Things aren't always hunky and dory in secular sobriety either

 A bunch of people, at least as far as posting and commenting, have decamped from Lifering's larger, and generally more active, email list to its smaller.

Obviously, I can't tell you why.

I do find it interesting, on the allegedly stated reason, an incident before that, and some of the people who have migrated.

That's all I can say.

No, I can add one thing more.

The whole scenario has given me further food for thought regarding one person.

Beyond who has switched email list activity,  one or two others who haven't, are even more surprising.

And, there I'll stop. And, I have no idea who my one follower on this list is. They do have a real name listed, but it's not a person I recognize inside Lifering.

So, Lifering is inviting Johann Hari

 To be the guest speaker at its annual conference, its Congress.

To expand on what I said in an email forum?

Hari will be "interesting." He's certainly a "name" beyond the likes of a Candace Selby, who has been the top level of speaker at previous Lifering Congresses. It's certainly a "get" to get him.

Of course, that itself doesn't mean so much unless Lifering does good marketing of this, since its Congress is still, post-COVID, online oriented. Ditto in spades on getting Hari to market Lifering.

As for Hari? I've not read Magic Pill, but I have seen some reviews, including a semi-crushing one by The Guardian that brought up his past plagiarism and other things. He's also had to officially apologize for a wrongful claim that food critic Jay Rayner used Ozempic.

I gave Chasing the Scream three stars, and if you pushed me, it would be about 2.5. Lost Connections got four.

SOS — Secular Organizations for Sobriety — is dead, but local groups don't recognize it AND Jim Christopher's "heirs" won't admit it

SOS being Secular Organizations for Sobriety, founded by Jim Christopher.

Christopher, kept afloat personally by the largess of Center for Inquiry for years, had to get others to help bail him out a few years back to get matching funds that CFI required of it, rather than a blank check which it had been cutting.

Well, the website got overhauled as part of that.

Without Duaine Metevia, who may not have been "THE" right hand man of Jim, but certainly was "A" right hand man. That would be the Duaine who, a dozen or so years ago, after Marty Nicholas stepped down as head of Lifering Secular Recovery and dodged founders syndrome for himself, and forced the organization to do the same, which it has done generally well indeed, threatened to call the cops on me if I ever attended the Dallas SOS-LSR meeting again.

That meeting was dual-branded at the time. I was at the Lifering Congress when Marty stepped down, and was also elected to its board. I talked about this after getting back from Dallas. I never mentioned Jim's name. But, I had no problems if people inferred I was making an insinuation, hint, whatever. 

That's when Duaine threatened to call the cops if I ever showed up again.

I got Lifering to stop the dual listing, of course.

Back to three-four years ago.

Duaine is cut out of the loop by a younger generation, with better web design skills for non-professionals, or professionals, than him. (Jim could barely send an email himself; his secretary at his office at CFI-West, which he got along with a salary, as part of the personal gravy train, had to do anything like this for him. It's part of why many people besides Marty were ready to move beyond SOS, which Duaine wouldn't tell you.)

So, he eventually takes his ball and runs home. 

The national meetings list is no longer maintained.

When Yahoo ends its email groups, he makes no attempt to find a replacement on another site. (Lifering is at IO Groups.) He doesn't create a Facebook group, though somebody else has. 

Then, Jim dies in July 2020.

And, SOS goes further downhill since then. SOS National had the "stay tuned" on meeting lists basically since that time, and it's now going on five years.

Center for Inquiry is clearly not going to fund a paid successor as executive director, let alone with a secretary and free office space.

And, I've known for years they don't have a real board of directors. Whether the IRS knows that, and what that would mean, and how far short of a real board of directors they've been, I don't know.

Now, in today's Net world, sure, it's not impossible to maintain local sobriety groups by word of Facebook mouth or whatever. But, that doesn't easily reach people who move across country. And, the lack of email groups or social media, which are unlikely to be maintained by individual groups, means that there's not that source of information about national happenings, either.

In short, these people are kind of like orphans. But, not 2-year-old or even 6-year-old orphans. They're like teenager orphans, who can survive on their own, but would be better off as part of a family.

Maybe leaders of some of them, like Metevia, have a smidgen, or more, of anti-Lifering animus. Maybe some are just wedded to tradition, even if it's a dead weight, the corpse has been rotting from the inside for five years, and the physical embodiment of the corpse has himself been a corpse for more than a year. Maybe, beyond that, but short of animus, it's stubbornness.

But surely, some leaders of some of these groups know of Lifering's existence already.

Anyway, whoever runs their website, and whatever other de jure (but not de facto, sorry) organization SOS has, from St. Louis? They've been contacted with a short and sweet summary of all of this:

"Wouldn't you be better off officially disbanding the organization and getting / encouraging member groups to join Lifering as their first / best option?

"Signed,

"Someone who knows some history"

The response, from John Gennari?

"Secular Organizations for Sobriety truly respects all paths to sobriety."

I replied to him, admitting the question was at least partly rhetorical, but telling him that clearly wasn't a direct answer and thus I was taking it as a "no" from him.

Given everything I've said above, IMO he's wrong. I also suspect that he knows enough about Lifering to know that ... at a minimum, even as an SOS last-ditcher, the issue is open to discussion.

So, maybe he wants to be a medium-sized fish in a tiny, and drying, pond. I mean, if there is a St. Louis SOS meeting, he can't even get that on the website. If there isn't one, he doesn't even have a personal puddle he's swimming in, only the national pond.

And, a quick Google proves me more than half right, at a minimum, on everything provable. A MeetUp shout-out isn't a website. Yes, he's getting one or two other attendees about .,.. one quarter the time? But, well over half the time, there's one attendee and I think we know who that is. The MeetUp isn't even linked on SOS's online groups page, though all of its nonexistent Yahoo groups are. Other than the Winnipeg group's website that led me here, the only other things listed are within a 60-mile radius of Buffalo, or Amherst, New York and CFI headquarters.

That said, going to THAT link? The plot thickens!

Gennari is ensconced at CFI West, according to it. Quite a magic trick, John, being in both St. Louis and Los Angeles. But, THAT would indeed seem to confirm the other part ... he's Jim Christopher 2.0, and seemingly not a lot better at current age techie stuff than him, or a mix of that and no better at getting help from the people (CFI IT staff, mayhaps?) who did the website overhaul five years ago. It's also "interesting," per what I know and what I've heard others say, that he identifies as a board member when the reality of an actual functioning board has also been a question. 

Seriously, dude. You've been at least a self-anointed heir apparent for what, a year, I'll guess, before Jim died? You've had two years to fix and update the website and haven't. You're a fine chip off the old Christopher block indeed.

AND ... interesting. NO IRS 990 form on file. But, that's an OLD notice. Back from the 1990s. Still, it shows Christopher was some sort of mis-manager then. Surely it wasn't fully under CFI's umbrella in 1992. That said, this additional info? Who is Hubert Michael Lenihan? Answer? Involved with a trademark suit over the SOS name. As in, Marty before Marty. In a sense. But, from what I can tell, never really involved in Lifering after the split. I MAY HAVE met him at a Bay Area Lifering Congress.

And, I've wasted enough time.

I will say, per the trademark lawsuit, I think Christopher talked about "individual SOS group autonomy" because he knew he was shit as an administrator. Peter Principle, sloughed off.

==

In addition, this quote from the SOS website:

If you can't find a physical meeting in your area, there are dozens of on-line groups utilizing the principles of Secular Organizations for Sobriety.

Is not true, or at least not unequivocally true.

SMART, for example, has four "steps," is explicitly wedded to cognitive behavioral therapy (which, IMO, may help you STAY sober, but is too rationalist to help a lot of people GET sober), and has at times, IMO, played footsie with moderation.

Nor does it take account of Refuge Recovery and other allegedly "spiritual but not religious" (Buddhism is a religion, folks, and Refuge Recovery is based on principles that are ultimately derived from the religious, metaphysical stances of Buddhism) sobriety orgs that aren't AA/NA. 

And, if it WERE true, wouldn't it underscore my point and make an SOS national org even more nugatory?

== 

Two comments, a year later.

First, looking at old emails from the late Itchy Bradley, he thought Duaine was a "call screener" for Jim a decade-plus ago. Could be; Duaine's computer skills at that time would have looked like stable genyus to Jim. (Sidebar: Why did CFI never build a website for them? Why did Jim never ask? The second question probably loops back to Duaine.)

Second, when the old Yahoo Groups disappeared and Duaine was cut out of a website redesign at about the same time, to raise money per a CFI demand? An email of his said that SOS Dallas would never go away. It linked to the website, which is ... now dead.

==

More comment, late 2025.

Gennari is STILL listed as being "care of" CFI-West, on the SOS-NYS website, the third link in the group of three, two-thirds down. That said on that page? Last copyrighted 2023. And, with COVID warnings still for meeting attendance.

SOS's main page? Domain has expired.

So has the first of those links, for Gennari's SOS St. Louis meetup. 

Ten days without Lifering emails (and counting)

 Per this post from March, and updated June 3, about DUI arrests and jail, and some Liferingers' responses and takes on the issue, I decided to absent myself for a while.

And, it is 10 days and counting. I may stay away for the rest of the month. I'm still hosting a Sunday night online meeting, but that's different, and who knows how long I will stay with that this go-round, either.

RIP Itchy Bradley

Robert "Itchy" Bradley, or "the immortal" as I called him after my first Lifering Congress meeting with him, has passed away.

I don't know which of us mentioned the phrase first. But, it became a catchword and remained so long after the second Lifering Congress at which I saw him.

I wasn't as close to Itchy as some of the founding or semi-founding members of Lifering. He's pictured at right in that photo at left with Lifering's original executive director, Martin Nicholas. I believe that's at the Lifering Constitutional Congress in Florida in 2001.

I do know that, even before he was there and before Lifering formed, he was taking an initiative in looking online for new alternatives in so-called "secular sobriety" from Secular Organizations for Sobriety, which at that time was the only game in town. Sadly, after a promising start and plenty of potential, SOS had befallen institutional problems, especially "founder's disease." Eventually, he, some SOS Floridians, who sometimes aren't fully recognized in Lifering's founding, which I've noted before, and Marty, representing Californians and having already founded Lifering Press, started Lifering Secular Recovery.

Itchy went on to serve a number of years on Lifering's board of directors.

Indeed, on Lifering's one email list, Marty reminds me and all that Itchy was on the founding board of directors and signed the articles of incorporation. I apologize to people who knew him longer or better that I didn't post that in any early emails to Lifering groups myself.

Itchy put the "secular" in there in the best way. He was a secularist, and I believe passed on that way, unless there's something I don't know about.

But, he wasn't some "Gnu Atheist" type of person, either.

Indeed, he turned me on to a "day at a time" book called "365 Tao." Knowing who he was, I bought a copy and still have it. And, in the spirit of "pass it on," I'm recommending it right here and now.

Daoism is a good way to look at "the immortal one," come to think of it. Itchy was a good practitioner of the Daoist art of "wu wei," or non-doing. In other words, he was good at trying to find what should be the flow of life for him, and afterword, doing as little as possible to disturb that flow. He also didn't suffer arrogance or fools readily.

I quote from another Liferinger, who posted this as a public setting on Facebook:

"Itchy was a sort of hillbilly Jesus who kept a set of mummified turkey feet (look closely) in the guitar case for when he played 'Turkey In The Straw.'"

If you don't believe that, said person has the picture where he says "Look closely."

Behind that body, as frail as he looked, and was, late in life, was both a steeliness of mind and generosity of heart, at least to the degree I knew him and to the degree I saw him with others.

I don't claim to have known Itchy as well as others either inside or outside of Lifering.

I do claim this memory and this understanding as mine.

I conclude this with a musical suggestion or two for listening.

The first is a musical tribute that another person offered to Itchy on Facebook:

The second, kind of stimulated by that, is Alan Parsons' haunting, exotic "Return to Tunguska."



I don't know if Itchy was into Parsons, or Alan Parsons Project as a group. But, while I don't do a lot of modern techno music, this one just grabs me ... and kind of makes me think of him.