What will history record as the biggest game-changer in Peer 2 Peer support for people with alcohol and other substance use disorders? Was it a Big Book, or something bigger?
Is the breakthrough in connecting the still suffering with effective mutual support be defined by history as this era - the normalizing of online recovery meetings? What did the book Alcoholics Anonymous aim to do? Ostensibly the aim was to bring comfort to the inflicted when/where there is a barrier to personal connection between fellow sufferers. The question posed today is, "Now that we are bringing peer2peer comfort via AA and other online mutual-aid groups, does the Zoom meeting connect people better than a book, or better than any book?
Host of Here’s Tom With The Weather Podcast, David G has written an article for Rebellion Dogs through the voices of connected alcoholics around the world about Zoom AA. On Episode 61 of Rebellion Dogs Radio, David talks about how the community centre meeting pandemic closures that led to widespread replacement meetings of Zoom AA has normalized online connection and recovery. Now, we ask, "Is Online-AA here to stay; is it delivering Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment* to more people with fewer barriers than books or face-to-face meetings have done, before?
Generally David’s hosting duties of Here’s Tom With the Weather has him pointing the microphone at others where he’s asking the questions. Today we point the microphone at David G and here what he has to say about why he thinks peer 2 peer style recovery entering the Zoom era could be reported by history to be the biggest breakthrough in carrying the message to the still suffering... bigger than any other development in mutual aid, bigger than any Big Book.
David’s Zoom journey has been global, clocking in at over 10,000 hours and in our hour of Rebellion Dogs around the globe trip, there’s a Nova Scotia reference; so today’s musical feature will be the East Coast’s Andre Pettipas and the Giants with their June 2021 pandemic release, “Homesick.”
For show notes and/or to download/read David G’s essay, “The Second Coming of Alcoholics Anonymous” visit Rebellion Dogs Radio https://www.rebelliondogspublishing.com/rebellious-radio
*C.H.I.M.E. is an acronym referred to by David Best in Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: the role of the social contagion of hope previously covered in Rebellion Dogs Radio #48