The meeting, held primarily at the very comfortable San Francisco LGBT Center, featured it’s usual mix of organizational work, informative talks by prominent researchers and experts, and a generous amount of warm interaction among the participants.

Friday’s sessions focused on how best to strengthen the LifeRing organization as a whole, with particular attention on the board of directors and its ongoing efforts to both grow and strengthen LifeRing’s work in reaching out to make our system of support available to all. In one session, the directors met with an experienced non-profit consultant to explore how best to move forward. In another, the board members and others met with three Ph.D. researchers to discuss possibilities for research. That session included a fascinating interaction by the researchers about their different approaches to addiction studies.

Saturday saw the “main event” of the Annual Meeting with presentations by very prominent experts about their research and their approaches to addiction treatment. There were also “break out” sessions to discuss how LifeRing can best use technology in its work, and on how to improve our fund raising efforts. The featured speaker for the day, Martin Nicolaus, the founding leader of LifeRing who developed the organization and articulated its approach in his writings, gave a talk on “Towards a Medical Model of Addiction, or: Is It Time to Occupy Recovery?” The talk was very well received by the enthusiastic audience. It was filmed, and if the video turns out well, we’ll post it on this website. The presentation was somewhat different, but much of the information was contained in a previous talk by Nicolaus, this one last fall in Victoria, Canada. That one is currently on our website at http://lifering.org/7086-2/.

On Sunday, the meeting moved to the nearby Alano Club. That meeting — the LifeRing Congress — was for discussion and action on organizational matters, primarily amendments to the Bylaws and elections for Board members. One Bylaw amendment was adopted unanimously, allowing the Board to hire (if we ever have enough money!) a professional to act as Executive Director under the direction of the board. This idea had surfaced before but been voted down. This year, however, the effort to move us towards a more organizaed and efficient entity has made it increasingly clear that professional skills would be a major asset. There’s no money for paying such a person at this time, but the board now has the option to move in that direction when finances allow.

The Congress also voted to move towards a system of allowing official delegates to vote on bylaw changes without being present at the Congress, which would be a significant change from current practice. A resolution was passed unanimously calling for the study of such a change with an eye towards adopting it as the first order of business next year and having it take immediate effect so that it could be used for any other votes that take place at next year’s meeting. The board will appoint a committee to work out the details of the idea.

There was also consideration given to a few other proposals made by members before the Congress. These included the possibility of expanding the Board and compensating other officers and Board members, as well as allowing those not in recovery to serve as Board members or officers. These ideas were discussed but rejected at this time.Elections for members of the LifeRing Board of Directors saw little controversy: incumbents — Craig Whalley, Dru Boyd, and Carola Ziermann — were re-elected to three seats and the fourth, vacated by the early retirement of Lauretta Magill, will be occupied by Troy Spears, the only candidate. Troy is from Modesto, CA, where he has begun several LifeRing meetings. A brief bio of him and the other board members will be posted soon.

This brief summary doesn’t do full justice to the weekend’s events, but perhaps it gives at least a hint of what the experience was like.

The 2012 Annual Meeting will be held in San Francisco on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 11, 12, and 13. Friday and Saturday events will be at the LGBT Center at 1800 Market St., near the Castro, Mission and Hayes Valley neighborhoods. Sunday’s gathering will be at the nearby Alano Club at 1748 Market St.

Friday’s events will be aimed at developing the group’s leadership structure, especially its Board functi0ning — the Board will work together with the help of a facilitator to sharpen the focus of its efforts. The facilitator, Mary Anna Dunn, has been a consultant for a number of non-profit organizations. Read more about her soon at our Annual Meeting Page. A featured part of Friday’s schedule will be a “Secular Recovery Open House” with representatives from several secular recovery groups meeting together. Read more about that event by clicking here.

Saturday is the busiest day and features a number of speakers, including John Monterosso, who spoke last year on cutting edge issues in neuroscience in relation to addiction; Michael Edelstein, a psychologist with long experience with REBT and its use in addiction treatment and recovery support; Sarah Zemore, who has extensive experience researching addiction; Martin Nicolaus, LifeRing’s founding leader who is largely responsible for building the present organization. Again, more information will be available very soon on the Annual Meeting Page. There will also be “break-out groups” to discuss various topics of importance to LifeRing. Topics for those are still being decided upon.  Saturday evening we’ll gather at Fuzio for the annual banquet (advance registration required).

Sunday, at the Alano Club, will bring the annual LifeRing Congress where business matters will be dealt with, including the election of board members (3 seats are up) and consideration of any bylaw amendments. Each LifeRing meeting is entitled to select one member who may vote on these issues, as well as giving a brief report on their own meeting. Learn more about the LifeRing Congress by clicking HERE

This year, we’re suggesting an entry fee of $52 dollars — a buck a week for a clean and sober year –  for the 3-day event, but nobody will be turned away. The banquet on Saturday night will cost $35 a plate.

Check the Annual Meeting Page for more information as it becomes available. For information on our speakers, click HERE

____  wrote last night about convening LifeRing groups and I thought I’d expand a bit on my own experience.

Being in an active group is, of course, very helpful to long-term sobriety. But it’s easy to sort of lose interest, to find the (totally necessary) repetition of advice to become tedious, to feel that the stories of the newcomers, struggling through early days, don’t relate well to one’s current life, and to drift away.

So I tend to think that working with people experiencing the intense struggles of early days is the best way to insure an ongoing engagement in recovery. Convening gives one just enough responsibility (along with tremendous psychic rewards for playing a “helping” role in the lives of others) to make newcomers a source of real interest and to put the familiar problems in a new light, rather like a teacher facing a new year with the same material but new students. Except the convenor is not a teacher — he/she is mostly an organizer who does the tedious but necessary things to make the group possible. Or at least that’s the LifeRing theory — inevitably, though, the convenor also becomes something of a role model, which can reduce his/her ability to seek support but greatly add incentive to staying on the recovery path.

The actual organizing of a face-to-face group is not exactly difficult, but it can be frustrating. Finding a place for free or very cheap is sometimes tough; figuring out how to connect with appropriate potential members, and keeping the discussions on track. And it is an obligation, so you have to show up at every meeting, or arrange for someone to fill in who won’t cause problems.

But the rewards can be enormous. You can’t drift away; you can’t “forget” that you have a problem; you witness the pain that drinking causes close-up and with people you grow to love. It does place recovery near the top of one’s life’s activities, but it doesn’t preclude having other activities. And, if you’re as lucky as I’ve been, the people you deal with are incredibly easy to love and care about. It’s a great cure for the isolation that so many of us face after years of drinking/using. The only requirement we set is to have at least six months of sobriety (there’s enough stress involved in starting a group, that we don’t recommend it for people in their early days, even though that’s when enthusiasm is often very high) and a willingness to use the LifeRing approach. We try to offer as much help as we can as an organization, but most of the burden will fall on the new convenor. All I can say is: it’s worth it. VERY worth it.

Report from the Service Center

Hi everybody, my name is Robert Stump, and If you haven’t heard, I am the new office administrator at the LifeRing Service Center. I have scheduled myself to be in the office Monday through Thursday in the afternoons from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM and on Fridays from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM. Craig Whalley, my partner in crime,  is usually at the Service Center for a couple of hours every morning, except on Wednesdays, shipping book orders and doing office stuff. If you’re planning to come down to visit please call first to make sure one of us will be in.

Here is a list of some of the things I been doing here at the Service Center in the first month of the new year:

• The LifeRing Meeting page at LifeRing.org
  • The on-line PDF Meeting Lists are being updated more frequently
  • Meeting locations have been fixed and updated.
  • I have listed the local LifeRing web site when available.
  • The Google meeting map has been fixed and updated to reflect these changes.
  • A new California Meeting Brochure has been created (thanks to Lynn C.) and will be updated and published twice a month.
•   LifeRing Brochures
  • Lynn C. has redesigned the “Welcome to LifeRing” and “Recovery by Choice” brochures. They are both published on white paper stock.
  • All our other brochures have had a minor update to change the web site wording from unhooked.com to lifering.org but otherwise will be left as is.
  • These brochures are scheduled to have major rewrites done to them over the next couple of years (again to be done by Lynn C.).
• Convenor and Meeting updates
  • I am in the process of updating the meetings and convenors information in the POL database.
  • There are currently some meetings where I have outdated contact information and in some cases no contact information at all.
  • I’m not even sure if some meetings that are listed on our web site are in existence anymore.
  • Because of this, I would like all currently active and past convenors, to email the LifeRing Service Center at service@lifering.org, call our toll free number 800-811-4142, or write to the Service Center (address is below). Please give me your current contact information including name, email, phone number, and address and the meeting you are currently convening if any (please include the meeting location with a meeting room if needed, time and day of your meeting). This information will be kept private in an encrypted database that only three people have access to.
  • I would also like to encourage individuals who are thinking about convening a meeting or who would like to learn more about running a meeting to send your contact info in to the service center. Even just a name and email/phone number will work. Someone will contact you to see what help or additional information you might need.
• Improved communication
  • Speaking of the 800 number, in the past it has taken a number of rings to get through to the service center. Most people, I suspect, gave up before getting through. I am changing this and upgrading to AT&T Unified Messaging. The 800 number will be set up to answer in three rings or less by either a representative in the Service Center or the answering service (which we will be checking when we are not in the office). Service should be a lot faster.

One takeaway? As counselor B.J. Davis mentioned at a Lifering Congress a few years ago … enjoying life early in sobriety is important in general. It has to be at the college lifestyle level, as a counselor at Rutgers points out on page 2. The story mentions specific ways to do that sober fun in college.

Having started my own sober life in AA, I can testify to this. My original AA group had people stay late on either Friday night, Saturday night, or both, almost every weekend. People would order a pizza or two and play cards or dominoes. Fun and camaraderie both got promoted.

Second takeaway? As younger Americans in general are more open-minded to new ideas and less religious than older Americans, they’re going to be more open to alternatives to 12-Step programs. How an organization like Lifering, in its size at this time, gets its foot in the door, I don’t know, but an opening is there, clearly.

Anyway, there’s plenty of food for thought here.

All who dealt with her will miss Rachaell Castro, the departing administrator. Rachaell gave some two years of service and brought much sparkle and intelligence to the job. She’ll be missed.

With Robert on board, the office hours will change. The new hours are 12-3 p.m., PST, Monday through Thursday, and 9-3:30 on Fridays. As always, visitors to the office should call ahead rather than just dropping by. In addition, LifeRing board chair Craig Whalley is in the habit of working at the office for an hour or two starting at 9 a.m. each weekday except Wednesday.