LifeRing is a not-for-profit network of support groups for people who want to live free of alcohol and other addictive drugs. It was started ten years ago in California by a group of recovering addicts who wanted a self-help approach based on positive social reinforcement. LifeRing works through its group meetings, and is based on three basic priciples: sobriety, secularity and self-help.
Sobriety
“Sobriety” can mean different things in dictionaries, but in LifeRing it always means abstinence. The basic membership requirement is a desire to remain abstinent from alcohol and “drugs.” LifeRing welcomes people regardless of their “drug of choice.” Please look elsewhere for support if your intention is to keep drinking or using, but not so much, or to stop drinking but continue using, or stop using but continue drinking. The successful LifeRing participant practices the Sobriety Priority, meaning that nothing is allowed to interfere with staying abstinent from alcohol and “drugs.” The motto is “we do not drink or use, no matter what.”
Secularity
LifeRing Recovery welcomes people of all faiths and none. You get to keep whatever religious beliefs you have, and you are under no pressure to acquire any if you don’t. Participants’ spiritual or religious beliefs or lack thereof remain private. Neither religion nor anti-religion normally come up in meeting discussion. Participants are free to attend both LifeRing and Twelve-Step meetings, but LifeRing supports recovery methods that rely on human efforts rather than on divine intervention.
Self-Help
Self-help in LifeRing means that the key to recovery is the individual’s own motivation and effort. The main purpose of the group process is to reinforce the individual’s own inner strivings to stay clean and sober. LifeRing is a permanent workshop where individuals can build their own Personal Recovery Plans. LifeRing does not prescribe any particular “steps” other than abstinence and is not a vehicle for any particular therapeutic doctrine. LifeRing participation is compatible with a wide variety of abstinence-based therapeutic or counseling programs.
The Approach
The LifeRing approach is eclectic, open-ended, and pragmatic. It evolves through recovering people’s experience, but it shares common tenets with Cognitive Behaviorism, Motivational Interviewing, Solution-Focused Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Choice Theory, and similar strength-based academic and clinical approaches. A growing number of treatment professionals are adapting the LifeRing approach to their treatment protocols.
“I support their endeavours as they are clearly focused on the welfare of the struggling substance user, and they offer their support in a non-religious, non-directive manner that appears to match the needs of some addicts."Dr Conor Farren, Consultant Psychiatrist at St Patrick’s University Hospital Dublin, quoted in the Irish Times Health Supplement, 04/01/2011. See the full article here
The Organisation
The heart of the LifeRing approach is the recovery meeting. Meetings are autonomous except in matters affecting other meetings and the organisation as a whole. LifeRing is supported by meetings that forward proceeds from passing the basket, by literature sales, and by individual donations. LifeRing Press publishes books, brochures, and other media. LifeRing Inc., a California nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) charitable tax-exempt status, owns the LifeRing service marks and is responsible for finances. LifeRing is financially, legally, organisationally and in every other way an independent organisation. A nine-member Board of Directors, composed of alcoholics/addicts with a minimum of two years clean and sober, oversees the corporation and provides worldwide coordination where needed. All LifeRing officer, directors, and convenors are unpaid volunteers.
LifeRing offers a wide array of online support options, including chat rooms, a social network, email listservs, and a forum. Visit the LifeRing.org website for full information and resources.
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Irish Times Interview
The founder of LifeRing in Ireland, Dennis Stefan, wasinterviewed by Michelle McDonagh of the Irish Times in January 2011.
“I felt there was a real need for choice in Ireland. In the US, the addiction recovery community is a broad community which encompasses organisations like Smart Recovery, Addiction Recovery and Alcoholics Victorious, as well as AA, but choice is something that has not been available in Ireland,” he says.
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| Dennis Stefan |
IMAGINE THAT inside every person struggling with drug or alcohol issues there is a conflict between a voice that wants to keep drinking or using and another that wants to be free of the drug and lead a better life. That is not just an imaginary situation, it is a common experience for people with addiction. LifeRing, a new concept in addiction recovery which has recently started up in Ireland, claims to help people to empower their “sober self” and reduce their “addict self” through fellowship.
When 63-year-old criminal defence lawyer, Dennis Stefan, retired from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Dublin five years ago, he was struck by the lack of alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step programme. “I felt there was a real need for choice in Ireland. In the US, the addiction recovery community is a broad community which encompasses organisations like Smart Recovery, Addiction Recovery and Alcoholics Victorious, as well as AA, but choice is something that has not been available in Ireland,” he says.
Stefan, who describes himself as “31 years without a drink”, moved to Ireland because he wanted a change of scene. As a lawyer, the majority of his clients had been addicts and/or alcoholics and he had gone through the process of rehab in prison with them. He has also spent some time working with prisoners in Mountjoy jail in Dublin.
In 2009, Stefan started the first Irish LifeRing meeting in his Dublin home with just five people – today, five LifeRing meetings take place every week in Dublin and two in Belfast, and new meetings will be starting around the country in 2011. LifeRing is a network of support groups for people who want to live free of alcohol, drugs and other addictions, such as gambling and food, working through positive social reinforcement. The meetings empower the sober self within participants.
Stefan explains: “It’s up to each individual to create their own personal recovery plan and the meetings are used as an opportunity to modify that plan, talk to others, and to get and give advice. We believe that the power is within ourselves to control our use of drink, drugs or whatever we are addicted to and it’s our choice whether to use or not to use today.”
LifeRing groups use a workbook called Recovery by Choice as a tool for building members’ personal recovery plans. Formats vary, but at most meetings the topic is: how was your week? Each person reports on the highlights and heartaches of their past week and plans ahead for the decisions of the coming week. Conversation among participants is encouraged although personal drinking and drugging histories are discouraged.
While acknowledging that organisations such as the AA do “wonderful work”, Stefan says that “one of the main differences between the 12-step programmes and LifeRing is that Life- Ring is a process whereby you develop your plan from the bottom up. You are the owner of your sobriety. You’re responsible for the good and bad things that happen in your sobriety. We all make bad choices along the way. Life-Ring is trying to help us make good choices and find out how other people did it.”
The three principles underlying Life-Ring are sobriety, secularity and self- help. Sobriety, for members, means abstinence from all drugs and alcohol, except where medically prescribed. While Stefan stresses that they are not all atheists or agnostics, he explains that members believe it is unnecessary to involve or invoke a God or higher power to gain sobriety. Instead, it is up to each individual to harness their self-power to achieve recovery. He says the LifeRing programme works well with other therapies, and complements other recovery programmes, including the AA’s 12-steps. LifeRing, a non-profit organisation with charitable status, was founded in 2001.
Full article and 'Michael's' personal story here
