Welcome to LifeRing Chat
LifeRing is an organization of people who share practical experiences, mutual support, and sober, secular, self-help. If you want to stay sober, then you are welcome in LifeRing!
SOBER
We believe that our lives depend on complete abstinence from alcohol and illicit and non-medically indicated drugs.
SECULAR
In LifeRing meetings, in person and online, religious beliefs remain private. You aren’t asked to have faith, or to believe in any strength other than your own.
SELF-HELP
We share ideas and insights through sober conversation. From these resources, each individual builds a personal recovery plan.
Help for Newcomers
How can I best use chat for sobriety support?
Please try both our online meetings and our casual chat between meetings. Online meetings focus very specifically on sobriety issues. Casual chat allows us to have social contact with others in sobriety, and simply share conversation about a variety of topics as friends. Even during casual chat, if you want to talk about sobriety issues, just say so, and the conversation will soon turn to that subject.
What is a convenor?
The word “convene” means to “bring people together”. The ‘convenor’ who runs a LifeRing meeting is simply a LifeRing member with at least six months of sobriety. Convenors are here for sobriety support just like you. In LifeRing meetings, we sit in a virtual circle, face to face, and meet as equals.
Convenors will have a name that appears at the top of the list during the formal online meetings. This name will be followed by the word “Convenor” so that you can recognize them. Convenors will have a different name when they are in casual chat, so you will probably get to know all of them if you spend much time in the chat room. Outside of their meetings, convenors have no special power, but they are usually good sources of information since they’ve been sober for at least six months, usually in LifeRing.
If you have questions during the meeting, you can send a private message to the convenor to ask. Be patient, they are often very busy during meetings.
Where do I find online meetings?
Click here to open the online chat meeting schedule (below the chat room itself) in a new window. When you are on the chat page, just scroll down to see the weekly schedule.
What’s an online chat meeting like?
LifeRing meetings – in person and online – are friendly, informal and confidential. Convenors will paste a brief opening statement that takes just a minute, because LifeRing is focused on the strength of sober conversation, not “readings” from a book. In “How Was Your Week” meetings (HWYW) each person on the chat list is asked “How Was Your Week?” and may talk about sober life in the week just past and the week to come. In TOPIC meetings, each person is asked to give their thoughts about a topic as it relates to their sober life.
We don’t dwell on the past, nor do we attack or confront. We share insights and ideas rather than giving advice. There’s no religion in a LifeRing meeting. No politics. No pressure.
And you need not label yourself an ‘alcoholic’ or ‘addict’ in LifeRing. It’s enough that you want to enjoy life clean and sober.
Will I be required to type or talk?
Not at all. If you would like to just listen, say so! Or say “I’ll pass.” when your name is called. LifeRing meetings allow for everyone to participate, but participation is never required.
What is cross-talk?
We encourage cross-talk: questions, ideas, supportive feedback and positive experiences from your own recovery. We tell stories that reveal the many ways we enjoy sober lives. If you’ve got something to say, say it while it’s fresh in your mind. Have a question? Feel free to ask right away. As people become comfortable with one another, meetings transform into circles of friends who connect through rich, relaxed and respectful conversation. Laughter is a common ingredient.
What about anonymity?
Please keep everything that is shared at a meeting completely confidential, even though you are using chat names.
What if the online chat meetings are not enough?
Our face to face meetings list is HERE. If there isn’t a meeting in your area, call us to let us know that you would like to start a meeting yourself, closer to home. Even if you don’t have the six months sobriety required of a convenor, you can begin to look for a location, develop outreach materials, and plan.
You can also get support 24/7/365 at LifeRing.org in our forums, on ning, , and in our toolbox.
LifeRing also maintains several email groups, that are described HERE.
Do I have to be a member to attend meetings online or in person?
Unless noted, all meetings are open to any interested person. Just by coming to a meeting, you “become” a member! We are a pretty informal group. If you would like to participate further, and receive emails and such that are usually associated with membership, please email service@lifering.org and ask to be added to our international database and receive our quarterly outreach.
Do I have to be clean and sober to attend meetings?
If you’re not sober, please listen quietly and talk to us following the meeting.
Can LifeRing certify that I attended?
Yes, for face to face meetings just bring paperwork and stay the entire meeting. For online and phone meetings, send an email following the meeting to LifeRingChatCoordinator@yahoo.com and give your real name, your chat name, the name of the meeting convenor when you attended, and the date and time of the meeting you attended. Provide both your email and any additional email for notification. Ask them to send you (and your counselor or compliance contact, if required) an email confirming your attendance.
What do I do if my treatment or legal contact specifies a particular kind of meeting?
Laws now require choice in recovery and recognition of secular groups like LifeRing. Check with your counselor or compliance officer and be sure that LifeRing meetings will be counted, and particularly ask about whether they will accept online meeting attendance. If you would like us to tell them more about LifeRing, ask them to call us at 1-800-811-4142 or email us at service@lifering.org, or let us know and we can phone them to talk.
What do you mean by choice in recovery?
There are as many ways to live free of drugs and alcohol as there are stories of successful sober people. What we share is our desire to live completely free of alcohol and addictive drugs that aren’t prescribed for medical reasons by a physician.
Our members create their own personal recovery plans, and each is very different. Whether you are still making your decision, struggling to end the cycle of addiction, in early recovery, or enjoying years of sober living, LifeRing has something to offer.
Can I talk about my problems in other groups?
Many LifeRing members attend other kinds of meetings or recovery programs, and we honor those decisions. Some have had negative experiences in attempting to find help elsewhere, but most people soon find that LifeRing’s emphasis on the positive, practical present-day can turn anger and despair into hope and resolve. LifeRing respectfully embraces what works for each individual.
What is DDNMW?
The first thing we do in sobriety: We “Don’t Drink/Drug NO MATTER WHAT!”
What do you mean by “Empower Your Sober Self”?
You probably already recognize the competing desires within each person who struggles with drugs or alcohol. There’s a voice that wants to continue drinking and using: the addicted self. And there’s another voice that wants to find a better way of living: the sober self.
When people get together and give voice to their inner addicts, they reinforce each other, leading to a destructive cycle with harmful consequences for individuals, families, friends, and communities.
But there’s an alternative. LifeRing chat connects you with other sober people, and the change can be equally reinforcing.
After each sober conversation, we are stronger. Eventually, sobriety overcomes addiction and becomes the pattern for everyday life.
Strengthen your sober self, and – so long as you avoid alcohol and drugs – you can realize your full potential and live a happier and more meaningful life.
Learning the Ropes
How do I register?
Registration allows you to keep the same identity whenever you come back to LifeRing chat. On the LifeRing Chat Page , click on the word “Register” and then fill in the blanks. When you are done, click on the register button at the bottom of the box. The only required fields are the chat name and password.
If you failed to register, you will be prompted to a error dialog. If you succeeded, you will be able to see a screen with the room list and “Login” button. Click the “Login” button to enter the chat “lobby”. You are now logged in, but have not yet entered a chat room.
The next time you come to chat, your computer will remember your nickname, your avatar, your font color, etc. Enter your password and you’re in.
Choosing a room:
Start by entering the “LifeRing Main Chat” room, which is where you will normally find active chatters in the day and evening.
Only the Living Room and the Back Porch Chat Rooms are open for general use. The LSRSafe room requires a password for entry. The other rooms are for convenors of the online meetings and other administrative purposes.
Double click the room name to enter. Once inside, take a moment to get comfortable. The chat scrolls up in the larger screen to the left.
Typing a message:
The place where you type is just below the bar with the “T” (where you can change your font color), a “smiley face” (where you can select from emoticons to express your feelings) and a silver can (which contains “canned” messages about LifeRing and chat).
Type a line of text, perhaps “hello” in response to the greetings of the others in the chat room. You can click “send”, but it is even easier to just hit the “enter” key on your keyboard. If noone else is in the room, experiment.
How do I get that avatar to the left of my name?
Your chat name will appear in bold at the top right of your chat screen. Notice the small box to the left of your name. Click this box to activate the drop down menu, and then select “Change Avatar”. A pop up window will appear from which you can choose an avatar you like. Be creative, you can choose a new avatar at any time.
Chat Status: Availably, Busy,and Away
When a chatter does not type a message in the room for more than an hour, they will be automatically removed from the room. They may simply log back in to re-enter chat. In the same drop down menu to the left of your name at the top of the chatter list, you will notice that you can set your chat status to “Available”, “Busy” or “Away” which will appear to other chatters as a colored dot on your avatar.
Exiting Chat
When you are done chatting, from the Chat Room, Use the “Exit” button at top right to leave the room. Then use the same button to log out of chat entirely.
The next time you come to chat, your computer will remember your chat name, your avatar and your font color, etc.
Ignore
If there is a chatter in the room who is disturbing you, simply select his username in the user-list and click "Ignore" from the popup menu. From then on, every message from this chatter, whether private or public, will not appear on your screen. The administrators and moderators can’t be ignored.
If you changed your mind, you can re-select the user and "Cancel ignore" to give this user the second chance to talk to you. If you continue to post messages to someone but get no response, you are probably ignored by him or her.
Action
The "/me" command is used to describe an action. Your nickname will automatically be inserted and the text will appear differently than normal messages. For example: "/me waves goodbye." will display on the screen:" waves goodbye." The "/me" command has to be at the beginning of a sentence to be effective.
Once a user enters a room, about 5 last messages will display in current chat window to give the newcomer a brief picture of the conversation which is going on.
LifeRing defines some messages to broadcast at certain intervals, which appear in blue type.
Other Options
New messages come in from the bottom of the screen. As new messages come in, old messages will scroll off the top of the screen. As only a certain amount of lines can appear in your chat box, the previous history will be automatically cleared to ensure the chatting speed. When examing some words, you may want to stop the fast scrolling and stick to one position. To do this, click the scroll button, an up and down arrow button at the top of the panel, and you can stay where you are. Click the button again to start scrolling all over again.
Each user can change the audio setting on or off using the Sound button.
Your setting only affects your own chat. Once you log out, this setting will restore to default.
Sound
The Sound button controls all the sound effects in a chatroom, if you just want to enable/disable one particular sound, you can configure that in "Option" panel instead.
There are two methods to access message history. You can click the History button to open past conversation history easily. You can also check chat history in option panel: options->Save message history on server-> view.
By default you have 100kb space for chat logs, but you can set the size bigger or smaller in the option panel, according to your hardware performance.
Once this space is filled up with chat logs, it will stop recording further messages. So please periodically backup chat logs if you need to store them.
Once logged out, your chat log will be cleared. So if the conversation is very important to you, please remember to copy, paste and save it to a document on your computer before you leave.
Private Message (PM)
Chatters are able to open a private window to any other chatter in the same room to talk one on one.
Private Chat is monitored too and recorded in a message log that is rarely accessed by the room administrator.
There is a user list at the right of the chat box.
Click any username you like, the background color of the chosen username will change and a mini menu popup with "private" button in it. (Click "All Users" at top to release the status to talk only to particular person.)
Click the "private" button, and a private window is activated between you and the recipient.
Even easier, you can double click a username to activate a private window with him or her.
Click the "minimize" button at the top menu of private window to shrink it to a single bar, or click the "maximize" button to extend it to original size.
Click the top bar of a private window and drag to move it around.
Click the right-top "close" button to close this private chat
window.
The user can uncheck the "Accept Private Message" box in the option panel to refuse to accept private window in case he or she wants to be left alone. Other users can still send messages to him, but they will not be received.
Click the OPTION button at the very top of the page and you’ll find a lot of additional useful and interesting features.
Is there a charge to participate?
No. Nothing! Donations are voluntary. But once you’ve experienced LifeRing and feel you’d like to give something back you might consider making a donation via credit card to reimburse the cost of the chat hosting service — just as you might put some money in the basket at a face-to-face meeting. Your donations are tax deductible. Or send a check to the LifeRing Service Center. Thank you!
Safety Information
Take care before you give out any personal information, full name, email, address, telephone number etc.
Remember that people online may not be who they say they are. Anyone with access to the Internet can use our site.
LifeRing chat rooms offer you the ability to prevent seeing incoming public and private text from a specific chatter. To ignore a specific chatter, left click their name on the main user list and select the ‘Ignore’ option.
To refuse private messages from all chatters, uncheck the “Accept Private Message”
Please be aware that our Moderators cannot monitor private conversations. Some chatters will use this to their advantage by trying to engage in offensive chat or otherwise violating the guidelines. If this happens to you, send a report to LifeRingChatCoordinator@yahoo.com, noting the problem content, that the incident occurred in private message, the name of the offender, and the date, time, and your time zone.
If you ever feel threatened simply exit the chat room – you are always the person in control. Please feel free to report any abuse to us via our email.
We cannot guarantee that a Moderator will always be present in our chat rooms and as such we do not consider LifeRing Chat to be a fully moderated site. Our team of Moderators covers the chat rooms as often as possible to reduce abuse, threatening behavior and explicit or other unwelcome conversation.
The fact that a Moderator is on duty does not mean the chat is guaranteed to be free from abuse. While every care is taken by LifeRing and everyone connected to the site, we cannot monitor what everyone does or says all the time.
While we take precautions to make this site safe, we cannot be held responsible for any consequences of your use of the chat rooms.
