New here - big LifeRing booster
 

Hi everyone, I'm on day 40 sober, completed a 28 day program recently (part inpatient, part outpatient), I'm committed to sobriety but I can't tolerate 12-steps. Have been having great success with the LifeRing approach and looking for others here who have connected with that as well.

My wife is in recovery and has been for the past 6.5 years, she has been quite patient with me and we're currently trying to do some relationship recovery at the same time that we're working our own recoveries. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Hope to be sharing more as the days / weeks roll by.

Glad you're here. :) I'm not familiar enough with LifeRing to be of any benefit in discussing it, but I'm sure others will be along that are.

I like LifeRing. It is a great supplement to my "secularly worked program".

I hear you. There's several people in the LR groups that I've attended who go to 12-steps along with LR, a bunch who don't. If people can do a secular program while attending 12-steps, I say that's great (my wife is one) - I just don't have the ability to perform those kind of mental gymnastics. I see LR as being central to my recovery....

I did the workbook "Recovery By Choice" while an inpatient, I can't recommend it enough....

DrSober,

yes, i agree about "Recovery by Choice"; found it extremely useful and right up my alley.
i got sober a few years ago participating on the LR forum (still do) and going to one weekly meeting.
all that was also right up my alley.

but i can't say it's a program...there is no program other than what each individual decides to put together. which is what LR encourages people to do.

congratulations on your 40 days, good to see you.

When I have some time I may look into Lifering. I am forming my own recovery as well.

Glad you are joining us :tyou

Welcome to SR.

I am not familiar with LifeRing but I'm glad it's working for you.

I did not drink for 13 years, 8 of those years enduring the 12 step route. I am now permanently abstinent and recovered with the help of Rational Recovery/AVRT method/technique. No more "one day at a time" for me.

There are many, many paths to recovery. I'm glad you seem to have found yours. I know I finally found mine.

Again, welcome.

I have been around Life Ring for many years since they split from SOS and it became Life Ring. Don't participate much in the groups online any more as I just don't dwell on the problem much anymore. I think at some point most of us move on. I do correspond still with several members primarilly through Facebook which keeps me in touch. Otherwise at this point I just live my life and realize that it would be irrational to drink as it causes only harm. Embracing life as opposed to "struggling" not to drink for me has been the key. Can't drink responsibly so only have a billion other things I can do. :)

I think it's interesting you say that. I certainly am "dwelling" on the problem right now (appropriately) because I'm still getting my 'sea legs,' as it were, regarding my recovery. However, once I get comfortable with this recovery thing and feel more stable, I see getting regular support, even if it has nothing to do with "dwelling" on addiction issues, as being something I must continue to do in my life. Maybe it's a dispositional thing and I just do better being around people.

I figure the world is spinning at 365,000 miles per hour or something and even when drugs and etoh become a distant memory in my life I'll still need people to hang on to. Makes things less lonely and the world more comfortable.

If I had meetings where I live, I would go. Their philosophy is for each individual to create their own personal program.

If you have 6 months of sobriety you can start your own meeting. They have literature to help with that.

The LifeRing Home Page | Sobriety, Secularity, Self-Help

I really wish we had meetings like that here. I really like groups, but didn't find I fit in the traditional ones...and have never had 6 months, so I can't just start one....sometimes, it seems like the steps have such a monopoly, of sorts, and those that benefit by a social atmosphere just have no real place to go in most places in the US...especially if you don't have a car.

I pondered this old Japanese poem today:

"I feel the wind’s keen force
As waves break over rocks
Worn down by loneliness
I dream of days gone by."

-Shigeyuki Minamoto, AD 963, from The Ogura Hyakunn Isshu


And though, Ah, to fill that void in some new way, but so little time anymore, work, the commute, no car, things intervening on all sides, and access more and more limited.

Been crying a lot these days.

You should contact the Lifering main office. They make exceptions to the 6 month rule on a case by case basis.

Thanks for the suggestion, and I think I will call them. Like you, I find a group setting very helpful early on, especially. We had a SMART group for a while downtown, but the guy running it left. It was always just us to, but even that was a huge help. Something about the person to person contact, and not having to hold hands and talk about God really made me feel good about recovery, the way working just on my own hasn't quite been able to do. I've tried to not make a group a precondition, and have had more luck with this, though I do think it helps, to have physical contact, for certain people.

Yeah, and email them as well. I am really motivated to encourage people to start Lifering meetings myself - for sort of selfish reasons. I would love it if someday I could step into any major or mid-sized city in the United States and find as many Lifering meetings available as there are 12-step meetings - so that ALL of us seeking recovery can find a home that's comfortable for us.

If I hadn't found LR in the past few weeks, I probably still would be sober now - but it would have been a far harder thing for me to accomplish.

I just checked out the link and there are no meetings in my entire state. I can't believe it, maybe it just doesn't get enough publicity. I don't have enough sober time to start a group either.

Minor complaint about the website, finding meetings in unnecessarily complicated, at least it was for me. Otherwise it looks like an interesting program.

Lyoness, Dr sober, Huskypup,
Lr is a fairly new organization and is steadily growing. they have a good on-line presence , including a forum, chat, email lists and online meetings.
the six-months sobriety requirement for convening a meeting is in place for reasons of stability. both for the convenor (organizer-type person) and for all who attend. it comes from recognizing that early abstinence is often and usually a roller coaster for people, and that much change and upheaval is usually going on. it's about people having a good chance to get a bit of a more solid footing in their own sobriety before adding the work and possible frustrations involved in getting a meeting going to their life.
but yes, in very special circumstances it might get waived.

keep going and then keep going some more and add another sober day and you'll get there. then start a meeting so that others like you have a place to go.
something to look forward to :)

Yes, their big fat workbook is also potentially very helpful for those who live where there are simply no LR meetings.

I bought the LR book and workbook a few years ago. Reckon I should dig 'em out again from my bookshelves, and actually DO some work (written) in the workbook! Currently seem to be in an almost back-to-back state of relapse (have posted about it in Newcomers), so anything to add to the arsenal is a good thing.

PS the LR stuff is very well laid out, and dare I say, damned intelligent. The workbook in particular (from my dim memory) can function like a sort of ready-made journal, divided into a host of life and addiction issues / chapters. Mutter mutter....have to find it in my library.

Hi again fini btw!

PS and hi and hugs to you Nands, and Husky (been following your latest posts Husky, though was in rehab / detox all last week so SR reading was very limited due to program time).

xx Vic

@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.