@bemyself-Thanks, and hope you're feeling better. I've never been in rehab/detox before, but can imagine it must be quite an experience. And you survived it!
So I called the Lifering office and had a very nice half-hour with one of the gentlemen who organizes it. He seemed very warm and compassionate, and willing to listen. I'm going to order some of the books/materials, and in time, see if I can get a meeting together in our area. After all, the Baltimore/DC area is huge, and very underserved in terms of non 12 step addiction resources.
What impressed me was the emphasis on a sense of community but without the dogma that one has to follow a set of steps in this or that way; or that one must see their brain as some kind of schism, where emotions are higher or lower, labeled a beast or the true self, as if one has can't healthily function with the brain and the body0 as a whole.
I found it reassuring that a group exists to promote and help people along their own paths, without all the finger-pointing and chest-thumping.
Sometimes, in recovery programs, I find the attitude of the proud adolescent, dutifully listing their knowledge as if at a spelling bee, fully enmeshed in the attitude of their own correctness. And one should be proud to have recovered. But I would add that showing compassion to those seeking to better themselves is also of value. Sometimes, I feel as if people play a kind of game with those that are still seeking to improve themselves: A game in which the 'recovered' group proclaims from an authoritarian parental ego state, 'But I'm only trying to help you!', and then, seeing through this, the struggling person in recovery', cast into the role of the child ego state in which they have been spoken to, feels attacked, and prone to rebel in whatever way. And in this way, it seems hard to have transactions as rational adult to rational adult.
I was quite happy in discussing various aspects of recovery on the phone that day; in all the calls I have made about agnostic groups, this, that and the other, this was certainly the most helpful, and has left me hopeful that in all this, there is so much room to expand upon modes of recovery so as to help more and more people.