written. Some Swedish groups had a Seven Step AA alternative, adapted by a sister fellowship inspired by both The Oxford Group and early AA called, The Link Movement. Their Seven Points, as one variation of AA’s Twelve Steps, formed one example, discussed at the 1953 General Service Conference. We will go into them in slightly more detail, later in this discussion.  Buddhists took the word “God” out of AA’s Twelve Steps and used “Good.” Seafaring AAs preferred a Six Step program in meetings held on vessels and at dock.  Hot off the AA press: Our Great Responsibility – Rediscovering Wisdom from A.A.’s Co-founder[ii] is all of Bill’s General Service Conference talks from 1950 to 1970  The followers—now in charge of AA—were concerned; what was AA to do? How were we to get these nonconformists in line? Bill was asked to speak. A summary of Bill W’s impromptu comments has been recorded in Conference Highlights: Special Report for the Groups on the THIRD GENERAL SERVICE CONFERENCE of A.A. You can read the report HERE.  In August 2018, we discussed Bill’s talk on Variations on AA’s Twelve Steps and Traditions, at AA Beyond Belief (Click here: https://www.aabeyondbelief.org)  Now, with the recordings of Bill’s conference talks transcribed, we can hear exactly from the founders mouth, “on the question of whether this program of ours is frozen as solid as an ice cube or whether there is any elasticity in it or not: whether we are going to get into the business of insisting upon conformity, whether we are going to get into the business of creating an authority that says that these Steps and Traditions have to be this way” in agenda item: Variations in Form of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Here are some segments from AAWS’s newest conference approved Bill W collection—in his own words:  “And then, rather gingerly in the old days, because so many were in fear of being God-bitten, we would sort of sneak it up on the boys that, well, you can't really make this program stick in the experience of most of us anyway, unless you depend on some Higher Power—call it God if you wish, call it the group if you wish, but it won't work very well without that.”  “[before the Traditions] a lot of the membership rules that the group had was to force conformity to those Twelve Steps. In other words, it would be rules like this: to be an A.A. member you must have done all the Twelve Steps, or you must agree with the Twelve Steps. Well, of course, long experience now tells us that there shouldn’t be any ‘musts’ in A.A. In fact, happily, the original suggestion was a suggestion only: twelve suggested Steps. So today we say, ‘Well, this sums up our experience and the more you do with these, the better off you’re going to be.” But folks, its minced, apple or plum: it’s up to you, really.”    “It amazes me how in distant lands this same pioneering story is being reenacted. Some years ago the Twelve Steps came to the attention of a Swede… he takes a look at this program and he thinks that we don’t need twelve steps. His idea was that you needed only seven. So in Sweden today, they have seven steps. Do you think that we should write these Swedes and say you can’t belong to Alcoholics Anonymous unless you print those Twelve Seps the way we got them? No! They are merely going through the old pioneering process that we went through.”  “There is one of these Traditions that really guarantees every A.A. group the absolute right to violate all of them if they wish to. We say here, ‘Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.’ And you must remember that these are suggested Traditions. When we say each group is autonomous, that means in effect that it has a right to be wrong from the viewpoint of the rest of you. My feeling is that the more we insist on strict conformity with these Steps and Traditions, the more resistance against them we create.”  “And if any improvements are to come, who knows: We may get them from anyone.”[iii]  This wasn’t the only controversy Bill was asked to speak about:  On Interracial [AA]: “The sole question is this: How can each locality, from the point of view of its own customs, afford a better opportunity for colored people to get well? The big thing that each us needs to remember concerning this phase of our program is the respect that one section of A.A. ought to accord to the other in the view they hold locally.”[iv]  At the time, AA culture wasn’t so different than the rest of 1950’s North America. Discussion on race and AA ranged from excitement in D.C. over the success of their “colored group”. One southern delegate said that the “colored people” in his state “weren’t alcoholics” and the topic shouldn’t be on the agenda. In the Midwest a delegate referred to Chippewan Indians suggesting “they aren’t typical alcoholics”.  There is much of our past—and present—that calls for inventory and reconciliation in our AA society.  Revisiting the 1953 GSC reveals hostility or worry deeply felt by AA followers. They showed concern or distain for adaptation of AA, even though it was their fellow AA members making these changes. What is widening the gateway to one is a chaotic existential threat to another.  Yes, there is a difference between innovators and adherents. Bill W wasn’t blind to this and he adapted AA to this reality. As a guard against censorship or banning individualism, Traditions protect members and groups from rules. We members point fingers at those others who violated this Tradition or that one—as if Traditions are rules. Traditions are our collective experience. They are designed to guide members, not bind us. Furthermore, Bill W reinforced every members’ rights in the Twelve Concepts for World Service. Warranty Six (Concept XII) reaffirms:  “… the extraordinary liberties which the A.A. Traditions accord to the individual member and to [their] group: no penalty to be inflicted for nonconformity to A.A. principles; no fees or dues to be levied—voluntary contributions only; no member to be expelled from A.A.—membership always the choice of the individual; each A.A. group to conduct its internal affairs as it wishes—it being merely requested to abstain from acts that might injure A.A. as a whole; and finally that any group of alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group provided that, as a group, they have no other purpose or affiliation…”[v]  Have you ever seen a celebrity speak directly or indirectly about their AA membership publicly? Were they excommunicated from their home group? Of course not. They might take some shit from fellow members, but their seat is still waiting at the home group, and they still get one vote in business meetings, just as always.  Cultural determinism vs. cultural imposition:  A Rockstar who talks about working his 12-Step program on the late-night talk show is an example of cultural determinism. The AA group sets its own rules, anonymity might be one of them; the member follows or ignores the rules. Twelve Traditions and the Warranties makes room for different applications of AA coexisting in the same AA; Live and Let Live is the societal style is called cultural determinism:[vi] each group, being a unique culture that is shaped primarily by the ideas and values of their members, defines its primary purpose. And each member can reject what they like or embrace what they like. Central offices can and have rallies to oust a bad-apple group in the name of AA purity but that comes with unintended consequences. Generally, the ousted group is reinstated – if it wants to be—and sometimes the hostility towards the group attracts attention, and in some cases, more support. Cultural imposition—setting rules or governing groups—rarely lasts and AA tends to correct back to cultural determinism.  Groups are asked to be considerate of neighboring groups and AA-as-a-whole. But even if you or I worry that our neighboring group’s overly liberal or overly conservative approach will be the ruin of AA, we live and let live. Back in 1953 we see Bill engaged the conference delegates with the question, “whether we are going to get into the business of insisting on conformity, whether we are going to get into the business of creation an authority.” By design, so far, AA has no mechanism for excommunicating groups (or members) for being unpopular and/or non-compliant.  So, everything should be good between our AA groups, right? We all have all the autonomy we want; why would we care what others are doing in that group, right over there?  The Spring 2019 Box 4-5-9 (linked below), reveals that today, we see these 1953-esque squabbles continue to be wrestled with. In one case, local backlash was directed at a group who voted 40 out of 40 members to end their Lords Prayer closing ritual. Other local groups—feeling as if they had AA Traditions on their side—told the other home group, “to get out of AA if the don’t like God.”  Rescinding group autonomy, intimidation, the tyranny of the majority, these are expressions of cultural imposition.  Racism, sexism, other discrimination, exploitation and abuse happen in AA, all ranging on the bad-AA-0-meter from microaggressions in the 2-4 out of ten in the bad-AA-0-meter to harassment and discrimination in the 7-9 out of ten bad-AA-0-meter range. AA groups are informed by, and a reflection of, the community just outside the meeting doors.  Here is an example of underrepresented populations in AA suffering the same systemic discrimination we hear about throughout society.  From the Spring 2019 Box 4-5-9 on a discussion about Inclusivity:  “Garrett closed by saying that serious problems remained, however, and while he believed that A.A. was capable of becoming more welcoming, it had not happened yet.  Fast forward to 2019, and there have been only eight black trustees in A.A.’s 80-year history. And, though the number of black delegates to the General Service Conference has been increasing, many African Americans, among other groups, can still feel excluded or set apart in A.A.  While it may seem an intractable challenge that has remained with A.A. for its entire lifespan, there are, if not solutions, steps that can be taken to ensure that the hand of A.A. continues reaching out to anyone, anywhere.”  In 1953 AA invited Bill to weigh in on two topics: Should we limit group autonomy in terms of how each group conducts itself and can we bend or impose rules on groups or AA-as-a-whole to overcome racism and/or other discrimination. The fight for cultural imposition vs. cultural determinism (for the good of AA) has always been a question for the AA followers that have been AA stewards for most of our history. The General Service Office doesn’t have the power to impose rules nor the will to mediate local skirmishes. Bill’s idea of an egalitarian AA was—as we see it today—not a list of rules in which to conduct our meeting, dictated by AA World Services, Rather, 120,000 sets of meeting rules are currently being talked about by 120,000 home groups. 120,000 is the number of AA groups and that’s how many lists of rules there are. The only rules upon a group are rules we set for ourselves through group conscience.  Bill Wilson wasn’t phased by a tendency towards reification. Who’s seen this excerpt from a 1961 letter from Bill to a member?  “As time passes, our book literature has a tendency for conversion into something like dogma, a human trait I am afraid we can do little about. We may as well face the fact that AA will always have its traditionalists, its fundamentalists and its relativists.”[vii]  Is AA held back by a constant struggle between more liberal factions and more conservative factions, each demanding that everyone saves time and sees it their way? It is possible to me, that while counterintuitive, AA’s polarity might be held together instead of held back in terms of what contributes to strength and longevity for AA.  Homeostasis – more AA Yin begets more AA Yang  From the East: Wikipedia describes the strength and harmony that opposition fosters in the Chinese philosophical idea of yin and yang which, “is a concept of dualism in ancient Chinese philosophy, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.”  From the West: The idea of Homeostasis isn’t as old, going back to 1865 France[viii], and Dictionary.com describes “the tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.”  I might be bending a physiological principle here or a philosophical word there to make a point here about how our 12-Step culture depends on divergent views. In nature, as in AA, seemingly opposing pressures maybe both complementary and interdependent.  Bill W said that we best face “the fact that AA will always have its traditionalists, its fundamentalists and its relativists.” Fundamentalists feel that AA, or in some cases, their brand of AA is the only winning formula in the fight against alcoholism. Traditionalists may take chapter and verse from the book Alcoholics Anonymous literally and see “the” purpose of AA as following the Big Book as an instruction manual, exactly as written. Relativists say this kind of dogma is a turn off to forward thinkers and we’d be more effective applying flexibility in our practice of AA, maybe the wording, too.  In Homeostasis, our outer body temperature gets too cold and we shiver to warm up our core. When we have a fever, we sweat to cool off. It could be that more Back to Basics AA inspires the forming of more Freethinkers/Secular AA groups and vise-versa with a result whereby we “maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of [AAs] parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.”  Take-what-you-like-and-leave-the-rest is a way of the relativist. Our adaptation of plyable principles is limited only by our own imagination. Here’s just a few approaches to Steps in 12-Step meetings:  A LGBTTIQQ2S+ group (or conference or other AA gathering) adapts AA’s Steps to rewrite “God as we understood Him,” replacing Him with a non-binary gendered higher power.  A mostly Islamic AA groups replaces “God” with “Allah.”  “Goddess” is used in place of “Him” in a women’s group.  One atheist/agnostic group never reads or posts any AA Steps.  Another atheist/agnostic group rewrites and reads their own secular version of AA’s Steps.  AA relativists are protected by embedded cultural determinism. These adapting Yin groups may never have started if the heat had not been turned up by a fundamentalist Yang group beating their drum about “exactly as written in the Big Book.”  Of course, many special purpose groups that are making a safe-space open to serve a specific demographic (gender, sexual orientation, age, minority religion, non-religious) may read the steps exactly as written in the Big Book. Why couldn’t they be both traditionalists and gateway wideners? This is cultural determinism, too; one group of underrepresented AAs doesn’t have to do as other same-spirited groups do—not all young people groups or secular groups or women’s groups have to march in lockstep with each other.  Some take a relativist approach, others like a traditional meeting format and let the individuality express itself in the group discussion. One group may symbolize their identity by customizing AA language to better include themselves. But for some special purpose groups, 1939 language has no oppressive power over them, changing the words to a new—but just as codified—wording isn’t a meaningful way of asserting their AA freedoms.  The 1953 Conference questioned the wisdom of turning a blind eye to nonconformity in AA. An example that Delegates looked at were some Swedish seven-point program groups that dared to call themselves AA:  You must admit, that you are an alcoholic.  You must believe in a power which is greater than your own.  You must change your outlook on life.  Undertake a thorough investigation of your moral concepts.  Discuss those affairs of yours which are unsatisfactory, and acknowledge your faults and shortcomings with another person.  Settle issues with all persons with whom you have unsatisfactory relations.  When you have come away from the alcohol, and you have, if you work on following these points, then you have experienced something which you can not thank any individual human being for. You must express your thanks through helping other alcoholics, and that is the only thing we demand of you.  Is that Seven-point program the same principles as Americans expressed in the 1939 Twelve Steps?  If you say “yes” maybe you’re a relativist.  If you were at the 1953 Conference and you feel the Seven Steps are a bastardization of AA, maybe you’re a traditionalist. Maybe being informed by the proliferation of such groups would disturb and motivate you to go back to your home group and bring up a motion in your group’s business meeting to “only read from conference approved literature,” to avoid this kind of liberalism that might reshape your meeting.  There exists today Ten Step AA groups, secular Step and no-Step reading groups. We have Back to Basic groups that feel the Big Book is AA’s only legitimate message and other Back to Basics groups that read the Wally P guide to Alcoholics Anonymous. We have groups of atheists that consider themselves spiritual and groups of atheists that will tell you that AA recovery is practical—not supernatural. We have groups that don’t pray and “our more religious” spiritual—not religious groups that pray at the start, middle and end of the meeting.    So even inside the traditionalist, fundamentalist and relativist tribes, Yin voices pull Yang chains and resentment + coffeepot = a new AA meeting—diverging forces aid in the growth and diversity of AA-as-a-whole. Thinking about Yin/Yang, Homeostasis or as Newton would say, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction (Third Law of Motion),” through this new pair of Homeostasis glasses, let’s look at any of these positions that follow; what’s the likely outcome to be?  A traditionalist group says to adaptive groups, “If you don’t like AA the way it is, why don’t you go start your own fellowship?”  A secular AA group badmouths the Big Book fundamentalist groups, “No one wants your misogynist, patriarchal, homo-normative, religious, outdated literature; you’re why AA has stopped growing.”  Subcultures petition that only the AA literature that speaks to them be kept and the other literature, preferred by others, be discontinued: Re-write the Big Book and discontinue the current version, Discontinue printing the watered down AA of Living Sober and eliminate “About Alcoholism” from The Grapevine.  Each intolerant voice of AA is saying, “That’s the one, that group is the cancer that’s going to ruin it for everyone if we don’t stop them!” Will their outburst gain the intended result? How much of Gay Pride is born of homophobia? In AA, be it faction vs. faction or infighting within each faction, attempts to assert our will over the larger group may mobilize an opposite forces, “to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.”  Even within subcultures, AA’s singleness of purpose police don’t all agree on what the purpose is or how to achieve it. Will all freethinkers, atheists, humanists, agnostics, et al agree on what “secular AA” means? Some see a broader highway; some want to keep it pure.  Rebellion Dogs Publishing has talked/written about “the extraordinary liberties which the A.A. Traditions accord to the individual member and to [their] group,” but what does the average “My name is Joe” rank-and-file AA really know about their membership rights?  When I was new, I assumed that there must be a list of what is sacred and what is forbidden in AA. I saw similarities in the first 20 to 50 meetings I attended so I assumed they were following a list of rules that, although I hadn’t seen these rules, others had read them and agreed to what we had to do, and must not do, in our group.  And I heard people start sentences with, “In AA we always _______” or “In AA we never ________.” Did I challenge these members for evidence? No, I assumed they knew what was right. Rules seemed intuitive to me.   It seems counterintuitive that AA could run without any rules or penalties for failure to comply to said rules. I think that most members, even those starting their first meeting, haven’t read The A.A. Service Manual Combined With Twelve Concepts of World Service cover to cover. For starters, reading the service manual isn’t a rule.  Naturally, there is tribalism within AA; is it so bad if people claim they are members of the best group in the city? Be proud. This is the cultural determinism we enjoy in AA. But anytime you or I want to petition for more of our kind of AA and less of those stubborn and delusional AAs over there, we might not get what we bargain for.  How about those annual group and member numbers and some comparisons for context-sake?  A look at AA’s latest membership/group stats comparing to growth/decline since the start of the millennium. “World” refers to non-USA/Canada members and groups. If numbers don’t add up exactly, institutional (prison) and loner groups/members are not counted. AA Membership worldwide is about the same over 19 years, while USA population has grown 16%. American AA has increased 17%, about the same as the country as a whole. Everywhere else, AA is in decline. Canada has 16% fewer members and non-USA/Canada members is -31% over 19 years. This makes AA a more American-centric fellowship that two decades ago.  Canada has lost almost 14,000 members. Outside USA/Canada members have fallen off 189,796 members. There are just under 200,000 more American AAs than at the start of the century. And while membership totals stays the same, we are dividing up into more, smaller group. AA added 25,000 more groups over 19 years while having about 30,000 fewer members.  We may want to resist putting too much of own biased meaning into why these numbers are what they are. Fundamentalists, Relativists and Traditionalists may all want to blame the others for AA’s declining populations compared to world population growth. Again, is “We need more of my kind of meetings and less of that one over there,” going to help?  Online members and groups are not counted in this comparison. “Survey says …” Musical Feature: The Fast Romantics "Do No Wrong." Buy their music or find out more click on the pic View or Download as PDF (click) [i] https://www.facebook.com/groups/246417729261168/  [ii] https://www.aa.org/newsletters/en_US/en_box459_spring19.pdf  [iii] AAWS, Our Great Responsibility: A Selection of Bill W.’s General Service Conference Talks 1951—1970, New York: 2019  [iv] Special Report for the Groups on the THIRD GENERAL SERVICE CONFERENCE of A.A. p. 22  [v] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/en_bm-31.pdf  [vi] https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/introtosociology/Documents/Glossary.html  [vii] Kurtz, Ernest, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Note 67

Rebellion Dogs Radio #45 goes back to California for The Fifth A.A. History Symposium from the San Francisco Bay Area February 1-3, 2019. Welcome to Rebellion Dogs Radio Episode 45. Rebellion Dogs Radio is a contemporary look at recovery from addiction, now with less dogma and more bite. Our focus on our April 2019 episode will be the second episode devoted to the Fifth Symposium on A.A. History, held February 1, 2 and 3, 2019 in San Altos at El Retiro San Inigo, a Jesuit monetary/retreat center.  Click to listen to stream Rebellion Dogs Radio #45 with our guests: Filmmakers Dan Carracino and Kevin Hanlon along with writer/director/researcher, Jackie B. Dan Carracino & Kevin Hanlon co-produced and directed the Emmy-winning PBS documentary film Bill W: The Creative Force Behind Alcoholics Anonymous. In making this film, Dan and Kevin visited over two dozen archives and private collections and interviewed over 75 people during the eight years they worked on Bill W. For some time, we have looked forward to bringing these two filmmakers to Rebellion Dogs Radio. If you’re inspired to see the documentary, from listening to their interview, we’ll hook you up with links et al.  Jackie B. (San Francisco, CA), historian and playwright, had her hands full as committee chair for the Fifth Symposium on A.A. History. We talk to between the end of the February weekend symposium and the opening of the tenth anniversary of her first recovery play, In Our Own Words. Jackie’s plays have been enjoyed from AA Conventions in San Antonio (2010) and Atlanta (2015) to black box theaters and county jails. Some attendees of the Toronto International Conference of Secular AA in the summer of 2018 could tell you that Jackie is one of the leading historians of under-served populations in A.A., having done primary research on early LGBTQ, people of color, young people and women in the fellowship. Her presentation in Toronto was considered a highlight to those in attendance.   Buy, watch on demand or see the trailer for Bill W: The Creative Force Behind Alcoholics Anonymous CLICK HERE Learn more about - keep in touch with A.A. History Symposium CLICK HERE  From the AA History Lovers Symposium page you can buy individual presentations or the whole collection for $20 (for MP3s). On this show we talk more about Dr. Earle M's Physician Heal Thyself: 35 Years of Adventures in Sobriety by an AA ‘Old-Timer’  Here’s a gem from the book on p. 203   “All of my life I yearned to meet someone who would simply hear me—not advise me, not criticize me, not even agree with me—just hear me. And my listening, nonjudgmental friend does just that. Being heard this way makes me eager to tell more. And my friends know that through really listening, he or she will connect with me. So, he or she listens to me with even more intensity.  And the two of us connect through the art of listening.” See an interview with Dr. Earle CLICK HERE From the Album Canary in a Coal Mine, we heard from Tomato Tomato, the Kite Song. Like to add it to your playlist? Apple Music, Band Website More Musings on San Fran: February 2018 - our March Blog CLICK HERE

If it sounds weird or nerdy to you, we Rebellious Dogs understand..Yes, it's true: The Fifth Symposium on A.A. History sold out. That's right, even if you wanted to invest an entire weekend listening to speakers presenting their primary research on Alcoholics Anonymous, the Symposium sold out and had to turn people away. We love this stuff even more than our fondness for urn made coffee so we have some content we wish to share with you. Today, we offer an hour of February 1 to 3, 2019 in Los Altos California - the Saturday 11:00 AM to Noon session - "The Debate Over Special Purpose Groups." Each session from Symposium-5 had an AA sharing their lived experience on the subject before someone else presents their findings from primary research. Mily T of San Francisco has a remarkable story about the LGBTQ community in AA, then and now, setting the mood for Joe C's presentation on the chronology of women's, young people's LGBTQ, aboriginal/native North American's atheists/agnostics, doctor's and lawyer's gatherings. We whip through some of the slides that are richest in content so, if you like, pause and read the rest of the slides. If you want a copy of the slides for review, email us.    Other presentations included Dr. Bob's Letters with Michelle Miriza, GSO archivist, Carrying the Message to Latin America, AA on North American Reservations, AA in san Quentin Prison, Early Group Problems, Bill W's curiosity about the Paranormal and a reenactment of the Rockerfeller Dinner. It was awesome to spend time with filmmakers, journalists, archivists, academics, playwrights, and others who do research AA. We hope the recording gives some idea of what fun it was. To get MP3s or CDs of any all of the other presentations: https://www.aahistorysymposium.org/ CLICK above to listen and watch the slide show. Click below for audio only. 

Episode 43 of Rebellion Dogs Radio says: Relieve the February Blues with February Twos, February 2019's books of interest and subject matter for this episode: Killing The Bear: Surviving Teen Addiction by M. Andrew Tennison Staying Sober Without God: The Practical 12 Steps to Long-Term Recovery from Alcoholism & Addiction by Jeffrey Munn         Click to find out more about the band Sleepless Nights - This band brought us the finale song, "Kids on Drugs." And our mid-way song by Tokyo Taboo has a dark side of addiction pang to it that  we are sure you're recognize in the song: "No Pleasure Only Pain." " We talk in this Episode about Rebellion Dogs most recent contribution to TheFix.com, "Is AA Too Religious for Generation-Z?" Click to read

In the book, Drunks: The History of Alcoholism and Birth of Recovery, Christopher Finan recounts America’s history of alcoholism which dates back to the first days of settlers and indigenous peoples sharing cultures and goods. America's search for sobriety  began among Native Americans in the colonial period, when liquor was used to cheat them of their property. We meet the first of a colorful cast of characters, a remarkable Iroquois leader named Handsome Lake, who dedicated his life to helping his people renounce hard liquor. Carrie Nation, the wife of an alcoholic, destroyed bars with an axe in her anger over what alcohol had done to her family, as well as the idealistic and energetic Washingtonians. There's a gold-cure, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence who was the first doctor to advance the idea of inebriates suffering from a disease - not a moral failing nor demon possession. From Handsome Lake to Benjamin Rush to Marty Mann, then William L White, to alcoholism's freedom-fighters today, Chris M Finan has created the heroes journeys this is our heritage - not a mere chronology of wet and dry facts. Technically, you'll notice our Chris Finan interview has some background noise. Sorry Chris: sorry listeners. We've done what we can to mitigate the annoyance. Can we recommend tea during the listening over coffee to reduce aggravation. Hang in, we assure you that the message quality trumps the medium shortcomings. If not, next coffee is on Joe C. We'll try to be better in the future. This is a good 'dry run' for Rebellion Dogs as we gear up for AA History Lover's Symposium February 1-3, in the San Francisco Bay area. CLICK Here for more information on the Symposium. If you're looking for an extended mid-winter getaway, go from AA History Lovers to the International AA Women's Conference the next weekend in Los Angeles. That's what I'd do, if I could.  For more information on Chris's captivating book, Drunks, CLICK HERE for ChrisFinan.com (audio book, hardcover, paperback, eBook) or contact Chris, he'd be happy to chat online. The Velveteins is an indie rock band from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We go out with their song (to celebrate Recovery - my interpretation) called, "Don't ya Feel Better" Show The Velveteins some love by CLICKING HERE Want more Chris Finan talking about Drunks? Visit AA Beyond Belief for Chris's chat with John S CLICK HERE Does the intro or transition music have you're curiosity? Visit Joe C's guitar-slinging @ The Chronicles "Chronic Malcontent" CLICK HERE to stream free  

Is there an attitude shift around addiction and mental health? I sense a healthy move from lip-service accountability about mental health and substance use disorder to a growing compassion and duty to our fellows. The idea of an  altering zeitgeist is the theme of Episode 41 of Rebellion Dogs Radio:  Two people are taking a stand to help end the stigma—and systemic discrimination—around addiction and mental health. Meet Lucy, likes to rock 'n' roll by night/ addiction & mental health  treatment by day.  Meet Michael, lawyer representing those with untreated addiction/ mental health conditions in the cross-hairs of Canada’s criminal justice system, someone who's been a law-making public figure, one who's been a defendant in the same legal system he helped author, and wait, there's more, an author in long-term recovery.  “Given that addiction and recovery remain an enigma to most lawyers and judges,” Michael Bryant writes, “there is a tendency to randomly embrace or reject any submissions on point. The discomfort with the subject is high. Eggshells everywhere.” In his new book, Mere Addiction, Michael J. Bryant offers an insider’s candid commentary about how abstinence bail conditions are a set up for failure and recidivism, leading many addicts/alcoholics to battle the stacked odds of overcoming addiction without support. Another senior lawyer I know in recovery refers to making drinking a violation of an alcoholic’s bail or parole as the criminal justice system’s means of “manufacturing crime.”  Lucy Di Santo's music is no stranger to Rebellion Dogs Radio; we've played Acid Test on our show. But do you know her story; her band's story? Lucy is lead singer of Acid Test, signed to Sire/Warner Records in the 1990s, toured the UK, USA and Canada with Nine Inch Nails, Grace Jones, 54-40 and Snow. Then a series of rock 'n' roll road blocks curtailed the tour bus including - no stranger to the music biz - addiction would befall not one, but two band members. But of course, addiction is not suffered by  ½ a band; addiction impacts the whole band. Just like one member of a family doesn’t suffer from addiction; the whole family suffers. In the case of Acid Test, one substance use disorder pat led to recovery, and the other, premature death. The 2012 loss of band-mate Mike Harland AKA DJ- Jus’ Rite brought disbanded Acid Test survivors together and eventually the seed was planted for a new record dedicated to their late colleague. At the time of posting Episode 41, this news-peg-du-jour which speaks to shifting consciousness about mental health awareness. In June, after the shocking suicides of one TV and one fashion celebrity Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins emailed all of his employees about the matter of mental wellness and coping with mental health issues. Here’s how it was reported by Christina Farr for CNBC[i]  “In light of recent tragedies, I wanted to step away from Cisco Live for a moment to talk about the importance of mental health,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, we all know friends, family, and coworkers battling mental health conditions, or maybe you’re going through your own struggles.”  Robbins, who took over the CEO role in 2015, encouraged employees to “talk openly and extend compassion,” asked that they “have each other’s backs,” and told them that professional support is available. Robbins had no idea what was about to happen. More than 100 employees responded to his note within days, some sharing in painful detail their own personal struggles.  “I didn’t understand the magnitude of the problem,” Robbins told CNBC in an interview. “The volume of responses we got back led us to be more active.”  Roughly one in five adults in the U.S. per year suffer from mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The costs to treat depression, stress, anxiety and other ailments exceeds $200 billion a year, and for many employers the number of sick days and lost productivity associated with mental health represent one of their biggest expenses  But relative to physical sicknesses, there remains a stigma in publicly addressing behavioral health. Insurers and corporations have been slow to recognize its importance, and many qualified health professionals, including psychologists and psychiatrists, don’t accept insurance, even in Cisco’s backyard.”  Large employers across the country are just beginning to prioritize it through their benefits programs as part of a broader focus on employee wellness. Technology companies in particular are adopting new health programs as another way to attract and retain talent in the hyper-competitive market for engineers. …  The article goes on to explain Cisco’s 7/24 access to professionals, meditation, yoga and paid leave.  One CEO says enough is enough and he won’t stand idly by, pretending that he can will or hope away  the financial and productivity costs of mental health problems. Cisco makes it okay to speak up, say, “I have a problem or think I might; who can I turn to for help?” Cisco suggests that this position adds shareholder value and is not a dragging cost to his company’s operations. Cisco talked about, CNBC reported on it, now we're talking about it. It sure looks like a movement, to me. I found myself swept up by this, “if you see something, say something” new-attitude, this month. I have a modest profile in the North American music scene but a voice nonetheless. Unless someone is blatantly reaching out for help when I'm on the job, I’m discrete about living in long-term recovery. This is the music biz; it’s artistic, counter-culture, a lot of the sponsors that pay the artists are booze companies. Before we know it, cannabis retailers will be sponsoring pop music tours. So why would I want to be a buzz-kill? Why would I brag about my sobriety? Well, the music industry isn’t spared from tragic premature deaths due to alcohol and other substance/process addictions. The 27-Club took baby-boomer icons Janis, Jimi,Brian Jones and Jim Morrison. GenX lost Kurt Cobain, Millennials lost Amy Winehouse: all lost to substance use disorder at the age of 27. Music is one of the few professions you can drink on the job and not be punished for it. So, just like Cisco’s leadership saw something and said something, IndieWeek, an annual music festival and music business conference added a health and wellness day to it’s Indie_101 conference schedule. So, what could I do? I had to ask, “Would attendees be receptive to hearing from professional musicians I know who currently negotiate a clean & sober path in the music scene? IndieWeek said, “Yes.”  So, I moderated “Second Chances: Recovery over Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Rob Laidlaw plays bass for 80’s A-list touring stadium acts. He also produces and writes songs with today’s emerging artists. Lucy Di Santo seemed like the perfect add on. She's in a 90's come-back band and an addiction treatment counselor with whom I volunteer in her Wednesday morning after-care at Bellwood Health Services.  As it turns out, the panel date and all of Wellness Day got moved from Friday to Wednesday, conflicting with Acid Test’s Fall tour: Wednesday in Montreal, Quebec, Thursday in Kingston Ontario, Friday and Saturday as delegates and performers at IndieWeek. So, to make up for this change, Lucy and I did a short YouTube video together for Indie Week delegates. That left Rob and I to hold court with IndieWeek attendees. Rob shared his lived experience, how snorting lines with record label executives over record contracts, the Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll life's wearing on his performance and reasoning. Rob found himself sucking back a few late-morning drinks at an airport bar before a flight and he was quite embarrassed that his band-mates didn’t concur that mid-day shots was not the way to fly. Rob looked for help. Getting sober, Rob wondered if he had a future in the music business. How could he live the life and stay sober? It didn’t seem possible. But he found a way and got threw the first awkward sober live performances and back stage shenanigans as a straight-edge, all while the party raged around him.  At the IndieWeek conference, I disclosed that IndieCan Radio wasn’t my only broadcasting gig and music isn’t my only form of journalism to which I draw upon lived experience. I can prepare for, and cope with, people getting high and tipsy around me when we’re all there for music because I’ve come to be comfortable around music, regardless of the environment it’s being performed in. When there are free beer tickets offered, I give them away. But when the music’s over and it’s after-party time, more about the booze and drugs, I go home.   Click to listen or download our interviews with Michael Bryant and Lucy Di Santo as well as teasers for Episode 42: No God No Problem, Accommodating the Growing Demand for Secular 12-Step Facilitation. This was a presentation I put on at NAADAC 2018 (Annual Conference of Treatment Professionals) in October. You and I will chat next episode about the timely role secular AA plays in a professional environment of more inclusive ethical standards, a search for better outcomes and best practices and... how to avoid legal jeopardy suffered on facilities with outdated practices. AA may have once been the lone last-house-on-the-block. Today, we have neighbors: Women For Sobriety, SOS, Refuge Recovery, SMART Recovery, Life Ring. Still, AA is ubiquitous and secular AA meeting make up a growing subculture and thus, are another helpful arrow in addiction treatment quiver.  [i] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/18/cisco-ceo-chuck-robbins-sent-employees-emails-about-mental-illness.html Visit Rebellion Dogs Reading Room for links to Michael Bryant's books HERE Acid Test The Band, The Music Click HERE The Interrupters "She's Kerosene" + More HERE See Lucy's story on YouTube Hear the interview with Michael Bryant on CBC Metro Morning IndieWeek (Canada) Indie 101 Conference Schedule Edgewood/Bellwood Health Services

Rebellion Dogs Radio, a contemporary look at addiction, recovery and mental health – Episode 40 is a cross-border mental-health and addiction/recovery trip, from NAADAC (The Association for Addiction Professionals) October 5-9, 2018 in Houston Texas to Rendezvous With Madness addiction & mental-health film and art festival in Toronto, Canada October 10-21, 2018. Today's adventure is as told by two songwriters, two therapists and one photographer - a story of lilved experience of moms, dads, addiction, mental-health, recovery, treatment and art. I know, it's a lot for one show. It will all be clear in the interview with Dr. Laura. In order of appearance:  Catherine MacLellan singer/songwriter is @ Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema on World Health Organization's International Mental Health Awareness Day, for the #RWMFest 2018, we saw the  premier of The Song and the Sorrow. This documentary looks at the life of Catherine’s father, award-winning songwriter whose songs have been sung by Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Joan Baez, Ann Murray and at least 96 other performers. “People ask me to perform his music;” daughter, Catherine MacLellan says in the documentary, “but I’ve been processing his suicide and I didn’t feel ready.” But on this day, producer/director Millefiore Clarkes and Catherine MacLellan shared the film that chronicles Catherine’s search for answers about her fathers and her own depression.  Dr. Laura Walsh presented in Houston at this year’s NAADAC Annual Conference about A.D.H.D.  and addiction, two troubling conditions that, when comorbidity presents itself in a client, exacerbates the need for care and the challenges of treatment. Let's just say I sometimes share a wee bit of lived-experience about these things... so does Dr. Laura. Letter to My Mother is a visual and literary body of work created by artist Branislav Jankic that seeks to raise awareness of and change the conversation around addiction, lifting the stigma and create an international support system for those suffering from substance use disorders. When the artist’s mother, a former prescription drug and alcohol addict, was diagnosed with lung cancer in November 2012, Jankic, who had experienced his own struggles with addiction throughout his teenage years, began writing a letter to his mother expressing his regrets for their dismantled relationship and his misunderstanding of her struggles, hoping to show both love and forgiveness. What came from this was a photo-exhibit, a book and a film, all of which were featured at NAADAC 2018 and we share our one-on-one with Branislav.  The new CEO and president of Women for Sobriety, Adrienne Miller is our guest, this episode, too. Women for Sobriety was founded by Dr. Jean Kirkpatrick in the 1970s, as Dr. Kirkpatrick saw that women’s needs in recovery over addiction were different than what men need. Adrienne Miller picks up the reins of stewardship and Joe C and Adrienne talk about new duties and talk about this year’s NAADAC Conference.  The life of this year’s NAADAC party was singer-songwriter John McAndrew who is the Recovery Music Specialist at Cumberland Heights in Nashville Tennessee – which offers both in and out patient drug and alcohol treatment. John presented about the brain, music and recovery, did some singing and got the whole audience singing as demonstration of the relationship between music and wellness.  We will also enjoy the music of both Catherine MacLellan and John McAndrew in Episode #40, too – all in less than an hour, so hold on tight.    Letter to My Mother - A short-film was viewed on the Saturday night of NAADAC called, Letter To My Mother. Shot during the first photo exhibition of the project in New York in June of 2016. Following its screening to us in Houston, artist Branislav Jankic, producer Goran Macura, Ben Levenson of the Levenson Foundation, and Sherri Layton, a pioneer who’s worked in treatment since 1977 and along with other hats, works on policy, advocacy and leadership.IndieCan Radio The film and the panel sparked a heartfelt post-viewing discussion. Mothers photographed in the project were in attendance, and they shared, too. This touching exhibit was a large part of why I set my sights on coming to Houston. I had the good fortune to chat one-on-one with Branislav Jankic  CLICK below for links... http://lettertomymother.us/ Women For Sobriety The 2017 If It's Alright with You - The songs of Gene MacLellan performed by Catherine MacLellan + other Catherine MacLellan music John McAndrew Music John McAndrew The Ties that Bind NAADAC.org RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS See the movie trailer: The Song And The Sorrow The Song and the Sorrow opened the 26th annual Rendezvous With Madness, a film and art festival devoted to addiction and mental health. Workman Art’s Bruised Years Choir, a collective of singers with addiction/mental health lived-experience, opened the night with a couple of songs at the Hot Docs Cinema on Bloor W in Midtown Toronto. The documentary played,  The film’s producer/director Millefiore Clarkes and Catherine MacLellan were on hand to talk about the film and field questions, Catherine played a few songs from her and her dad’s collection. Then I had a chance to talk to Catherine MacLellan for IndieCan Radio.

September 13thand 14th, Recovery Capital Conference. Recovery: A return to a normal state of health, mind or strength; the action or process or regaining possession or control of something lost.  Capital: Wealth or other assets possessed by a person or available to contribute to a particular purpose.  We spend some of Rebellion Dogs Radio show understanding Recovery Capital by talking with organizers and presenters of Recovery Capital Conference, Canada. Science and research on one side, anecdotal wisdom from lived experience on the other side - are these oppositional forces? Not according to Rebecca Jesseman, Director of Policy at the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction and not according to Gord Gardner, Executive Director of Community Addictions Peer Support Association; different styles, yes, different goals, no. Dr. John Kelly, Elizabeth R. Spallin Associate Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine at Harvard University presents recent research that suggests some folk-know-how is now corroborated as evidence-based practices. Some will say, "I knew it!" Others, "You don't say?". Read, listen and/or join the conversation. Emerging research supports the concept that Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care demonstrate improved mental and physical health, improved quality of life, pro-social behavior, and a dramatic reduction in human and financial cost to the community. Rebellion Dogs was "in the house" for the annual ICOAA Seminar, a mulit-day workshop where AA Intergroups and Central Offices share ideas. This year, Montreal was the host. Area 87 runs the Greater Montreal Area central office. We have a look at some new AA literature produced by Montreal Quebec’s Area 87 and we unpack some common myths about Intergroups and their place in AA service.  Along with radio show #39, visit AA Agnostica for a review of this year’s Recovery Capital Conference, September 13th and 14th at The Carlu in downtown Toronto, Canada. As a preview, we heard from:  Dr. Manuel Cardoso, Deputy General – Director of SICAD Decriminalization and Portugal Public Health Policy (pictured below) Ann Dowsett Johnston, author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol (pictured above Building Resilience with Recovery Capital with Betty-Lou Kristy, Tristan Johnson and Habib Hass). Dr. Julian M. Somers, Simon Fraser University, presentation on Recovery Capital: When Wealth and Poverty Have the Same Price.  Dr. J Kelly, Harvard Dr. John Kelly –Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine at Harvard University  Arthur C. Evans, Jr., PhD, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President, American Psychological Association  Building Recovery Capital: Mining, Defining and Utilizing with co-presenters: Gord Garner. Executive Director, Community Addictions Peer Support Association and Rebecca Jesseman, Director of Policy Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.  All about Recovery Coaching with Dr. Ray Baker, MD, Consultant in Recovery Medicine  Workplace Wellness with Christine Burych, President of Starling Brook Leadership  Yoga and Mindfulness breaks with Evonne Sullivan  Hamish White + Dr. Michele Pole on An Integrated Treatment Model for Addiction and Trauma/PTSD  Addiction, Recovery and Youth with Dr. Emily A. Hennessy, Vanderbilt University, Angie Hamilton of Families for Addiction Recovery and Kristen K. Harper, Executive Director for the Association of Recovery Schools. Dr. Jean-Pierre Chiasson, founder and Medical Director, Nouveau Depart, EHN Canada  Dr. Brian Rush, PhD, Scientist Emeritus, CAMH and Principal, VIRGO Planning and Evaluation Consultants Inc.   AA Agnostica Coverage (Click here to read, download and/or have your say) A short segment of Dr. Evan on Philidelphia - a case study HERE More about Recovery Capital Conference of Canada Dr. William Miller from Vancouver 2018 Motivational Interviewing & Recovery Capital (one hour)  

This is Episode 38. Leslie Jamison is our featured guest. Touring her latest book, The Recovering, I got a chance to talk to her in the lobby of the King Edward Hotel. Se was in Toronto June 2nd, for the In Her Voice Festival hosted by Ben McNally Books. In this show, we’ll listen to that interview I had with Leslie Jamison about The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath[i].  We are focusing on the question, "Is booze the muse? Or, will I find creativity in sobriety?" Americana literature and the  drunkard storyteller(s) is our setting which includes Leslie Jamison’s own what it was like - what happened - what it’s like now. Who among us didn’t fear that without our drug of choice we would stand naked to the world, without our mojo?  From Amazon “About the Author” …  Leslie Jamison is the author of the essay collection The Empathy Exams, a New York Times bestseller, and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and the Oxford American, among others, and she is a columnist for the New York Times Book Review. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.  We also explore the fear about stage fright and the inspiration for content-creation that entertainers suffer through in early sobriety—indie artists and legacy rockers, fine artists, comedians and, of course writers. We’ll talk to Lucy and Steve from Acid Test. If addiction is a family disease, then it’s a band disease too; this 90s buzz-band was interrupted, in part, by addiction. Acid Test's "Recovering" includes a new record, Just ‘Rite which we’ll share from to finish off the show. We’ll borrow from William White’s recent work and writer Jessica Lamb-Shapiro’s study of self-help America.  SHOW NOTES  My thumbs up for The Recovering is not universally felt. “This much-touted literary love letter to Alcoholics Anonymous is too moral in its argument for the superiority of the sober,” is how Rick Whitaker starts his review in The Guardian. We challenge some of The Guardians seemingly erroneous assumptions on our show. You can read the whole 2018 article HERE[ii]  Maybe the problem for some critics is the blurring of genres. You’ll hear Leslie Jamison sharing about how some readers want more memoir and others want more historical journalism from her book.  Some readers protest that one ought not drift into the other lane; it’s distracting. Rebellion Dogs regulars remember how critics butchered, Drunk Mom: A Memoir (2014) by Jowita Bydlowska. You can do a "mumoir"; you can do a crash-and-burn drunkalogue. But don’t be candidly writing about waking from a blackout and not knowing where your panties or baby are.  That’s open season for righteous indignation. By the way, the 2014 Drunk Mom still has that new-car smell and is still a Rebellion Dogs top-dog-pick today, if you haven't read it already.  Anhedonia: Loss of the capacity to experience pleasure. The inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences. "Anhedonia" is derived from the Greek "a-" (without) "hedone" (pleasure, delight).[iii]  Nikki Sealy in Withdrawal.net writes, “Anhedonia doesn't make addicts throw up, feel achy all over, or break out in a sweat. Instead, the condition makes addicts feel flat and unable to find any joy in life. The unchanging and perpetual feelings of depression can make them feel emotionally empty and somewhat lost in the world. Things that would normally make most people smile don’t have the same effect on people who are struggling with anhedonia – especially during early recovery”[iv]  Graham Isador of Vice.com (2017), “What happens when you finally stop drinking on stage?” Mark Maron (comedian), Drew Thomson of Single Mothers.[v]  “On a recent episode of Marc Maron's WTF Podcast the comedian announced he had celebrated eighteen years sober. I decided to reach out and see what Maron thought was the main difference between when performing sober compared to when he was using. His email response was short and to the point: " I'm not hiding."  Of Drew Thomson, lead singer or the band, Single Mothers, Isador was told, “Most of my accomplishments I've done while in a deep haze of booze. Drunk Drew. Drunk Drew started a band. Drunk Drew is on stage. It's Drunk Drew's band. I never gave sober Drew any credit. I was scared I couldn't do it sober.  When I drank I thought I was filling a prescription …The booze keeps you thinking you need it.” Regarding sobriety, Thomson says, Oddly, I have almost zero stage fright now. I used to think, 'Oh no I haven't had enough to drink I don't want to go on,' but that's when I thought booze gave me some kind of superpower. I was under a spell. Now that the spell has lifted—I know I can play great sober or sick or tired—I don't really give a fuck now, just let me on the stage and I'll do my best. It's a personal choice. I have no problem at all being around people who are drinking, usually it just reminds me why I stopped.”  Alice Cooper talked to Craig Furguson about the stage fright of early sobriety while they were on The Late Late Show in 2005[vi]. Alice was 23 years sober, looking back at his relationship with Whiskey and wondering at the time, “How could Alice be sober?”  Stevie Ray Vaughn - Jim Washburn of the LA Times in 1988 about Eric Clapton’s 12-Step influence. "He'd been sober for a time when we first met, and I was drinking heavy," Vaughan said. "He didn't tell me what to do or not to do, he just looked at me drinking and said, 'Yeah, I guess sometimes you've got to go through that, don't you?' He knew I had to hit bottom myself before I could get up. And some of the things he told me turned out to be principles of the program I use now."[vii]  Emilie Modaff is a songwriter, actor and produces the WBEZ podcast, Pleasure Town. In “Being A Sober Artist” for SoberNation.com. “Who would have thought that refraining from drinking myself into a blackout and snorting coke for breakfast would result in better quality work? Weird.”[viii]  In Promise Land: My Journey Through America’s Self-Help Culture Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Chicken Soup For The Soul, a best-seller that went from book, to brand(series) and then Tony-Robins-esque seminars on how to make a million dollars telling people what they want to hear. “As Americans, self-help reflects our core beliefs: self-reliance, social mobility, an endless ability to overcome obstacles, a fair and equal pursuit of success, and the inimitable proposition that every single human being wants and deserves a sack of cash.”[ix]  The self-help genre yields over $10 Billion in the USA alone each year and the average Amazon indie author makes $100/year.[x]  Lindsay Myers (Brain Blogger) “In addition to high revenues, self-help also has a high recidivism rate, with the most likely purchaser of a self-help book being the same person who purchased one already in the last 18 months.”[xi]  William White (June 1, 2018 William White Papers), “Vague but passionate promises of a new approach always garner more hope than the known limitations of current efforts. And any industry that has attracted substantial financial capital will draw a subset of individuals and organizations who will sacrifice public health and safety for personal and corporate profit… Aware of such risks, most fields develop standards of organizational and professional practice that maximize effectiveness and elevate ethical decision-making.”[xii]   From IndieCan Radio (SiriusXM) interview with a band who has opened for Nine Inch Nails, 54-40, Snow, Acid Test’s Jus’ Rite[xiii]. Thanks for being part of Rebellion Dogs Radio. Feel free to re-post, download or email this show as you see fit.  [i] preview The Recovering on Amazon [ii] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/recovering-leslie-jamison-review-intoxication-aftermath-alcohol  [iii] https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=17900  [iv] https://www.withdrawal.net/contributors/understanding-anhedonia-depression-in-early-recovery/  [v] https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/xwwm33/we-talked-to-artists-about-how-sobering-up-changed-their-work  [vi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD_H2UffQf8  [vii] http://articles.latimes.com/1988-10-01/entertainment/ca-3942_1_jimmie-vaughan/2  [viii] https://sobernation.com/the-art-of-being-a-sober-artist/  [ix] Promise-Land-Journey-Americas-Self-Help by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro [x] https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-an-average-self-publishing-author-make-on-Amazon  [xi] http://brainblogger.com/2014/05/23/the-self-help-industry-helps-itself-to-billions-of-dollars/  [xii] http://www.williamwhitepapers.com/blog/2018/06/recovery-porn-a-story-of-healers-and-hustlers.html  [xiii] https://acidtestmusic.com/store Drunk Mom: A Memoir AMAZON link LeslieJamison.com

Our guest today is writer/journalist, from Los Angeles, Tracy Chabala a Technology, food and addiction/mental health writer, now working on an upcoming novel. We’ll talk about the craft of writing, the writing industry, some of the nuances of the addiction/recovery media world. Recently TheFix.com charged Tracy to write about researcher, Sarah E. Zemore et alia’s “A longitudinal study of the comparative efficacy of Women for Sobriety, LifeRing, SMART Recovery, and 12-step groups for those with AUD(Alcohol and other Drugs).”  Much of the resistance to AA from people in treatment centers is the perceived religious or spiritual component and so AA effectiveness was compared to non-religious, spiritually benign or secular fellowships, that have formed to meet the need for secular peer-to-peer or mutual aid support. Who’s come up with a better modality to concur alcohol and other drug use disorder? Or does AA have something that yields better results today compared to these newer options?  I’ll talk with Tracy for the bulk of our time together. First, here’s some up-dates on recent activities (March/April 2018) that I’ve been posting about on Rebellion Dogs social media…  AA Road-warriors who “carrying the AA message” in various ways gathered in Sedona Arizona to talk about the future of AA. Attendees included circuit speakers, past delegates/trustees, GSO workers, treatment industry workers, AA historians, researchers and people working within the General Service Structure today. Sobriety varied from 11 years to 50 years, from all over America, from Iceland, Denmark and Canada.  Discussion points included AA’s changing culture, the question about our literature being up to the task for future newcomers and what might be altered or improved, spirituality and social media.  I was on an outreach trip for ICSAA 2018, in Toronto this August 24 – 26, the International Conference of Secular AA, formerly known as We Agnostics, Atheists & Freethinkers.  Prior to the USA S/W outreach leg the host committee was in Toronto at the Ontario Regional Conference at the Area 83, Eastern Ontario International Assembly in Kingston and North Bay’s We Agnostics Group, 150 miles north of Toronto. Later this Month, it’s Alberta with meeting stops in St. Albert (near Edmonton) and Calgary Alberta. The musical offering today is an LA pop-punk foursome called The Regrettes.   Notes & Links CLICK for links: http://www.tracychabala.com/ The FIx article: The Regrettes band: http://www.theregrettes.com/ Photo credit: For IndieCan.com (Sirius XM Radio) Wendy L. Rombough Photography The Journal of Substance Abuse Therapy Tracy Chabala on After Party Podcast with Anna and Danielle      

February 15, 2018 is the launch of a new memoir about addiction, about recovery called, Parallel Universe: The Story of Rebirth. Author David B. Bohl, like all of us, has an incredible personal adventure to share. Everyone confronts certain demanding existential questions: who am I, what am I doing here, who are these others? My personal sense of identity has been a prerequisite to sanity, integrity and a satisfying, purposeful life.  “’Who’s my biological mother?’ I asked my adoptive mother as a child,” David recounts on page 16 of Parallel Universes.  What are the catalysts to the life we lead, overachieving, underachieving, addiction or recovery? Duality and addiction and later duality and recovery are challenging dance-steps for any of us. How much more challenging is an integrated sense of identity if you’re adopted; if much of your pass is locked away in a filing cabinet in an office that you have no access to. “Two Parallel Universes, two realities. I was marked for life, destined by my circumstances to have my perception warped from the get-go.”  For anyone who's still waiting for a previously hinted about show, here's an update on the Ten-thousand Beyond Beliefs Blog: most of a show done about  our book, Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life was finished over a month ago. The episode recounts how it was conceived, written and some notable facts/stats upon reaching the 10,000 mark of paperbacks and eBooks now on people’s mobile devices, reading nooks and bedside tables. We reached that milestone in December. I’m going to do this story, as some of you have requested. It will include a few ideas to anyone else thinking they have a book in them. The problem is, like today, I have another book or another subject I want to talk about way more than my own efforts. There is a wealth of good books and stories going on. Another writer, Anne Fletcher, needed help with addiction late last century. So, I would guess two things about her: First assumption: she may not have an executive-style health care benefit plan whereby no treatment cost is prohibitive. I’m a writer and I don’t have a fancy employer-sponsored health plan. Secondly, it’s natural that she might want to channel her lived experience into a narrative. That’s what writers do. From treating obese patients to penning, Thin for Life, Fletcher championed medicine, folk-wisdom and subjects held up as examples that she called masters of weight control.  Thin for Life comes from the consumer/lifestyle/wellness genre whose titles flirt with best-seller-ness often. Hers became its own franchise of follow up books that inspired and helped 100’s of thousands. Channeling the Thin for Life winning formula Anne M. Fletcher, found in her own life-challenge, a new project, the 2001, SOBER for Good:  “Along the way I tried some of the conventional solutions for alcohol problems. Though I was impressed with how helpful AA was for others and I’d benefited from the support, I’d come home from a meeting feeling like the odd one out. My take-responsibility attitude—along with my tendency to challenge the status quo and want to do things my way—didn’t mesh with the program’s twelve-step philosophy. I wasn’t ‘in-denial.’ I was looking for help but felt I had nowhere to turn. So I crafted my own rather lonely path to resolving my troubles with alcohol, with the help of some open-minded therapists who did not demand that I become abstinent or that I attend a recovery group but respected my ability to make the decision to stop drinking and encouraged me to develop my own strategies to do so.”[i]  SOBER for Good, went on to quote and interview people in long term recovery, provide a consumer guide and overview of the recovery world, with—or without—AA style peer-to-peer. In 2013, she followed up with Inside Rehab after doing more research. As a respected writer, she was invited to observe in and out-patient programs and she reported her findings from the campuses of Caron, Hazelden, Promises and other infamous facilities.  I think it’s great that people investigate, criticize and report on addiction/recovery modalities. Skepticism isn’t cynicism. Yes, some find fault like there’s a reward for it; we know enough about recovery from addiction to separate the attention getting nay-sayers from sincere outcries to aid addicts seeking help. And story-telling - be it alcoholic to alcoholic, eyeball to eyeball or print, documentary or social media accounts of experience, strengh and hope - is one of the best lessons learned from the 1939 Alcoholics Anonymous. Sharing our experience can empower others. Similarly, to Anne Fletcher, and many of us, David wasn’t a by-the-book alcoholic that fit nicely into a by-the-book recovery. First, David’s worldview didn’t fit the popular 12-Step recovery narrative of an intervening higher power that “could and would if He were sought.” Secondly, imagine how one takes inventory or reconciles one’s past where “nurture” happened in an adoptive family home and “nature” is out of the reach of personal scrutiny?  Today we’re going to hear from David, who is stepping up to share his story, his memoir, Parallel Universes: The Story of Rebirth. We’ve talked with other authors on this podcast and it never gets old. This one’s special for me because David is a friend of mine. I came to know him the same way I have come to know many of you, online at first and eventually in the rooms. David and I, and some of you, were among the 300 or so who attended the first Secular International gathering of AA in Santa Monica in 2014. Since then, I’ve been to meetings in his hometown and he’s been to meetings in mine.  I loved David’s Parallel Universes. I sometimes take public transit and on my way to Toronto Intergroup, I was transported by the tale of David landing in India, an alcoholic on the run again. I missed my bus stop; I missed three of them. Four stops later I sufficiently snapped back to my universe and start my mile, or so walk back to my destination, in a Toronto winter. I didn't mind the unplanned walk at all. It's gave me time to think more about the book. Just like in Anne Fletcher’s quote above, David didn’t feel right at home in AA either. He felt different because he was different; we’re all different. That’s something I trust Anne Fletcher found in her research… there is no universal solution but instead there are many paths and many absolutely fascinating stories to be shared. If you don’t know David he as a Masters of Addiction Studies and he’s a member of the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors (NAADAC). I’ll let him tell you how that happened. Here’s David on the phone and me at my desk, talking about life and recovery and his new book, out now, called Parallel Universe: A Story of Rebirth.   UPDATE: ICSAA 2018, The International Conference of Secular AA in Toronto Hashtag #OnToToronto is six months away. I happen to be your host-committee outreach coordinator. I’m working with Thomas, the outreach coordinator for the Secular AA board. I’m saying this because I am inviting you, if you are willing, to be a local liaison for your home group or the Agnostic/Atheist groups in your region. Send me your email and maybe a physical address too. The www.secularaa.org site has meeting info but not always phone numbers, contact names, etc. So, I need people to get the word out at your own group and maybe your district table or your local intergroup. Not all of the secular AA community belong to atheist/agnostic/freethinker groups and we want to reach anyone, anywhere.   The Toronto ICSAA 2018 conference is just around the corner and the host committee is ready to help people plan their trip. Check out Facebook and Twitter for info on things to do in Toronto. While we’re meeting August 24th to 26th in Toronto, the Canadian National Exhibition is on before, after and during the conference. Maybe you’d like to take an extra day this summer and attend Canada’s national exhibition. There are walking or bicycle tours, art galleries, museums and shopping walking distance from the Toronto Marriot Eaton Centre Hotel. Niagara Falls or Canada’s Wonderland are short drives away. We have local intel on how to get here by bus, plane or train but we need—I need—people to help get outreach to your local meetings. Toronto is an expensive North East city but from first-class to starving artist, there is lots to do on any budget. So check the show notes bellow or come register at www.secularaa.com and send us an email with your contact info.   Since posting this podcast, David B's book was reviewed by fellow Memoir writer, Thomas B, click to read it on AAagnositica. March 1, 2018 David B was the guest of John S on AA Beyond Belief Radio. Listen Here LINKS for Episode 36 of Rebellion Dogs Radio Click the words and enter "Parallel Universes." Rochester (pictured at the Mod Club Theatre, Toronto Canada photo credit: Wendy L. Rombough, www.IndieCan.com) APPLE MUSIC - SOUNDCLOUUD. Helschel Haus Books. David B Bhol website. Register for ICSAA 2018 August 24 - 26 HERE ICSAA 2018 on FACEBOOK ICSAA 2018 on TWITTER   Thanks for being part of Rebellion Dogs Radio. See you on line, see you in the rooms, [i] Fletcher, Anne M, SOBER for Good. 2001: New York, Houghton Muffin Company  [ii] https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/balance/1324728516?i=1324728520

Think Think Think: The Truth and How to Reconcile “Think, Think, Think…” Show me another AA slogan that doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Everyone loves, “Easy Does It,” and “Live and Let Live.” I’ve seen sober club houses that hang “Think, Think, Think” upside down. What is that supposed to mean? Meditation isn’t Step One in AA so perhaps it’s a more advanced tool in the kit than, “First Things First.” On Epiosode 35 of Rebellion Dogs Radio we are think, think, thinking about Truth and Reconciliation. We borrow from Science, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Dave Chappelle's waxing philosophical in Los Angeles, lessons learned from Apartheid in South Africa and Canada's indigenous Truth & Reconciliation. We look at a AA - history, current conflicts and we ponder about how our actions today will shape our future. We compare AA's current day personalities with Refuge Recovery mindfulness. Nelson Mandela, in his 1990, The Struggle is My Life said this: "Since my release, I have become more convinced than ever that the real makers of history are the ordinary men and women of our country; their participation in every decision about the future is the only guarantee of true democracy and freedom." So fellow ordinary men and women; it's up to us... let's talk. Episode 35 is about an hour of chitter-chatter, you can help yourself to a PDF or online transcript from Rebellion Dogs BLOG. As always, share, re-post, download or stream and if you feel inclined, join the conversation.  

“More than just a professional historian, as a Women’s Studies professor, I’m a professional feminist.  That means that my orientation to history is informed by an awareness of the unequal distribution of power between men and women, and a desire to reveal, critique and correct that inequality. Feminism works for me as what Ernie [Kurtz, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous] called a filter—it colors the questions that I ask and the answers that I formulate.” Trysh Travis: 2017 AA History Lover's Symposium, Sedona Mago Recovery Series. The history of woman in AA (and throughout the larger recovery community) is the focus of  Rebellion Dogs Radio #34. Rebellion Dog's 21st century look at 12-Step Life welcomes, from the University of Florida Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research, Trysh Travis. Having just come back from Sedona Mago Retreat (Arizona), I can tell you that the place is still buzzing from Trysh Travis' shared research and insights on women and the 12-Step community. Working on culture and literature book # 3, Trysh Travis authored The Language of the Heart: 12 Step Recovery from AA to Oprah Winfrey, and more recently Re-Thinking Therapeutic Culture. Add to that, as Managing Editor Emeritus of Points: The Blog of the Alcohol & Drugs History Society, our 12-Step culture has never been too far from this researcher's gaze. Today, it my rebellious and dogged pleasure to share my recent conversation with Trysh Travis about some of what her extensive research can tell us about women, addiction and recovery. Respecting your time, I compromised my way from what could have been the "longest Rebellion Dogs show ever" to a "longer than usual Rebellion Dogs Radio show." That's the great thing about podcasting; we don't have to break away to the news at the top-of-the-hour. Still, I understand you are a busy person, too. What to cut and what to showcase is never a pleasant decision when the content is so rich and important. With some good fortune, episode 34 won’t be the last we hear from Dr. Travis. If you care about any particular marginalized populations in the addiction/recovery community, or if you are intrigued by AA and other 12-Step history, you are in for a treat. This might be one of those, "I have to listen twice to catch it all," shows. Background: PhD, Yale University, American Studies, 1998    MA, Bread Loaf School of English, 1995    BA, New York University, Gallatin Division, 1987    Contact University of Flordia CLICK the PIC to Visit the Blog Post, "Points" Two Books (and counting) by Trysh Travis  “Readers who come to this book looking for blanket condemnation or praise will be disappointed.” Trysh Travis from Language of the Heart.   Also by Trysh Travis: anthology Rethinking Therapeutic Culture (co-edited with my friend Tim Aubry 2015) extends my work on popular self-help and other “mental hygiene” movements.    

"Ernie Kurtz was one of the most generous people I ever met. I think that the most important lesson that he ever taught me was that humility, curiosity and good manners, are the true fruits of both spiritual and intellectual investigation."  Jay Stinnett, Sedona Mago Retreat Center This is part of the story Jay shares with us in a chat which makes up the lion's share of Episode 33 of Rebellion Dogs Radio. Jay runs the Recovery Series of weekend workshops at Sedona Mago Retreat Center in Arizona. If you haven't already meet Jay, today's the day!  We planned on talking about an upcoming retreat we're working on together October 27th to 29th, 2017. It's called, "Beyond Belief: A secular journey through the 12-Step... with - or without - God."  Anyone who follows surveys or demographics is preconditioned to the reality that generation-next newcomers differ from our AA generation. Today's newcomers need AA, just like us. But today's newcomers include more freethinkers.  More millennials wants AA sobriety without the "God stuff," the monotheistic narrative about addiction and recovery. Why so fussy?  We have all read, "...deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 55)," That just isn't universally true, anymore. How do atheists make sense of "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character"? Does Step Three make sense without a higher power? Can there still be prayer, if nobody's there?  Largely, American atheists are still closeted. Think gays and lesbians, Circa: 1950. LGBTQ Americans found greater safety in the shadows during more homophobic times; atheists have learned how to avoid that familiar tyranny of the majority in our present-day "secularphobic" era. So how many people in North America don't believe in a prayer-answering, sobriety-granting higher power? A sneaky new survey suggests that that one quarter of Americans may not believe in an intervening deity. Conceivably, that could be 500,000 of today's AA members. No shit?!? Could that be true? Recently, Pew Research Group bluntly asked, "Do you believe in God." Of respondents, 11% identified as nonbelievers (but only 3% go so far as to call themselves "atheist"). Regardless of how you personally feel, there is a very real dislike of atheists in the USA. Think of how we talked/joked about "fags" in the 1950s - or the 1980s for that matter. Today's favorite scapegoat is the American atheist. Pew Research also revealed an American public who wouldn't want to vote for an atheist or learn that their child was marrying a godless partner. Let me introduce you to some sneaky researchers who believe they found a way to out American nonbelievers from our closets. Will M. Gervais and Mazime B. Najle of the University of Kentucky crafted a subtle way to text people. Five Thirty Eight.com spoke with the researchers and reported: “Instead of asking about belief in God directly, they provided a list of seemingly innocuous statements and then asked: “How many of these statements are true of you?” Respondents in a control group were given a list of nine statements, such as “I own a dog” and “I am a vegetarian.” The test group received all the same statements plus one that read, “I do not believe in God.” The totals from the test group were then compared to those from the control group, allowing researchers to estimate the number of people who identify as atheists without requiring any of the respondents to directly state that they don’t believe in God. The study concludes that roughly one-quarter (26 percent) of Americans likely do not believe in God.  Why am I telling you all about this right now? Jay and I don't actually talk about any of this on this podcast or much about the upcoming retreat. We got distracted. But we will stay focused October 27th to 29th. We will discuss how to approach today's newcomers with a non-exclusive -- neither religious nor irreligious -- language. As for today's podcast, Jay and I drift a wee bit. Jay and I had to catch up, and it was so interesting, I want to share it with you. We are talking about the Oxford Group, smoking as it relates to recovery, the history of the Taoist Sedona Mago Retreat and how it has braided the beard of the "No Californication for my Arizona" locals.  It's a great show. Here's some pictures from my last Sedona Arizona trip. The bottom left picture is a Tradition 11 anonymous selfie - my feet and the view part way up to the peak of Bear Mountain Arizona. The other three are the Sedona Mago grounds. If you've booked for Beyond Belief: A Secular journey through the Twelve Steps and Traditions, see you in Sedona. It's going to be epic. If you're not booked but impulsive... throwing caution to the wind and coming for the weekend is still cheaper than a crack relapse-lost weekend and you'll be back to work, Monday without a hangover or regret. So, think about joining us. Besides, who doesn't want to show-off how open-minded they are. If you can't make it, it's not as if this issue is going away and I'm sure this conversation will be oft' discussed in every corner of 12-Step culture.  Also on Episode 33, we touch on SOAAR - the Secular Ontario AA Roundup held in Toronto Canada, this past September 16th. SOAAR was well attended with members from Northern California to up-state New York. Ontario members came from South, North East and West to join the downtown Toronto crowd. The day ended with entertainment and singer/songwriter Kevin M of The Kat Kings and other performers who were well received. We close today's podcast, like we closed SOAAR in Toronto, with a Kat Kings song.  As always, stream or download the show from the link below. Share Episode 33 freely. If you're new here -- don't binge all in one sitting, but -- check out some of our previous shows. There are 32 more if we've counted correctly and many more blogs, too. Many of them still have that new-car smell.   https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/way-more-americans-may-be-atheists-than-we-thought/ http://www.sedonamagoretreat.org/beyond-belief/ https://secularaa.com/registration/The Kat Kings: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/the-kat-kings/id423404170  

Writer, Douglas Coupland wrote a 1990s book called Generation X and it helped dignify a generation lost in the shadow of Baby Boomers. If not for X, if not Coupland maybe there wouldn’t be a Gen Y (18 - 36-year-olds we call Millennials now) or Generation Z who make up today's teenage alcoholics and addicts. Douglas Coupland said something in the Foreword of a book that I have on order by Rosa Harris called, Boomerville: Musings on a Generation that Refuses to Go Quietly. He wasn't talking about AA, he wasn't warning us about any generational communication-breakdown but let's hear him out: “We stood at the turning point,” “We beg of you to be fearless,”“…we continued to practice these principles in all of our affairs,”“God as we understood Him.”It sounds like Coupland is looking right at "we" AAs as he’s making this generational distinction. Episode 32 of Rebellion Dogs Radio takes a wide-angle look at demographics with some help from Pew Research Group. We look at some challenges with bringing up the idea changes to the literature with "unselfconscious" Boomers. That won't go well, but we have four ideas of how we can overcome communication-breakdown and ensure 12-Step rooms are as Next-Generation friendly as "we" surely are for Boomers (my generation).Jon Cohen Experimental is the indie musical contribution to Episode 32 with the song based on a Buddhist folk tale, "Feed On Me."Want to read along? If you want to download the transcript, visit our blog page by clicking HOW BABY BOOMER ARE HOLDING AA BACK & 4 WAYS TO FIX IT. If you are ADHD there's lots to read, lots of links and pictures, too.Download or stream the show  below.   Want a PDF transcript to follow along with? CLICK HERE

    The Business of Recovery[i] was the title of the debut documentary produced by institutional insider, Greg Horvath. I talked to Horvath in November 2016 at Toronto’s film/art festival, Rendezvous With Madness. Rendezvous is an art, addiction and mental health amalgam. Painters, filmmakers and psychiatrists sit on panels together and discuss well-being and falling off the beam in panels that precede and follow indie films and documentaries.  Greg Horvath with Geoff Pevere of Rendezvous With Madness This just in: Horvath! Crowd-sourcing is underway for his second treatment business inventory-taking documentary. His followup documentary has a working title of The Truth About Rehab[ii]. It aims to frame the addiction treatment business as a wild, wild west, where wild claims are made and wild fees are charged for healthcare. Greg’s film is dedicated to exposing corruption and unethical, predatory practices. The new trailer to The Truth About Rehab quotes 50,000 as the number of people who died of addiction in 2015 (the year of his first documentary). Death is something Greg has some insight into. As the drama of his film unfolds, some of the people Horvath interviewed in The Business of Recovery, who are going through the addiction treatment system, don’t live to the documentary’s completion; Others are no longer alive, today.  The Business of Recovery motivated Rebellion Dogs to do our own digging around behind-the-scenes of the $US $35 Billion + addiction treatment industry. We share some of what we’ve found in this episode. Pundits, advocates, critics, lobbyists, all have a spin on this. Why not? A lot is on the line—a lot of well-being and profit to be had.  Background we need to know for context:  Ask Google: What does addiction treatment cost? A 30-day program could be $14,000 to $27,000, or $80,000 in Malibu. Out-patient treatment could be in the $500 range. Detoxing can cost $600-$1,000 per day.  Resources:  Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)[iii] was formed in 1992. Formed by Congress, SAMHSA describes itself as “the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation. SAMHSA's mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America's communities.”  Here is a mind-blowing statistic from SAMSHA:  In 2015, they count just under 286 million people 12 or older with either alcohol or drug dependency or abuse. By the way, the $35 Billion that is reportedly spent only meets the demand of 10% or so of Americans seeking addiction treatment.  SAMHSA itself has requested Congress for a budget of $4.3 Billion to carry on its work.  The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD)[iv] has some AA history. A first in many regards, Marty Mann was AA’s first LGBTQ success story and an early advocate outside the AA rooms. It’s interesting to wonder if we had formal Traditions or finger-pointing tradition enforcers back then, if Marty M could have or would have done what she has done. Mann is credited for organizing the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism in 1944, which became National Council on Alcoholism in in 1950, became equally concerns with drugs and re-branded as NCADD in 1990.  Mission Statement for NCADD: “Affiliate Network is a voluntary health organization dedicated to fighting the Nation’s #1 health problem – alcoholism, drug addiction and the devastating consequences of alcohol and other drugs on individuals, families and communities.” Activities include professional and community training, referral services, support and advocacy and public information.  National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)[v] or  National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)[vi]  Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)[vii]  Horvath’s first movie makes the claim that treatment center cost for addiction in America is $35 Billion and has risen 300% over 25 years. He also points out that treatment centers have tripled in 25 years now with 14,000 places that take your money to treat your addiction.  We also bring you some of what we’ve found from Vice, In Recovery Magazine and The Guardian. Of note, many within the industry are dedicated to ethical best-practices, education and outing predatory and unethical practices. We will report on some of their efforts and advocacy, also. Visit the links below to buy or rent The Business of Recovery or keep up to date with Greg Horvath’s newest project.  Mark your calendars for November 3 - 12, 2017 for this year’s Rendezvous With Madness[viii] art and film amalgam.     A complete PDF transcript will be coming soon.  [i] http://www.thebusinessofrecovery.com/  [ii] https://www.gofundme.com/thetruthaboutrehab?mc_cid=3efc9cc66c&mc_eid=21e35c81c1  [iii] https://www.samhsa.gov/about-us  [iv] https://www.ncadd.org/  [v] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/about-niaaa  [vi] https://www.drugabuse.gov/  [vii] http://www.doh.wa.gov/DataandStatisticalReports/DataSystems/BehavioralRiskFactorSurveillanceSystemBRFSS  [viii] http://www.rendezvouswithmadness.ca/  SEDONA MAGO RETREAT October 27, 28, 29, 2017 "A Secular view to Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions: http://www.sedonamagoretreat.org/beyond-belief/ Secular Ontario AA Roundup September 16, 2017 SOAAR http://www.soaar.ca/ Issues of Substance, Calgary November 13 - 15: http://www.cclt.ca/Eng/newsevents/Issues-of-Substance-Conference/Pages/default.aspx Feature song: "Crazy" by Ash Leigh Ball http://www.ashleighballmusic.com/  

March 2017: Joe C was on Talk Recovery Radio, 100.5 FM in Vancouver B.C. Hosts Darren Galer, Frances Stone and Giuseppe Ganci bring recovery and addiction issues to the airwaves with expert guest interviews, question of the day, call in time and awesome music.  Vancouver Co-operative Radio, CFRO, 100.5FM is a non-commercial, co-operatively-owned, listener-supported, community radio station. Located in East Vancouver and with long-time roots in the Downtown Eastside, Co-op Radio strives to provide a space for under-represented and marginalized communities. Co-op Radio aims to increase community participation by encouraging examination of the social and political concerns of the geographic and cultural communities of BC and beyond.  Toronto AA Intergroup had just made peace with AA secular groups including them in the directory without conditions. Vancouver Intergroup was debating reinstating agnostic/atheist AA groups at the time of recording, March 2, 2017. Congrats Van-city. They did, restoring unity to local AA and inviting the no-God groups back into the fold. Joe C loved being back on Talk Recovery. It's a show you can listen to online any Thursday at noon Pacific Time (3 PM EST)or visit their podcast section anytime for past shows. See links below... So what do we talk about? We cover different ways that secular AA meetings ignore, embrace or interpret AA's 12-Steps. We talk about the Toronto Human Rights case that reviewed the Intergroup discrimination (expulsion) of agnostic/atheist AA groups. We talk about identity politics, AA rituals and we share each others struggles with semantics, autonomy, willfulness and how we each make peace with and find a place in AA. Are words sacred? Does changing them help or hinder?   The Last Door   More Talk Recovery Radio on 100.5 FM

The new British Invasion: The God Word. What you need to know about AA history and The God Word? Get your PDF and take action to bring it to your home group library table.What's Joe's Secret and his recovery and what does it have to do with AA narrative, culture, orthodox vs. fluid language? Betcha' wanna' know!   We introduce a band called The Dash from Vancouver Canada. Connect with them on social media or hear more from their recording "A Better Place" by clicking HERE  Get a PDF transcript of the radio show HERE   The "God" Word - the path to an atheist/agnostic pamphlet being adopted by AA World Services

A discussion on AA service with John S & Joe C.  'Tis the season to show our gratitude. Is gratitude a feeling or an action; is it talked about or demonstrated?  The circle-triangle often associated with Alcoholics Anonymous represent three tenets of AA life: recovery, unity, service. Today we're talking about service. At the time of posting this podcast, I had some bad news come my way. AA World Service Director and Class B Trustee Joe D died this week. I last heard Joe D talk about AA’s history of diversity at our 2015 District 10/Area 83 service workshop called, “So You Think You’re Different: Diversity in AA” about a year ago.This episode is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Joe D.  Joe was on the trustees’ Literature Committee that was recommending the atheist/agnostic pamphlet that was rejected by the General Service Conference. Joe was visibly frustrated by the time, love and service that went into the draft, which was all for not. Joe was one of the “good guys,” (not to suggest there is any nefarious element at General Service). He would certainly have been a voice or reason and asset to AA World Service – and all of us – at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal mediation now underway. In this regard, the timing couldn’t be more tragic.  I have a hard time grasping that Joe D is gone for good. He was a former Area 83 delegate (South East Ontario Canada and NW New York State – AA’s only international Area). He was a mentor to many past and present trusted servants both in Ontario Canada and around the General Service Office. It is timely that we’re talking service; many of us to step up to fill a void created with the loss of Joe D. If 2016 has taught us anything, it is this: Don’t take your democracy for granted; liberty comes with responsibility. "What keeps you clean and sober, through thick and thin, all these 40-years, Joe?" you might ask. While why I am sober is still partly a mystery, there's no mystery to what I do to stay sober. I stay busy. Service, within AA and in our larger community, isn't something I do out of duty. It isn't something I do because I fear relapsing if I'm not a good boy. Maybe that was true at one point in early recovery. But today, service - in and outside of AA - is a building block within a purposeful life. A higher purpose was something I learned from secular AA friends who didn't drink the sobriety-granting, prayer-answering higher power Kool-Ade.  If you are like me, if you don't connect with popular AA God-talk that comes with 12-Step discussion, read the Traditions, read the Concepts. Our Traditions make one vague reference to god and the Concepts of World Service don't mention supernatural forces at all. To a theist, god is assumed in every corner of AA and good for theists. But for me, service work is a reprieve from the "turn it over, trust god" talk in so many meetings. Service work is secular. Hospitals, correction facilities, public information, accessibility, cooperation with the professional community, being group treasurer or answering the phones - these are all roll-up-your-sleeves activities will little concern for philosophy or abstractions.  Rarely do I ever get into debate over supernatural vs. natural worldviews when I'm talking about how AA can reach more underrepresented populations. Phones, trade-shows, coffee pots and committee meetings don't care what any of us believe. The same folks that make me roll my eyes if we're talking about Step Three, are good-natured colleagues when it comes to AA service work. In this regard, service and unity are linked. Regardless of opposing views on this or that, I find myself united in common good, in carrying AA's message, cheerfully with no cause or time for debate about spirituality.  Some will tell you that for them service is spiritual. I don't fight them on that. For me, service is secular; it is neither religious nor irreligious. It can help keep us sober and satisfied with life, regardless of what we do or do not believe.