RobbyRobot

Yeah. Before my starting up with SR in Jun 2008, I was already sober since 1981. I joined SR to help see me thru my separation and divorce of 22 yrs marriage. I wasn't concerned about returning to drinking as much as I was wanting to re-invent myself as a single guy. SR provided an ideal path to achieve my desires and move me ahead of my personal challenges successfully while saving me the trouble of dating f2f. As it turned out, I wasn't single for long, and Melissa and I married in October 2009. We met up here at SR July 2008, and f2f in Ottawa Sept 2008. Mellissa is American, I'm Canadian, and we live in Ottawa, while also keeping a house just outside of Boston. Both our ex's are happily remarried too. My ex I also met in recovery, she is now herself sober past 28 yrs. We have one daughter between us, now 22, who is, and always was, a total non-drinker and agnostic too. She and her common law husband live happily enough. She attends to her private school art classes and she'll graduate in 2014 classically trained by mentorship fashion in visual arts. She'll thereafter work in the graphics arts field while continuing her personal growth into maturity in visual arts. Sorry, TMI. I'm just bursting with pride, my apologies. Melissa has four children with her ex now the oldest is almost eighteen. They continue to happily live near Boston with their Dad and step-mom. Melissa is sober since 2001. We are both retired living comfortably without worldly concerns.

I worked in the addictions field near twenty yrs on a street level peer initiative in rehabs and intensive day programs. I eventually reached executive level becoming a program director. Our organizations were various multi-million dollar investments collectively and we operated in independent franchises. The whole organization is now defunct as originally created - a street level peer counselling rehab run by recovered addicts and alcoholics for helping other street level addicts and alcoholics become recovered in their own right and path. We did not charge our residents for costs. We paid their dime in various ways. Length of stay varied from three months to a year depending on the individual. Unfortunately, funding laws in Canada changed, making such peer initiatives competing for increasingly fewer dollars.

The last nail in the coffin for me working with the organization was when I refused to hire non-addicts who also socially drank and unofficially used weed recreationally. Special governmental funding perks were given to these junior positions ie paying 50% of their salary and training costs for up to 12 months. As well, this included additional funding perks and other supports in general for staffing such selected individuals from a general pool of public college grads trained in government approved addiction counselling programs. The organization head office was seeking after the medically supervised and professional institution dollars which paid sometimes high bed day rates. Filling the beds became a prime pursuit.

I challenged it all as executive program director. Head office refused us a renewal of our franchise license, and from that day forward the whole organization began its decent into oblivion. In the end, millions of dollars were wasted away to satisfy even bigger dollars initiatives which did not include the expertise of street level peer counsellors.

I was even offered a grandfather clause, in effect giving me a kind of tenure if I would just relax and join the approved crowd. I refused, and they moved on without me. My refusal eventually left them scrambling when freshly hired workers could not work with street level residents, who could easily see thru the non-experience of the so-called new counsellors. They then changed up their residential requirements, not taking in people from the street as much, but it was too little too late. The head office eventually disbanded and admitted failure after 5 more years or so, and that was the end of that. Today, the original half-million dollar residence from my original initiative stands as an office building having gone thru three directors within those 5 yrs after me who could not keep it going with their new ideas. Other franchises re-invented themselves in various ways, but none were true any longer to the simple and successful peer counselling supports and resources of one recovered addict helping another recover while not charging for services offered in a residential rehab. The whole scene has now changed from the 1980's, and rehabs and recovery is a multi-billion dollar business for better or worse.

Before my quitting in 1981, I had tried nothing except quitting on my own, and this without success. I never asked for help from others to quit until July of 1981, when I then went to the described above rehab organization as a client myself. Just being around others in residence trying to stay clean n' sober was enough for me to learn to work with others while doing my own thing. This balance gave me the resources to find myself. When AVRT proper finally came out in 1986 I was already a director and 5 yrs sober. I became very interested and realised I had always been doing my own AVRT, same as millions of others had for many centuries already. By now I was also well into AA without difficulty. I completed the AA program within three months while a resident no problemo. Since I simply approach all recovery resources as supports and specialised tools to achieve a certain end goal, I've no difficultly with blending my experiences as an holistic eclectic approach. Recovery is entirely an art, an inside job, is my experience. I take what I want and need and leave the rest without regret.


Yeah, I agree I have a lower threshold. I'm all for example example example. I'm all for waiting for others to discover their own ways before being pushed this way or that. In fact, why push anything? I know many don't agree, and that's what it is, no big deal. Although more difficult initially for folks to discover for themselves the questions being answered from their own inside experiences, the outcomes of such experiences are more valuable then being told "hey, it worked for me, so why not you?"

For myself, very little of what worked for others has worked for me. I require an entirely out-of-the-box approach from different resources to live my life as a recovered alcoholic addict. One size does not fit all, this including AVRT, in my opinion.