hey fini, thanks for starting this thread) (and for your v helpful remarks on my trapdoor one).
I bought the LifeRing books quite some time ago, forget exactly when, what with sobriety time and relapse time and sobriety time ad nauseum :-), and I do recommend them.
It's a drag that stuff like LifeRing, SMART, etc are really the luck o' the draw, depending on where you live in the world. For example, where I am in Melbourne, Aus, there are NO LR meetings, and so few SMART meetings you'd imagine they never existed unless you really went looking. And then, not every one can make it across a sprawling city for a short meeting once a week. If you live outside the city, no hope whatsoever.
Anyway, I get where Husky's coming from....thanks to Todd too for his observations about the things we let obstruct us from just giving something a go! I'm a major sufferer (right word?) of that, the endless research and such...and the feeling, oh, it's too hard. (Todd, that's me talking, not you!)
One thing I have wondered about - to those of you who DID manage to start up something, even something very unstructured, easy going etc:
How do you find a few potential participants? I say this because I'm really new still in this part of this city; I know a few, a very few AA members and perhaps a couple of ex-rehab people (but haven't heard from them for more than a year). And the AA-ers are happy with that, and wary of anything else; the ex-rehabbers ...well, I don't know what they're doing or how they are.
I don't want to just put a public notices ad in the local paper (for example), because Goddess knows who might respond...you know what I mean. Crikey, one could have to sift through all manner of potentially dangerous people.
So, when some of you started a secular / general recovery f2f thing, did you already know even one or two / three bodies who might come along? i.e. apart from the organisational / venue etc part of it?
something of a conundrum, I find....