This is a welcome addition to core recovery literature about why and how 12-step programs work.
by Barb Rogers
Clean and sober 20 days or 20 years, we all need a little help every once in a while. Rogers has been sober for a long time and she knows that doesn’t make a difference — what makes a difference is that she’s clean and sober today.
Her newest book offers true stories from real people whose addictions led them to a 12-step program. Yet in working the program, they have found, as the saying goes, that things are simple but not always easy.
The important thing — no matter what difficulties they have with any of the steps — is to keep working the steps, as many times as it takes. There is no perfection, there is no goal, there is only walking the talk, one day at a time.
Rogers once again offers down-home, sensible advice, along with stories a struggling reader can identify with. Twelve-step programs are neither cult, curse nor cure. They work because they are ongoing, because the focus is inward and outward, and because people recognize that their lives are better when they work them.
This is a welcome addition to core recovery literature about why and how 12-step programs work — for alcoholics, addicts, overeaters, workaholics and more.
$12.95 — Conari Press, Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 500 Third St., Ste. 230, San Francisco, CA 94107.
Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 28, Number 5, October/November 2009.
April 15, 2012
Book review