Category: source

Scientific study from a book about Recovery Pathways: Measurable factors that can improve or impede our outcome rates

Review by Joe C.

David Best’s Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: The role of the social contagion of hope (2019), as he said in a keynote address at Recovery Capital Conference, New Westminster (Vancouver, Canada) late in 2018, months before the book’s release “was seven or eight years of study and research.” The result for us, is a 200-page read, along with another twenty pages of notes and references for the keeners and skeptics in the audience.

From the podium Best described the book as being about “a model of recovery that happens interpersonally. Recovery isn’t something that happens without people; but it’s something that also happens between people. Recovery is  a social movement and a social movement for good.”

A professor at the University of Derby, previously Sheffield Hallam University and visiting Associate Professor of Addiction Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, David Best specializes in criminology and finds some commonality in desistence from crime and recovery from addiction. In fact, his work overlaps, helping England with the first recovery prison, changing the culture for staff and inmates. Any of you who works in corrections, law enforcement, whose story includes doing time, or take meetings inside correctional facilities, there is a good deal of fascinating experience and findings that will appeal to you. For the purposes of this book review, I’ll be leaving this out of our discussion.

Research that went into this book includes over 2,000 recovery stories from Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and America. He looked for a common element that everyone did, which he could not find. However, “What I’ve discovered from all of these stories is that nobody recovers alone.” Therefor Pathways to Recovery and Desistence is a social model of recovery.

What about spontaneous remission? We know that people overcome process and substance addictions without treatment or mutual aid. But are they recovering alone? Best’s  findings suggest, that the individual recovering “on their own,” has some recovery capital active in their life. Best spends a good deal of space talking about social models of recovery/ recovery capital that have nothing to do with going to mutual aid groups or treatment centers: work/life satisfaction, family, community, role models, etc. “People can and do mature out of addiction if the environment and the context is rich and enables them, supporting that process of change.”

Fun fact from the Best research: For any group of people who detox from alcohol or other substance use disorder, with the intention of maintaining abstinence, people who know at least one person who is abstinent—this factor alone—yields a 27% better chance at sustainable permanent recovery over others who know no one who is clean and sober.

Return to the crack house or the band on tour, or any other profession that glorifies or rewards drinking/using behavior, without anyone in their circle who lives clean and sober—this isn’t to say this individual can’t get sober. But this peerless lone wolf has a 27% less likely chance of achieving long term sustainable recovery.

“Recovery is a long-established phenomenon but as a professional phenomenon, we still struggle for it to gain adequate traction,” Best reports. “There are still huge barriers, misconceptions, professional jealousy and attitudes that block recovery. It’s been a very gradual process.”

Time for the next fun fact from the book? How many people do you think recover from process or substance use disorder? What percentage? No, 5% is not factual. The whole industry massively underestimates the outcome rates.

The findings of Best et al. is 58% will eventually achieve stable recover – effectively five years abstinent from their drug of choice.

“Why five years? That has to do with relapse risk.” Between leaving our first detox and making it to five years, the likelihood of relapse for both opioids and alcohol is 50 to 70%–you or I are more likely to relapse in our first year, so researchers have learned that getting well is not an uninterrupted (relapse-free) trip for all of us. By five years our relapse rate is 14% or less. Researchers argue that after five years, recovery is self-sustaining. People can do it by themselves at that point. The determinants of outcome rates, of getting people from that first year to the five-year mark has a lot to do with the quality of community.

If your guess about outcome rates was lower than 58%, you are not alone. There is pessimism among treatment workers. Best asked a group of Welsh workers, “What do you think the likelihood of success is among your clients; how many people do you think come to treatment and then find long-term recovery? The science says 58%. The average (guessed) score from Welsh drug workers was 7%. You might reasonably think, ‘Well, if that’s what you expect, that’s what you’ll get; because you’ll convey that message of hopelessness.’ This is what is referred to as a clinical fallacy. One of the massive challenges we have to overcome is the pessimism of the workforce.”

Borrowed from studies on mental health recovery, successful recovery interventions have five component parts that are essential, and they came up with an acronym, CHIME:

1. Connection
2. Hope
3. Identity
4. Meaning
5. Empowerment

Any system (including mutual aid groups) that embodies all five of these, in Best’s observations, will succeed. Any system that does not, will not succeed. So, it’s not Step this or Noble Truth that or affirmation-A or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy technique-B. All of these professional therapies and peer to peer supports can work equally well, so long as they incorporate these five essential elements.

She Recovers has intentions and guiding principles, Buddhist based recovery follow an eight-fold path, in LifeRing, efforts to strengthen the Sober Self and weaken the Addict Self are achieved by a do-it-yourself program. Like the 12 steps or a stylized AA philosophy, any of these “programs” relates the experiences from one substance use sufferer to another. Trust and engagement of a group and placing faith in a process, seems to facilitate better outcome rates, regardless of the group or the process.

Connection

Johann Hari famously concludes that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is connection. That makes a great bumper-sticker but like most reductionism, it holds only a modicum of truth. Lots of people have connection and community if they go back to the bar, the crack-house or into the arms of an enabling partner. The type of connection that leads to sustainable recovery is connection that channels hope. the connection to a community that models recovery lifestyle. The example of fellow sufferers who are coping and/or thriving in a life of abstinence. “If they can do it, I can do it.”

Connection is more involved than attendance. Connection comes from engagement. When trust and commitment are inspired from the community, that is the basis of a healthy connection.

Hope

My attitude changed from resignation about dying an addict’s death to the possibilities presented to me by my recovery community. And as I look back, they had hope for me before I could muster the integrity to do it for myself. Their hope – the hope from the community – was contagious; I caught hope, I didn’t muster it.

Identity

Identity brings into context the value of special purpose mutual aid groups like secular AA but a change in identity is important to all. As David Best reports:

“…The impact of identity of social group membership. The Social Identity Model of Recovery (SIMOR) frames recovery as a process of social identity change in which a person’s most salient identity shifts from being defined by membership of a group whose norms and values revolve around substance abuse to being defined by membership of a group whose norms and values encourage recovery.” (p. 64)

That makes sense, going from a community where using/drinking behavior is modeled, my identity was tied to my using, which was tied to being a renegade, a member of the in-crowd cool subculture. Then, hanging around people in recovery long enough, I started modelling their behavior and developing their identity as a person beyond drugs and drinking, someone who chose recovery as a self-image. But there is more; Best goes on to say, “For this model to apply, the new group that the person aspires to join has to be attractive…”

If the heteronormative language of AA literature bums your recovery high, listening to shared experiences in meetings for LGBTQ+ will be more attractive for you. This is true for youth or women, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and secular AA for agnostics, atheists – anyone who isn’t from or rejects a Judeo/Christian look at the world. When we find ourselves saying, “These people are a lot like me,” we identify and if we can identify, we can imagine modeling their recovery behavior. Identification is tied to self-image and identity.

Meaning

“We found that two best predictors of recovery and recovery wellbeing are 1) how much time did you spend with people in recovery and 2) how much stuff did you do? The number one biggest predictor of quality of life for people in recovery from alcohol and heroin was meaningful prosocial activity.” Of course some of that is in the rooms, but meaningful employment, volunteering and family life also discourage relapse events. Best et al. call it GOYA. “Get off your ass.” Do something, find a sense of purpose, and stay clean and sober.

As a side-effect of this search for meaning, society benefits. Best talks about a study of people in long-term recovery in the UK. 79% were doing charity or some other form of community work. What do you think the average rate was of this kind of generous civic engagement among the UK general population? About half of the recovery community’s activity. So it pays for governments and communities to invest in recovery. We have heard this from advocates before: every dollar spent on treatment/recovery, comes back two or three-fold in terms of productivity improvements, etc.

Empowerment

“Within a social identity model of change, this involves a virtuous circle of social engagement, purposeful action and an increased sense of wellbeing manifest in a growing sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. …  recovery capital is captured in the empowerment component in which the individual derives personal strengths (and awareness of those strengths) from this cycle of positive identity change, engagement in meaningful and pro-social activity, and increased empowerment and self-determination.” (p. 184)

I can see CHIME in how my sobriety came to be and how it goes, today. I also see in others whose vastly different path than mine, the same Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment at work in their recovery. I guess that all of our stories—then and now—are as individual as our own thumbprints. This book is a great source of the latest science; it challenged some of my views and it also validates some of my own anecdotal folk-wisdom. You may find—as I have—that the book is also a useful tool to test one’s unique journey against measurable recovery capital characteristics. To finish off from Pathways to Recovery and Desistance:

“This is the heart of the CHIME …  the start of a radius of trust which can inspire the drive and motivation that will enable a sense of empowerment and self-esteem that will inform the development of a new set of social identities linked to positive groups and activities.” (p. 198)

---

Joe C was one of the founders of the Toronto group and meeting, Beyond Belief Agnostic and Freethinkers Group, Canada’s longest running secular AA meeting. He is also the creator and manager of a secular AA website, Rebellion Dogs Publishing.

Joe is the author the ever-popular book Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life. This is a book of daily reflections that is often read at the beginning of secular AA meetings.

---

Counting today’s, Joe has written 22 articles published on AA Agnostica. Here are the earlier ones:

• The Growth Rate of Secular AA (May 29, 2019)
• Recovery Capital Conference of Canada (September (September 30, 2018)
• International Conference of Secular AA – Toronto (June 24, 2018)
• Daily Reprieve: A.A. for Atheists & Agnostics – Review (January 25, 2018)
• Each Breath A Gift (June 21, 2017)
• Beyond Belief Agnostics and Freethinkers (March 09, 2017)
• No God? No Problem: Atheism in AA as a Human Right – Jesse Beach (March 02, 2017)
• AA Membership: Growth or Decline (September 06, 2015)
• A Changing Landscape (May 13, 2015)
• Living with Lillian (February 11, 2015)
• Letting Go of God (October 26, 2014)
• Together We Can (August 31, 2014)
• A Reverend at the Agnostic AA Convention (April 13, 2014)
• Is listability the new AA? (January 19, 2014)
• Six Shades of Nonbelievers (August 11, 2013)
• Pharisees and Recalcitrants (August 26, 2012)
• Quadrants of Knowledge (June 24, 2012)
• Never Fear Needed Change (June 3, 2012)
• The Silver Tongued Devil and I (February 25, 2012)
• Let the Wood Burn (December 13, 2011)
• AA Public Information: “Let it Begin With Me” (July 24, 2011)

For the record, Joe’s first article was the fourth ever posted on AA Agnostica.

---

 

The post Pathways to Recovery and Desistance first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Scientific study from a book about Recovery Pathways: Measurable factors that can improve or impede our outcome rates

Review by Joe C.

David Best’s Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: The role of the social contagion of hope (2019), as he said in a keynote address at Recovery Capital Conference, New Westminster (Vancouver, Canada) late in 2018, months before the book’s release “was seven or eight years of study and research.” The result for us, is a 200-page read, along with another twenty pages of notes and references for the keeners and skeptics in the audience.

From the podium Best described the book as being about “a model of recovery that happens interpersonally. Recovery isn’t something that happens without people; but it’s something that also happens between people. Recovery is  a social movement and a social movement for good.”

A professor at the University of Derby, previously Sheffield Hallam University and visiting Associate Professor of Addiction Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, David Best specializes in criminology and finds some commonality in desistence from crime and recovery from addiction. In fact, his work overlaps, helping England with the first recovery prison, changing the culture for staff and inmates. Any of you who works in corrections, law enforcement, whose story includes doing time, or take meetings inside correctional facilities, there is a good deal of fascinating experience and findings that will appeal to you. For the purposes of this book review, I’ll be leaving this out of our discussion.

Research that went into this book includes over 2,000 recovery stories from Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and America. He looked for a common element that everyone did, which he could not find. However, “What I’ve discovered from all of these stories is that nobody recovers alone.” Therefor Pathways to Recovery and Desistence is a social model of recovery.

What about spontaneous remission? We know that people overcome process and substance addictions without treatment or mutual aid. But are they recovering alone? Best’s  findings suggest, that the individual recovering “on their own,” has some recovery capital active in their life. Best spends a good deal of space talking about social models of recovery/ recovery capital that have nothing to do with going to mutual aid groups or treatment centers: work/life satisfaction, family, community, role models, etc. “People can and do mature out of addiction if the environment and the context is rich and enables them, supporting that process of change.”

Fun fact from the Best research: For any group of people who detox from alcohol or other substance use disorder, with the intention of maintaining abstinence, people who know at least one person who is abstinent—this factor alone—yields a 27% better chance at sustainable permanent recovery over others who know no one who is clean and sober.

Return to the crack house or the band on tour, or any other profession that glorifies or rewards drinking/using behavior, without anyone in their circle who lives clean and sober—this isn’t to say this individual can’t get sober. But this peerless lone wolf has a 27% less likely chance of achieving long term sustainable recovery.

“Recovery is a long-established phenomenon but as a professional phenomenon, we still struggle for it to gain adequate traction,” Best reports. “There are still huge barriers, misconceptions, professional jealousy and attitudes that block recovery. It’s been a very gradual process.”

Time for the next fun fact from the book? How many people do you think recover from process or substance use disorder? What percentage? No, 5% is not factual. The whole industry massively underestimates the outcome rates.

The findings of Best et al. is 58% will eventually achieve stable recover – effectively five years abstinent from their drug of choice.

“Why five years? That has to do with relapse risk.” Between leaving our first detox and making it to five years, the likelihood of relapse for both opioids and alcohol is 50 to 70%–you or I are more likely to relapse in our first year, so researchers have learned that getting well is not an uninterrupted (relapse-free) trip for all of us. By five years our relapse rate is 14% or less. Researchers argue that after five years, recovery is self-sustaining. People can do it by themselves at that point. The determinants of outcome rates, of getting people from that first year to the five-year mark has a lot to do with the quality of community.

If your guess about outcome rates was lower than 58%, you are not alone. There is pessimism among treatment workers. Best asked a group of Welsh workers, “What do you think the likelihood of success is among your clients; how many people do you think come to treatment and then find long-term recovery? The science says 58%. The average (guessed) score from Welsh drug workers was 7%. You might reasonably think, ‘Well, if that’s what you expect, that’s what you’ll get; because you’ll convey that message of hopelessness.’ This is what is referred to as a clinical fallacy. One of the massive challenges we have to overcome is the pessimism of the workforce.”

Borrowed from studies on mental health recovery, successful recovery interventions have five component parts that are essential, and they came up with an acronym, CHIME:

1. Connection
2. Hope
3. Identity
4. Meaning
5. Empowerment

Any system (including mutual aid groups) that embodies all five of these, in Best’s observations, will succeed. Any system that does not, will not succeed. So, it’s not Step this or Noble Truth that or affirmation-A or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy technique-B. All of these professional therapies and peer to peer supports can work equally well, so long as they incorporate these five essential elements.

She Recovers has intentions and guiding principles, Buddhist based recovery follow an eight-fold path, in LifeRing, efforts to strengthen the Sober Self and weaken the Addict Self are achieved by a do-it-yourself program. Like the 12 steps or a stylized AA philosophy, any of these “programs” relates the experiences from one substance use sufferer to another. Trust and engagement of a group and placing faith in a process, seems to facilitate better outcome rates, regardless of the group or the process.

Connection

Johann Hari famously concludes that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is connection. That makes a great bumper-sticker but like most reductionism, it holds only a modicum of truth. Lots of people have connection and community if they go back to the bar, the crack-house or into the arms of an enabling partner. The type of connection that leads to sustainable recovery is connection that channels hope. the connection to a community that models recovery lifestyle. The example of fellow sufferers who are coping and/or thriving in a life of abstinence. “If they can do it, I can do it.”

Connection is more involved than attendance. Connection comes from engagement. When trust and commitment are inspired from the community, that is the basis of a healthy connection.

Hope

My attitude changed from resignation about dying an addict’s death to the possibilities presented to me by my recovery community. And as I look back, they had hope for me before I could muster the integrity to do it for myself. Their hope – the hope from the community – was contagious; I caught hope, I didn’t muster it.

Identity

Identity brings into context the value of special purpose mutual aid groups like secular AA but a change in identity is important to all. As David Best reports:

“…The impact of identity of social group membership. The Social Identity Model of Recovery (SIMOR) frames recovery as a process of social identity change in which a person’s most salient identity shifts from being defined by membership of a group whose norms and values revolve around substance abuse to being defined by membership of a group whose norms and values encourage recovery.” (p. 64)

That makes sense, going from a community where using/drinking behavior is modeled, my identity was tied to my using, which was tied to being a renegade, a member of the in-crowd cool subculture. Then, hanging around people in recovery long enough, I started modelling their behavior and developing their identity as a person beyond drugs and drinking, someone who chose recovery as a self-image. But there is more; Best goes on to say, “For this model to apply, the new group that the person aspires to join has to be attractive…”

If the heteronormative language of AA literature bums your recovery high, listening to shared experiences in meetings for LGBTQ+ will be more attractive for you. This is true for youth or women, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and secular AA for agnostics, atheists – anyone who isn’t from or rejects a Judeo/Christian look at the world. When we find ourselves saying, “These people are a lot like me,” we identify and if we can identify, we can imagine modeling their recovery behavior. Identification is tied to self-image and identity.

Meaning

“We found that two best predictors of recovery and recovery wellbeing are 1) how much time did you spend with people in recovery and 2) how much stuff did you do? The number one biggest predictor of quality of life for people in recovery from alcohol and heroin was meaningful prosocial activity.” Of course some of that is in the rooms, but meaningful employment, volunteering and family life also discourage relapse events. Best et al. call it GOYA. “Get off your ass.” Do something, find a sense of purpose, and stay clean and sober.

As a side-effect of this search for meaning, society benefits. Best talks about a study of people in long-term recovery in the UK. 79% were doing charity or some other form of community work. What do you think the average rate was of this kind of generous civic engagement among the UK general population? About half of the recovery community’s activity. So it pays for governments and communities to invest in recovery. We have heard this from advocates before: every dollar spent on treatment/recovery, comes back two or three-fold in terms of productivity improvements, etc.

Empowerment

“Within a social identity model of change, this involves a virtuous circle of social engagement, purposeful action and an increased sense of wellbeing manifest in a growing sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. …  recovery capital is captured in the empowerment component in which the individual derives personal strengths (and awareness of those strengths) from this cycle of positive identity change, engagement in meaningful and pro-social activity, and increased empowerment and self-determination.” (p. 184)

I can see CHIME in how my sobriety came to be and how it goes, today. I also see in others whose vastly different path than mine, the same Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment at work in their recovery. I guess that all of our stories—then and now—are as individual as our own thumbprints. This book is a great source of the latest science; it challenged some of my views and it also validates some of my own anecdotal folk-wisdom. You may find—as I have—that the book is also a useful tool to test one’s unique journey against measurable recovery capital characteristics. To finish off from Pathways to Recovery and Desistance:

“This is the heart of the CHIME …  the start of a radius of trust which can inspire the drive and motivation that will enable a sense of empowerment and self-esteem that will inform the development of a new set of social identities linked to positive groups and activities.” (p. 198)

---

Joe C was one of the founders of the Toronto group and meeting, Beyond Belief Agnostic and Freethinkers Group, Canada’s longest running secular AA meeting. He is also the creator and manager of a secular AA website, Rebellion Dogs Publishing.

Joe is the author the ever-popular book Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life. This is a book of daily reflections that is often read at the beginning of secular AA meetings.

---

Counting today’s, Joe has written 22 articles published on AA Agnostica. Here are the earlier ones:

• The Growth Rate of Secular AA (May 29, 2019)
• Recovery Capital Conference of Canada (September (September 30, 2018)
• International Conference of Secular AA – Toronto (June 24, 2018)
• Daily Reprieve: A.A. for Atheists & Agnostics – Review (January 25, 2018)
• Each Breath A Gift (June 21, 2017)
• Beyond Belief Agnostics and Freethinkers (March 09, 2017)
• No God? No Problem: Atheism in AA as a Human Right – Jesse Beach (March 02, 2017)
• AA Membership: Growth or Decline (September 06, 2015)
• A Changing Landscape (May 13, 2015)
• Living with Lillian (February 11, 2015)
• Letting Go of God (October 26, 2014)
• Together We Can (August 31, 2014)
• A Reverend at the Agnostic AA Convention (April 13, 2014)
• Is listability the new AA? (January 19, 2014)
• Six Shades of Nonbelievers (August 11, 2013)
• Pharisees and Recalcitrants (August 26, 2012)
• Quadrants of Knowledge (June 24, 2012)
• Never Fear Needed Change (June 3, 2012)
• The Silver Tongued Devil and I (February 25, 2012)
• Let the Wood Burn (December 13, 2011)
• AA Public Information: “Let it Begin With Me” (July 24, 2011)

For the record, Joe’s first article was the fourth ever posted on AA Agnostica.

---

 

The post Pathways to Recovery and Desistance first appeared on AA Agnostica.

by Roger C

PREAMBLE

AA Agnostica has now published a total of ten books in the last eight years. And the last two of these ten were just published and are now available! These are:

1. The second edition of The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps, and
2. Its French translation Le petit livre jaune: Les douze étapes vues autrement.

More about these books is coming up, but first, a bit about Alcoholics Anonymous.

Let’s be clear: AA needs to grow up. It hinges itself almost entirely on something called the Big Book, in which the word “God” or another version of “Him” is found 281 times in the first 164 pages. And six of the 12 Steps have a supernatural, interventionist and male God in them. Why is that? Well, it’s an ancient book, published in 1939. And its author was a member of the Oxford Group, a Christian evangelical movement that had its heyday in the 1930s. The USA was very Christian at that time. It took another couple of decades – 1962 – before the Supreme Court banned the use of prayers – including the Lord’s Prayer – at public schools (The Lord’s Prayer and the Law).

The Big Book is eighty-two years old! Worse yet, it is “Conference-approved” by AA. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you go to a traditional AA meeting – the overwhelming majority of the meetings are “traditional” – you will only find a very few “Conference –approved” books on a Literature Table and all of them very old. Everything else written about alcoholism and what might help you in recovery is either rejected or ignored.

I got sober a little over a decade ago. While I was in rehab – Homewood in Guelph, Ontario – I tried to find literature on recovery, other than the ancient and godly AA stuff.  Couldn’t find a thing. And, to be honest, at the time there were very, very few books that were either contemporary or written by and respectful of non-believers in recovery.

That is why a few years later, after the creation of the AA Agnostica website, I started to publish a few books. The very first was The Little Book.

Let me also add this: there are many, many other new and wonderful secular AA books by a variety of authors these days. Here are just two of them. Beyond Belief – Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life. The author, Joe C, was one of the founders of the first ongoing secular AA meeting in Canada, also called Beyond Belief. I met Joe when I was a regular attendee of that meeting. And Staying Sober Without God. The author is Jeffrey Munn, a Californian, who attended a Secular Ontario AA Roundup (SOAAR) which I helped organize prior to the pandemic and was held in my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario.

SECOND EDITION OF THE LITTLE BOOK

The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps was first published in 2013. The title was chosen to indicate that, while it was all about the Steps and recovery, it was in some ways the opposite of the Big Book.

The second edition now contains 20 versions of the 12 Steps. The oldest version, I believe, which is also in the First Edition, are the Humanist 12 Steps published in 1987 and written by B. F. Skinner, a winner of the Humanist of the Year award.

There are four new versions in the second edition. The newest version is The Practical 12 Steps, written by Jeffrey Munn and published in 2019. And, thanks to the French translator, Louise, there is also a version by the first ever secular AA group in Québec, les Libres-penseurs (Freethinkers). Those Steps were shared in an article on AA Agnostica in 2018.

The Little Book still contains four secular interpretations of each one of the Steps. No “Higher Power” is required or demanded. It’s all about “a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism”. And that’s your goal and your work, and to this end, with the support and encouragement of others in recovery.

More about the second edition can be found below. Overall it has been updated, and hopefully it has been made even more pleasurable to read. I encourage you to read The Little Book – even though it’s not “Conference-approved” – and, indeed, to read any number of the more contemporary and very helpful books on the topic of recovery.

---

THE LITTLE BOOK – Second Edition

“A beautiful testimony to AA’s living history.” Ernest Kurtz, author, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Inside the book:

Part 1: Twenty alternative versions of the 12 Steps reflecting a wide range of perspectives.

Part 2: Four interpretations of each of the Steps by well-known authors.

After each of these parts, there are templates so the reader can write her or his own personal 12 Steps and an interpretation of each one of them.

Part 3: An essay that traces the origins of the AA 12 Step recovery program.

The Little Book is a celebration of the many ways people are today adapting and interpreting the original 12 Steps in order to achieve a “personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism”.

---

The paperback version – second edition – is available at Amazon USA. It is also available via Amazon in Canada and the United Kingdom and, well, several other continents and countries.

---

 

The post The Little Book – Second Edition first appeared on AA Agnostica.

by Roger C

PREAMBLE

AA Agnostica has now published a total of ten books in the last eight years. And the last two of these ten were just published and are now available! These are:

1. The second edition of The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps, and
2. Its French translation Le petit livre jaune: Les douze étapes vues autrement.

More about these books is coming up, but first, a bit about Alcoholics Anonymous.

Let’s be clear: AA needs to grow up. It hinges itself almost entirely on something called the Big Book, in which the word “God” or another version of “Him” is found 281 times in the first 164 pages. And six of the 12 Steps have a supernatural, interventionist and male God in them. Why is that? Well, it’s an ancient book, published in 1939. And its author was a member of the Oxford Group, a Christian evangelical movement that had its heyday in the 1930s. The USA was very Christian at that time. It took another couple of decades – 1962 – before the Supreme Court banned the use of prayers – including the Lord’s Prayer – at public schools (The Lord’s Prayer and the Law).

The Big Book is eighty-two years old! Worse yet, it is “Conference-approved” by AA. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you go to a traditional AA meeting – the overwhelming majority of the meetings are “traditional” – you will only find a very few “Conference –approved” books on a Literature Table and all of them very old. Everything else written about alcoholism and what might help you in recovery is either rejected or ignored.

I got sober a little over a decade ago. While I was in rehab – Homewood in Guelph, Ontario – I tried to find literature on recovery, other than the ancient and godly AA stuff.  Couldn’t find a thing. And, to be honest, at the time there were very, very few books that were either contemporary or written by and respectful of non-believers in recovery.

That is why a few years later, after the creation of the AA Agnostica website, I started to publish a few books. The very first was The Little Book.

Let me also add this: there are many, many other new and wonderful secular AA books by a variety of authors these days. Here are just two of them. Beyond Belief – Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life. The author, Joe C, was one of the founders of the first ongoing secular AA meeting in Canada, also called Beyond Belief. I met Joe when I was a regular attendee of that meeting. And Staying Sober Without God. The author is Jeffrey Munn, a Californian, who attended a Secular Ontario AA Roundup (SOAAR) which I helped organize prior to the pandemic and was held in my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario.

SECOND EDITION OF THE LITTLE BOOK

The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps was first published in 2013. The title was chosen to indicate that, while it was all about the Steps and recovery, it was in some ways the opposite of the Big Book.

The second edition now contains 20 versions of the 12 Steps. The oldest version, I believe, which is also in the First Edition, are the Humanist 12 Steps published in 1987 and written by B. F. Skinner, a winner of the Humanist of the Year award.

There are four new versions in the second edition. The newest version is The Practical 12 Steps, written by Jeffrey Munn and published in 2019. And, thanks to the French translator, Louise, there is also a version by the first ever secular AA group in Québec, les Libres-penseurs (Freethinkers). Those Steps were shared in an article on AA Agnostica in 2018.

The Little Book still contains four secular interpretations of each one of the Steps. No “Higher Power” is required or demanded. It’s all about “a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism”. And that’s your goal and your work, and to this end, with the support and encouragement of others in recovery.

More about the second edition can be found below. Overall it has been updated, and hopefully it has been made even more pleasurable to read. I encourage you to read The Little Book – even though it’s not “Conference-approved” – and, indeed, to read any number of the more contemporary and very helpful books on the topic of recovery.

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THE LITTLE BOOK – Second Edition

“A beautiful testimony to AA’s living history.” Ernest Kurtz, author, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Inside the book:

Part 1: Twenty alternative versions of the 12 Steps reflecting a wide range of perspectives.

Part 2: Four interpretations of each of the Steps by well-known authors.

After each of these parts, there are templates so the reader can write her or his own personal 12 Steps and an interpretation of each one of them.

Part 3: An essay that traces the origins of the AA 12 Step recovery program.

The Little Book is a celebration of the many ways people are today adapting and interpreting the original 12 Steps in order to achieve a “personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism”.

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The paperback version – second edition – is available at Amazon USA. It is also available via Amazon in Canada and the United Kingdom and, well, several other continents and countries.

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The post The Little Book – Second Edition first appeared on AA Agnostica.

par Louise B

PRÉAMBULE

Tout s’est passé vite. À l’été 2020, un membre d’Ottawa habitué des groupes AA laïcs de sa ville me tient un discours statistique sur l’appartenance religieuse de la population générale du Canada. J’ai oublié le pourcentage exact, mais j’ai été frappée  par l’indifférence des Canadiens face à la pratique religieuse.

Du coup, je me retrouve en pensée dans mon groupe d’attache dont la très grande majorité des membres ont plus de cinquante ans. De temps à autre arrive une jeune recrue… que nous ne reverrons pas. Tout s’éclaire : le discours religieux des AA traditionnels a sur les jeunes un effet dissuasif. Le message ne les atteint pas.

Or, les jeunes ne sont pas les seuls qu’agace l’intense présence de Dieu dans le déroulement des réunions AA. Intellectuellement adepte du védisme et du bouddhisme, je n’en peux plus des bondieuseries judéo-chrétiennes dans mon groupe. Au point que l’honnêteté me force à abandonner mes fonctions, et le groupe lui-même.

Mais le message de mon ami athée et agnostique, comme lui-même se définit, a porté ses fruits et je trouve dans la liste des réunions virtuelles un groupe francophone pour athées et agnostiques. Les Libres-penseurs accueillent tout le monde ; l’ouverture d’esprit de ses membres est rafraichissante. Dès la première réunion, je sais que je viens de trouver mon groupe d’attache pour un bon moment.

LE PETIT LIVRE JAUNE

Désireuse de servir, je fais part aux Libres-penseurs de mes compétences professionnelles en traduction. Le groupe ne laisse pas passer l’occasion ; il estime qu’il faut accorder la priorité au Little Book de Roger C. ainsi titré par les anglophones pour faire un rappel du Big Book. Je le traduirai.

Ce n’est pas parce que le client est AA Agnostica et les Libres-penseurs que la tâche sera facile. Du côté du client, rien à redire : les Libres-penseurs ont fait montre de patience, AA Agnostica aussi. Il n’en reste pas moins que chaque traduction, chaque nouveau client sont un défi. C’est le cas ici.

Premier frein : Les Libres-penseurs veulent modifier la formulation de leurs propres étapes. Il faut attendre le texte définitif puisque la version Libres-penseurs sera incluse dans Le petit livre jaune. De plus, l’auteur modifie parfois les textes anglais après qu’ils ont été traduits, avec des répercussions dont lui-même n’est pas conscient. C’est un scénario bien connu en traduction! Travail de fourmi en vue en dépit des avancées informatiques en production de texte.

Deuxième difficulté : les nombreuses références aux textes de base en français. Si certains sont facilement accessibles, comme les douze étapes d’origine, il n’en est pas de même pour d’autres comme Transmets-le ou des textes de Bill W. dans Grapevine. Il faudra négocier avec le service des Archives d’AA pour obtenir les originaux français de toutes les publications. Merci aux Archives puisque la demande d’AA Agnostica sera finalement agréée.

Enfin, le travail de mise en forme avec une personne d’une langue différente a été une fabuleuse expérience de patience. Aucune ironie ici : ensemble, le metteur en page et moi, avons produit 10 versions du Petit livre jaune avant de crier : « Victoire ! » Je suis reconnaissante à Chris G. d’être resté impassible tout au long de l’aventure. Il a dû m’inspirer puisque je n’ai jamais connu avec lui de moment d’exaspération et que, au contraire, ses fantaisies involontaires m’ont fait sourire. Je m’en voudrais de ne pas mentionner le soutien indéfectible de l’auteur, Roger C. Je souhaite que mes multiples demandes et exigences ne le découragent pas d’ouvrir d’autres chantiers de traduction.

Enfin, j’ai largement profité du travail exécuté dans le cadre de l’adaptation du Petit livre jaune. J’ai été plongée au coeur des préceptes et des valeurs qui font les groupes AA athées ou agnostiques. J’ai la conviction d’être à ma place. Que ce soit le cas de tous ceux et celles qui croient trouver en eux-mêmes et en elles-mêmes et au sein d’un groupe d’alcooliques la solution à leur problème d’alcool. Je leur dédie la traduction du Petit livre jaune.

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Le petit livre jaune

«–Un merveilleux témoignage de la marche continue de l’histoire des AA.–» ERNEST KURTZ, Auteur de Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous.

CONTENU :

• Vingt versions des douze étapes.

• Les interprétations de chacune des étapes par quatre experts renommés : Stephanie Covington, Thérèse Jacobs-Stewart, Allen Berger et Gabor Maté. Des gabarits pour écrire une version personnelle et des interprétions de chacune des étapes.

• Un essai qui trace l’histoire des douze étapes et qui pose un regard critique sur cette histoire.

Le petit livre jaune est une célébration des nombreuses façons dont les gens adaptent et interprètent les douze étapes afin de parvenir à un «–changement de personnalité qui suffit à entraîner le rétablissement de l’alcoolique–».

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Le petit livre jaune, écrit par Roger C et traduit par Louise B, est disponible sur Amazon. Voici quelque liens:

Amazon USA;
Amazon Canada et
Amazon France.

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The post Présentation du Petit livre jaune first appeared on AA Agnostica.

par Louise B

PRÉAMBULE

Tout s’est passé vite. À l’été 2020, un membre d’Ottawa habitué des groupes AA laïcs de sa ville me tient un discours statistique sur l’appartenance religieuse de la population générale du Canada. J’ai oublié le pourcentage exact, mais j’ai été frappée  par l’indifférence des Canadiens face à la pratique religieuse.

Du coup, je me retrouve en pensée dans mon groupe d’attache dont la très grande majorité des membres ont plus de cinquante ans. De temps à autre arrive une jeune recrue… que nous ne reverrons pas. Tout s’éclaire : le discours religieux des AA traditionnels a sur les jeunes un effet dissuasif. Le message ne les atteint pas.

Or, les jeunes ne sont pas les seuls qu’agace l’intense présence de Dieu dans le déroulement des réunions AA. Intellectuellement adepte du védisme et du bouddhisme, je n’en peux plus des bondieuseries judéo-chrétiennes dans mon groupe. Au point que l’honnêteté me force à abandonner mes fonctions, et le groupe lui-même.

Mais le message de mon ami athée et agnostique, comme lui-même se définit, a porté ses fruits et je trouve dans la liste des réunions virtuelles un groupe francophone pour athées et agnostiques. Les Libres-penseurs accueillent tout le monde ; l’ouverture d’esprit de ses membres est rafraichissante. Dès la première réunion, je sais que je viens de trouver mon groupe d’attache pour un bon moment.

LE PETIT LIVRE JAUNE

Désireuse de servir, je fais part aux Libres-penseurs de mes compétences professionnelles en traduction. Le groupe ne laisse pas passer l’occasion ; il estime qu’il faut accorder la priorité au Little Book de Roger C. ainsi titré par les anglophones pour faire un rappel du Big Book. Je le traduirai.

Ce n’est pas parce que le client est AA Agnostica et les Libres-penseurs que la tâche sera facile. Du côté du client, rien à redire : les Libres-penseurs ont fait montre de patience, AA Agnostica aussi. Il n’en reste pas moins que chaque traduction, chaque nouveau client sont un défi. C’est le cas ici.

Premier frein : Les Libres-penseurs veulent modifier la formulation de leurs propres étapes. Il faut attendre le texte définitif puisque la version Libres-penseurs sera incluse dans Le petit livre jaune. De plus, l’auteur modifie parfois les textes anglais après qu’ils ont été traduits, avec des répercussions dont lui-même n’est pas conscient. C’est un scénario bien connu en traduction! Travail de fourmi en vue en dépit des avancées informatiques en production de texte.

Deuxième difficulté : les nombreuses références aux textes de base en français. Si certains sont facilement accessibles, comme les douze étapes d’origine, il n’en est pas de même pour d’autres comme Transmets-le ou des textes de Bill W. dans Grapevine. Il faudra négocier avec le service des Archives d’AA pour obtenir les originaux français de toutes les publications. Merci aux Archives puisque la demande d’AA Agnostica sera finalement agréée.

Enfin, le travail de mise en forme avec une personne d’une langue différente a été une fabuleuse expérience de patience. Aucune ironie ici : ensemble, le metteur en page et moi, avons produit 10 versions du Petit livre jaune avant de crier : « Victoire ! » Je suis reconnaissante à Chris G. d’être resté impassible tout au long de l’aventure. Il a dû m’inspirer puisque je n’ai jamais connu avec lui de moment d’exaspération et que, au contraire, ses fantaisies involontaires m’ont fait sourire. Je m’en voudrais de ne pas mentionner le soutien indéfectible de l’auteur, Roger C. Je souhaite que mes multiples demandes et exigences ne le découragent pas d’ouvrir d’autres chantiers de traduction.

Enfin, j’ai largement profité du travail exécuté dans le cadre de l’adaptation du Petit livre jaune. J’ai été plongée au coeur des préceptes et des valeurs qui font les groupes AA athées ou agnostiques. J’ai la conviction d’être à ma place. Que ce soit le cas de tous ceux et celles qui croient trouver en eux-mêmes et en elles-mêmes et au sein d’un groupe d’alcooliques la solution à leur problème d’alcool. Je leur dédie la traduction du Petit livre jaune.

---

Le petit livre jaune

«–Un merveilleux témoignage de la marche continue de l’histoire des AA.–» ERNEST KURTZ, Auteur de Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous.

CONTENU :

• Vingt versions des douze étapes.

• Les interprétations de chacune des étapes par quatre experts renommés : Stephanie Covington, Thérèse Jacobs-Stewart, Allen Berger et Gabor Maté. Des gabarits pour écrire une version personnelle et des interprétions de chacune des étapes.

• Un essai qui trace l’histoire des douze étapes et qui pose un regard critique sur cette histoire.

Le petit livre jaune est une célébration des nombreuses façons dont les gens adaptent et interprètent les douze étapes afin de parvenir à un «–changement de personnalité qui suffit à entraîner le rétablissement de l’alcoolique–».

---

Le petit livre jaune, écrit par Roger C et traduit par Louise B, est disponible sur Amazon. Voici quelque liens:

Amazon USA;
Amazon Canada et
Amazon France.

---

 

The post Présentation du Petit livre jaune first appeared on AA Agnostica.