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SRC, the Secular Recovery Community is a collection of resources for people seeking assistance with problem drinking and drugging but are uncomfortable with the religious content of traditional recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). We do this by providing the services of a Website, Online Bookshop, Online Discussion Forum, and an Online Directory that will assist you in locating a secular meeting closest to your home. |
Greetings and Welcome! My name is Rex Alexander, a recovered alcoholic and founder of the SRC the Secular Recovery Community. In 1984 I stopped drinking and using mood altering, recreational drugs--and now it is my goal to give something back to the secular recovery movement. The aim of SRC is a simple one in principle that came about in response to a clear but very tough problem shared by all organizations in the secular sobriety movement: There are not enough secular support group meetings! Period. It is all good and well for an organization to style itself as an alternative to traditional 12 Step programs, however it is quite another to actually provide meetings to all those who might want and benefit from one! As of this writing, the number of secular support group is unknown, but probably can be counted in the hundreds. Compare that to the tens of thousands of traditional 12 Step meetings world-wide!
While we are excited about SRC Discussion Forum, Bookshop and Website, those components are in a sense afterthoughts. The real heart and driving idea behind SRC is perhaps the least flashy: The Online Secular Meeting Directory, designed to assist people in locating a secular support group meeting--of whatever brand or organizational affiliation--closest to their home. However perhaps I am getting ahead of myself and a bit of background will help to make this idea more resonant
In 1933, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) were pioneers. From the earliest days, they intuited the value of "one alcoholic helping another" and established the institution of the local support group where people with a drinking problem could meet to "share their experience, strength and hope" in helping themselves and one another to recover. From the humble beginnings in 1935 of a single meeting in Akron, Ohio the support group concept grew into a world-wide cultural institution. In 2002, the General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous reported more than 100,000 A.A. groups in 150 countries, with a total membership of approximately two million alcoholics world-wide! By any reckoning, this is an extraordinary accomplishment.
There is, however, one serious downside to this remarkable accomplishment. The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous represent a religious belief system which insists that recovery from alcoholism necessitates a religious solution. Nothing wrong with that . . . except that many people are uncomfortable with the religious content of 12 Step programs, and regard religion and recovery from addictions as separate issues. For decades, those alcoholics and addicts who felt they could benefit from the support and fellowship of group meetings were stuck with the often equally unappealing choices of either going it alone, or of attending 12 Step meetings which conflicted with their core beliefs and personal values. While some can and do resolve or make peace with this inherent conflict, others cannot or do not care to. One can only imagine the sense of isolation secular-minded drunks experienced in those early days when AA was the "only game in town" and the internet was still science fiction for ordinary people.
In 1985 James Christopher met his personal
conflict head on by founding Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS)
which was the beginning of a network of support groups patterned after
the idea that Alcoholics Anonymous had pioneered fifty years earlier--but based
upon the principle of self-reliance, peer support and treating religion and
sobriety as separate issues. In the ensuing 20 years, other organizations followed,
each making its own unique contribution to what I refer to as the world-wide
secular recovery movement.
While it seems to me that James Christopher deserves credit as founding father of the secular recovery movement, we should not overlook that fact that he was hardly the first. As early as 1976, the late Jean Kirkpatrick founded Women For Sobriety (WFS) a secular-based approach. Moreover, for who knows how long before the founding of SOS, there have been atheist-agnostic-freethinker and moderate groups operating overtly and covertly from withiin Alcoholics Anonymous. All of the early pioneers--many of whom are unsung and unrecognized--deserve our respect and our gratitude.
In my opinion, the most important accomplishment of these various groups over the past two decades has been to demystify and put to rest the AA insistence that a religious program is the only way people can successfully recover from addictions. This has been accomplished by hard work, persuasive, rational argument, and most importantly by thousands of happy, functional, productive, sober men and women who have recovered outside of a religious context. The other important accomplishment has, of course, been to make secular support group meetings available in many places in the U.S. and other countries. Great! However, this brings us full-circle to our introduction where we lament that there are not nearly enough meetings for all those who might want and benefit from them. Along with that, locating the meetings can be extremely difficult and frustrating. Until now, there has been no central, database-driven directory, and no clear path across the internet for people who are searching
It is beyond the scope of this document to speculate about why there are so few
secular meetings compared to 12 Step meetings, or to offer compelling
suggestions for how to remedy the situation. However, we encourage you to discuss
these interesting and important issues in the "Sober Coffeehouse" on the
SRC
Discussion Forum. Perhaps the problem is simply endemic to
secularity some way? Perhaps the phenomenal growth of AA is indeed driven by a
spiritual motivation as described in the 12th Step: "Having had a
spiritual awakening . . . we tried to carry this message to alcoholics . . ."
However, putting such discussion aside for now, we keep our aim modest; to make at least some small contribution in
assisting those who struggle with alcohol and drugs to quickly find a
support group meeting closest to them, or lacking that, an online meeting that
meets their particular needs.
