Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page
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But then I came to AA - I began to work this materials in English - made translation, correct translations of another people. Then I began to work this e-mail. And I have to answer for letters from another countries - this help me to "remember" English. I don't think my English is very good, but I
gift from members of AA in America. It was very useful for me - I find many interesting articles, some of them we translated to Russian and one or two was publish in Russian AA journal "Rodnic". I want to translate some more articles from numbers of "Grapevine", which I have.
in AA. And this translation - not the first things for me. I have some deals, that I think more important. And translations can be done by another people. But I can say - it was very interesting to read "Grapevine", it help me in my sobriety (and in my English too).
my work - and I can send letters only 1 or 2 times a week). Thank you for your story. This love in AA Marina Dear Barbara. Certainly, you may send my letter to Nancy and use it and next in your Newsletter. I understand, that my letters need a corrections (my English is not good enough+) - you may do it. I get a letter from Nancy with suggestion to join Internet group AA History Buffs. As I understand from her letter - it is very interesting group for me. I am very grateful for this suggestion. But I have some problems to join this group - Today I live in a small town on the North of Russia. And our telephone lines are not good enough. So, I have my own name in Internet, but I have technical problems to connect with my internet provider from my home computer. And I connect from my place of work (where I get money). It is not comfortable. I have a permission to use telephone line from work, but+ Usually, I have only 10-15 minutes to send my and get e-mail letters, convert them to Word file and put them on the mini-diskette. And I read this letters at home in the evening. So, in Russian-speaking e-mail group I ask my friends to send me letters in special ZIP-archives - it take less time to get such e-mail. So, I afraid, that in this group (AA History Buffs) I may get many letters, and I shall not be able "to process" them. The second problem - in summer I'll be on my work rarely (once a week or once in 10 days) - so, you may understand, that I can't answer letters very quick.
to get connection from my home. If it will be so - I'll join AA History Buffs. But for today I must wait. But I am ready to contact with you and with Nancy (if she want this), to have individual correspondence. I'll try to translate to English the document "hronika" - it is a history of Russian AA (it was written by one member of Russian AA). But I think it will take time (perhaps month or more) - I have many duties (in AA and in my usual life) today. If I will do this - I'll send it to you. I'll be very grateful, if you can send me the most interesting materials. If it will be 2-4 letters in a week - it is normal, but more then 10 - it is a problem for me (and if this files will be not very "big' in kilobytes). But if it is difficult to do this - I'll understand. I know, that it take time to do individual selection. You may not do it for me. In any case - I'll be very glad to get letters from you. Please, send a copy of this letter to Nancy. I find e-mail address in her letter, but as I understand - this is address of a group. And as I said - today I may have only individual contacts.
the flavor of her own words.) _________ Letters from Irina to Margaret S.: Hi Margaret. It's a small world! Marina mentioned about "autoprobeg"-motor race through Urals. I would like to say I came to Yekaterinburg (central city of Urals region) 2 May two years ago on this gathering after some cars of this race arrived there! Maybe I saw Marina but I don't remember. Guys did a great job. It was inspirational experience for local AAs!
Yekaterinburg appeared just 8 years ago. There are some groups one among them in prison. I had been there twice (in prison's group Svecha-Candle). Also there are some groups in towns of Middle Urals (AA ,Al-Anon, NA). I'm the only Loner by correspondence. We have't meetimg-by-mail for Loners, Homers etc. in Russia. In my first year I asked myself, my friends in groups of Yekaterinburg- What should I do with my sobriety in my small settlement without group? I would like to mention that then my husband still drunk. I attended speaker meeting for the first time in December 98 in Yekaterinburg. Speaker was Tom from US. I was impressed. I remember I wrote down all that he said in my notebook! It was turning point for me. After meeting one sheet fell into my hands-it was information from Moscow AA Office about LIM. One brother Felix (he died in last year) told how he tries to set up something like LIM in Russia. I wrote to him immidiately. I thought just about corresponding in Russia & not presumed about Inernational corresponding-I knew nothing! He mentioned if I understand English I can write to GSO. I thought I knew! Now I know it was just a beginning. He did a great job.
of letters from different countries! I'm grateful to my Higher Power for this gift! Still I have many pen pals but now prefere using e-mail because postage on "snail-mail" still rising. By the way you can read about typical state of AA of Russia in typical towns in the AA Grapevine, Millenium Editon, January 2000, page 22 "A Hard Spiritual Labor". I was so impressed that immidiately found in Russian AA Directory & wrote a letter to Krasnodar to Valery M. You can picture his shock! -He could't imagine that someone could read Grapevine somewhere in such nook as my settlement! Now he is my close AA friend & the first person with whom I corresponding in Russian! Misterious way!
Through my sister in Australia I got last AOSM newsletter. Russia among many countries of this zone was included in AOSM. Our candidate was present on last AOSM in Seoul in Oct. 2001. I got Final Report too. As to literature-I have some pamphlets & books (AA) both in Russian & English. Mainly in English. I'm really blessed I can translate & read. But I take responsibility for not violating copyrights of AA. Yes, I have an opportunity to translate, to print, to copy. But it 's tremendous responsibility as AA member. I saw illegal BB made in Germany there a couple of years ago (free of cause). I get AA materials from Moscow AA Service regularly information about events, gathering etc. Recently I got a couple of addresses of new loners in Russia! Now I have a couple of pen pals in my country at last!
those times during Communism. If Communism wouldn't fall it would be impossible my sobriety & my participation in AAs! I remember well this time - from 1970 to 1990. It was the country of militant atheism. The only "cure" for alcoholics were labor camps. If police had stopped drunks on streets of town they were dispatched into special sobering-up stations. "Alcoholic" is still like stigma in community. I tried to prove I'm not alcoholic. My folks had said "where is your will power?" Still for example in a lobby of our mashine works names of those who drunk "too much" posting up on special board-administration of plant think that these poor workers must be ashamed! These boards were used in former Soviet Union at every plant. In province where I live (this is typical Russian out-of-the-way place) community yet not open to "open" talk. I could make sure in it. It's legacy of Communism that touched mind & spirit of people.
something will change. People will be more free & open. Russian society is not the same as 10 or 20 years ago - I can compare those years as I was born in 1964 in Yekaterinburg (former Sverdlovsk). By the way as it turned out I was born in this city twice-in 1964 & in 1998. It's not a coinscidence!
letters.) IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1668. . . . . . . . . . . . AA in Russia -- Some posts from those who have visited Russia From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/20/2004 4:04:00 AM
then-Soviet Union. My first was in April 1987 and then again the following April - 1988. To my knowledge, trip #1 in April 1986 marked the first public AA meeting in Moscow and that is considered by most as the beginning of AA in Russia.
Finnish AAs, then went into the Soviet Union. On the '87 trip, we went first to Estonia, and held the first AA meeting in Tallin. We also met with the Anti-Bacchus Society, a sobriety club in Tartu. Most of our contacts in both St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) and Moscow were initially through the Department of Health and the hospitals. In Leningrad, it was the Bechterov Institute and in Moscow, Hospital # 13.
and some in their homes. On the second trip, we held workshops on how to take an inventory and how to make a twelve-step call; it was fascinating stuff. I remember one woman named Marina being in our meetings, but this is a very common name in Russia.
to sit in a meeting in Niznhy Novgorod and hear the beautiful language of the heart spoken by 60 or 70 wonderful Russian people.
city in the International Directory, so I took it upon myself to go looking for some drunks to work with!
group of pastors, doctors, psychiatrists, etc. They were all very eager to help alcoholics, and it was wonderful. By the second night, there were 100 of them, and there were also some real alcoholics in the bunch! I was thrilled. I spoke to them and told them my story on the first night, and what the Big Book tells us about each of the 12 steps during the second night.
became apparent that they knew things about AA that the average person would not know. So after the second night I asked them if they had attended AA somewhere. They said, "Oh yes. We belong to one of the two groups here in town!" I was thrilled, and they invited me to speak at their meeting.
meeting half way around the world. What a beautiful experience. I must admit that I was amazed by all the people who had turned out to hear me 4 nights in a row (including the AA meeting). Then one sweet Al-Anon lady spilled the beans.
in, since it was a closed meeting. When she arrived, though, she found out that it was an open meeting that night. "I don't think you could have kept me out," she said, "because I figured I'd never again have the chance to meet Dr. Bob of AA fame..."
town that Dr. Bob was visiting them! Can you BELIEVE IT????? I began to chuckle, and then finally told them that I hated to disappoint them. I said, "This is a case of mistaken identity.... My name is Bobby Davis. But I'm not a doctor, and certainly not Dr. Bob! He's been dead for about 50 years..." There was a hush in the room, and then a sudden mass-recognition of the mistake they had made. There was much laughter, and afterwards, I was hugged, kissed and fawned over like I have never been before in my entire life!
Not bad from a country full of atheists! Of course, who can be an atheist for very long in an AA meeting! LOL Bobby __________ Larry D. wrote: I WAS PRIVILEGED TO SET UP A MEETING WITH THREE SPEAKERS FROM THE FIRST AA GROUP FORMED IN MOSCOW. THEIR INTERPRETER WAS ALSO WITH THEM, AN AMERICAN, WHO WAS NOT AN AA MEMBER, BUT GAVE HIS HEART AND SOUL TO THE PROGRAM OF AA IN RUSSIA. HE WAS EDUCATED AT WHEATON COLLEGE AND BECAME A MINISTER WITH MISSIONARY ZEAL. BILLY GRAHAM WAS EDUCATED AT THE SAME SCHOOL.
TIME IN RUSSIA, WAS INTERPRETER FOR THE THREE SPEAKERS FROM RUSSIA. IT WAS FELT BY EVERYONE THERE THAT NO INTERPRETER WAS NEEDED. THIS WAS THOUGHT BY MOST OF THE ATTENDEES, ABOUT THREE HUNDRED. THEY SPOKE FROM THEIR HEARTS. THEIR EMOTIONS WERE AS EVIDENT AS THE TEARS CAME INTO THEIR EYES, SHAKING VOICES, AND THANKFULNESS TO AA. WE WERE MOST STRUCK BY THEIR BY THEIR LOVING HIGHER POWER WHICH THEY DECIDED TO CALL GOD.
DAY.
OVERCOME BY THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT THEY LEFT WITH US. IT WAS A MIRACLE MEETING THAT SATURDAY NIGHT. LOVE YOU ALL, LARRY D. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1669. . . . . . . . . . . . More on AA in Russia compiled from earlier posts. From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/20/2004 5:12:00 AM
1975:
Anonymous, urged the development of cooperative efforts between the U.S. and Russia in the area of alcoholism. He offered to go to the Soviet Union to share the AA program with the Russian people.
International Convention of AA in Denver July 4-6, Norris said: 'My hope is that AA may soon find its way to every nation on earth -- including the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain countries. We are told that alcoholism is a major health problem in these regions. AA could alleviate it. We are apolitical -- so there should be no conflict on that score. "'Further, a believe in God or membership in any formal religion are not requirements for AA membership. Therefore, our program would work in Moscow just as it works in Denver or London or Sydney or Paris. It is refreshing to observe that some of the barriers between the U.S. and the USSR seem to be softening. I urge the development of cooperative efforts in the area of alcoholism. "'We would be willing to travel to the Soviet Union to confer with the leaders in that country who are concerned about the problems of addictions. We would be pleased to share our program with the Russian people. Alcoholism transcends all barriers. The alcoholic in Russia suffers the same pain experienced by an alcoholic anywhere. He or she deserves the same relief from pain.'" ________ AA Grapevine, July 1989 A VISIT TO THE SOVIET UNION The message of Alcoholics Anonymous knows no language barrier, nor do custom or cultural heritage have any meaning when it comes to our recovery process. There were sixteen of us at the Moscow Beginners Group. We were there celebrating their first anniversary as an AA group. The meeting opened in Russian with the Preamble, then a reading of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions. The chairperson said, "This is a Second Step meeting," and they began to share.
months sober and beginning to work the Steps. When he spoke, I heard my own alcoholism, I heard my own history of destruction and pain.
said to do here. And I have found a spiritual power within me. I think that might be God."
had no history of God in their lives, but who together have found a spiritual power they can rely on.
the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States and Canada to some very specific people in the Soviet Union. Over the previous year or so, there had been a number of communications back and forth between the Soviet and American governments concerning alcoholism; and AA, while not
York traveled by invitation to the Soviet Union with sixteen other individuals related to the field of alcoholism, as part of an exchange program between the two governments on the topic of alcoholism and drug abuse. Then, in May of 1988, a return visit was made by a group of Soviets.
a few people inside the Soviet Union who had a growing interest in Alcoholics Anonymous. We began corresponding with some of these people - Ministry of Health people, Temperance Promotion Society (TPS) people, psychologists, psychiatrists, narcologists, sobriety clubs - and in the course of this ongoing dialogue, another visit was set up which was to be independent of the previous trips. The AA members picked for the trip were the two trustees-at-large - myself from the United States and Webb J. from Canada - along with Sarah P., the GSO staff member assigned to the trustees' International Committee. In addition, since we'd be talking primarily with Soviet professionals and doctors, it
Smith, a nonalcoholic trustee from Canada, was added to the team. Of course it wouldn't have done much good to send us off without a voice, so we also added a nonalcoholic fellow who is a simultaneous translator. Our first stop was Helsinki, Finland. We went there first for two reasons: first, we wanted to take care of jet lag and be fully adjusted to the time change; and second, the Finns have been carrying the AA message into Russia for some time and we wanted to coordinate our efforts so that each of us might be as effective as possible.
drunkenness until I saw the Finns. They were big, they were like redwood trees, they were stoned, and they were moving. Finnish AA members are incredible, too. They give the same depth of love to AA that they gave to the bottle - and then some. One of the ways in which the Finns practice anonymity is by taking on a nickname. And so, in Helsinki, we met "Columbus," the fellow who first brought AA to Finland. On November 13, we took the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn was one of the most beautiful cities I'd ever seen. There were buildings there which had been built in the 1400s and were still in use. Estonia was in the Soviet Republic, but it is a separate culture. We'd carried with us a good-sized box of Russian-language AA literature, and though I knew we'd be stopped, I had no idea how this literature would be received. I've been through plenty of tough customs checks before - and after one of them, I ended up in prison - and I was getting a little nervous. I'd brought along a pocket knife to open up the box with, but I couldn't find it anywhere and ended up having to open up the box with a plastic pocket comb.
off to show it to a fellow in a suit standing back in a corner. Our interpreter leaned over and whispered to me, "It's an ideology check."
called over a uniformed guard. I thought, "There goes the box." As they talked together, the interpreter leaned over. "They like it," he said.
box, and the interpreter on through. On the other side of the check point, the interpreter translated her last comments to the uniformed guard for me.
alcoholism." This seemed to set the tone for the entire trip, and we started handing out literature wherever we went.
each one of us had a real desire not to promote anything but rather to share our experience, strength, and hope with the professionals we came in contact with so that they might better understand AA and perhaps allow AA to happen in the Soviet Union. At one of our meetings with the Sobriety Society of
and tell us of their program and to slant the conversation politically, but eventually we got across to them that helping alcoholics was our only interest. During one of our conversations, a girl spoke up in English and said, "I have read your book [the Big Book]. How am I going to work with these AA principles if I don't believe in God?"
came to AA. It's not a requirement, you know." With this, the girl visibly relaxed and I heard a sigh of relief.
saying how the program would have to be changed to fit the Russian people, a people with no historical cultural background of God. "It won't work here" was something we heard a lot. I must admit that I did get a bit of a chuckle out of this. Quite a few times I heard people say, "We don't have any
you like to see the cathedral?" At first, many of the people we talked to were reserved. But because we talked so openly about alcoholism and about ourselves, they too began to share openly. We discovered that whatever else they might be doing in terms of treatment, they were already using some of the basic principles of Alcoholics Anonymous: admission of powerlessness, an honest belief that some sort of recovery is possible, and the importance of taking a personal inventory. It was rigorous, but they were doing it. They had a thirty-question inventory that had to be renewed every six months with a doctor and a peer group. Treatment was a three-year process, and if you slipped, you went to a labor camp for two years. The official position was that after six or eight weeks of effective treatment, the patient was no longer an alcoholic. There was a cure, they believed, and it took about six to eight weeks. The only catch was that they had to keep renewing this cure or they became alcoholics again. However, the drunks we talked to said, "We know it's important to understand that we're alcoholics forevermore." And they completely understood the need to pass this information on to the next person. This, then, was the foundation of whatever was going on in the Soviet Union, and it seemed like fertile ground for AA principles to flourish in.
were going to be traveling by train and I hoped it was going to be like the Orient Express. But it turned out to be more like the milk train instead.
apiece, and gave us a cup of black Russian tea. It was an experience that I wouldn't have missed for the world, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it again.
trying to use the AA method, but he didn't believe it would work because of the emphasis on God. Eventually this man brought some of his patients to see us and it is our hope that the sharing that went on will one day be of some use to them. One of the exercises this doctor has his group doing for therapy
he said, but they don't seem to mind. The group that this doctor worked with has been using AA for about three years, and one of the group had three years sobriety, another had one year, and another had seven months. These people were allowed to come and visit with us in our hotel rooms, something unheard of just a few years back. On our end, we were not restricted in any way in our travels. We were allowed to
The people of Leningrad had a pride and a spirit like I'd never seen. At one point during our stay in Leningrad, just prior to our scheduled meeting with the Temperance Promotion Society, an American movie was shown on Soviet TV - a movie about one woman's struggle with alcoholism and her eventual sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. The movie created quite a response from its Soviet viewers, and the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda printed a piece with some of the hundreds of requests it received asking for more information on AA. We had the article translated and were moved by the overriding tone of the responses. Here, translated from the Russian, is just one of the many responses: "I have acquaintances but no friends. I have spent these last ten days at home. I have not gone anywhere and will invariably get drunk. And once I go on a binge, it lasts a long time.
me. I'm twenty-four. My employment record is like an index of available jobs. Besides which, last summer I was released from incarceration.
his crowning remark: 'If you don't have a job in ten days, I'll send you to the Labor-Rehabilitation Camp.' Who wants to go there? So I hide. It was better in jail. I don't know how AA can help me, but I am writing nevertheless."
of the Temperance Promotion Society (TPS), which had recently come under fire for what appeared to be a lack of effectiveness in supplying adequate answers to the huge problem of alcoholism facing the Soviet Union. Of AA, the first
method is interesting, but is only partially useful for us. And we will reject it primarily because certain interested parties from across the ocean are very clearly using it to promote the American way of life. The pretext is a good one; there is nothing to be said against it. But still I will block it." With a note of uncertainty, then - and these conflicting messages in our minds - we went off to our scheduled meeting with the TPS. Of course, we got lost along the way, literally, and as things hlostave a way of going in AA, it turned out to be one of the greatest days I've ever had. Finally, after wandering around the city's back streets, we found our way. Unlike our dire predictions based on the newspaper article, the TPS people were very cordial, very kind, very open, very pro-AA. While we were there talking, a television producer showed up with her camera crew asking for permission to do some filming for a ten-minute documentary on Alcoholics Anonymous for Soviet television. We started to explain our Traditions, of course, and she cut us off; she understood them quite well, she assured us, and promised to maintain our anonymity. So, as we began to talk with the TPS people, the cameraman went to work. Rather than showing any faces, he focussed in on our hands as we were talking.
minutes was going to be nearly enough to give a sense of Alcoholics Anonymous to the Soviet public. So what they intended to do, at their own expense, was to travel to the United States in order to prepare a more in depth documentary on AA. We made plans to send them copies of some of the films and video material that AA has already produced, such as "Young People and AA," "It Sure Beats Sitting in a Cell," and "AA - An Inside View," hoping that this material would add to their understanding of AA principles and practices. Eventually, we headed up to Moscow, and on our first day there we met with the Moscow Beginners Group. There will be debates forevermore about which was the first AA group in Russia, but this group had as good a claim as the next. It was started by an Episcopal minister who was living and working in Moscow,
group registered with the General Service Office in New York. Also in Moscow we had an appointment to meet with a doctor who had written a book about alcoholism and recovery, and a good part of it was about AA and its principles. The book, it seems, was a huge popular success and had already sold out. They were going to have a public debate about this book, and a big hall had been opened up at one of the cultural palaces where
the ideas in this book. We were invited to come. It turned into quite an afternoon - one we never could have planned.
questions about AA and were quite right in their understanding of anonymity and the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous. These people proved to be great advocates of AA. And by the time the debate was over, a spokesman for TPS announced in public that they would now actively support Alcoholics Anonymous. A woman stood up in the crowd and shouted out, "How do you think Alcoholics Anonymous will work in the Soviet Union?" My compatriots looked at me. All I could really tell her was that it would be presumptuous of me to pretend to be an expert. I had been in her country only thirteen days. How could I possibly base anything on that? But I did say that we have the experience of 114 other cultures who have used AA quite effectively, and that the only purpose of our visit to her country was to share our experience with them if it could be of any help. Finally, we were to have a meeting with the head of TPS, the man who had made the statement in Komsomolskaya Pravda. This fellow was a very short man with white hair - very charming, very cordial, and tough as nails. There was no question about who he was. The first thing he did was give us a cup of tea and say, "Now, here are the rules for this get together." He laid out how the
meeting, I have asked a number of people also to be here. They are alcoholics with another way of doing things." This was all done very graciously, however, and it was clear that he wasn't opposing us in any way.
bunch of people there. These were alcoholics from a sobriety club formed in 1978, and the founder of the club was there. He was now twelve years sober. The club was formed to give alcoholics something to do in their spare time. They were responsible for forming their own activities - staging plays, etc. Their charter stated that members couldn't drink until death, and they told us that only two people in the last nine years had slipped. They wanted to demonstrate the sober life. The trade union bosses had helped to organize this club. It was all done through the workplace. If you were an alcoholic, your name was on the wall at work. They knew who you were and lots of peer pressure was brought to bear. Their idea was to break the cycle of alcoholism. They wanted to have a whole generation of people who were living good, healthy lives without drinking alcohol.
of how little they really understood of the concept of anonymity. "How can you get well when you don't even know each other?" was the basic question the head of TPS asked us. He said that in these sobriety clubs, people weren't anonymous to each other - they got together frequently and were much like a
Our last really official meeting was with the chief deputy and chief narcologist of the Ministry of Health, the governmental agency that oversees all alcoholism treatment in the Soviet Union. This guy was tough - not in any antagonistic way, but he wanted "the facts, please." He wanted to know organizational things: how AA was set up, and how his agency could use AA. He voiced his biggest concern, however, by calling AA an "uncontrolled movement." After we'd been talking with this man for an hour or so, he asked us pointblank, "What can we do to get this thing started here?" Our response was very simple: "Give them space. Give them rooms to meet in and a little bit of space to grow in." We told him we'd send him a lot of AA information, especially the organizational stuff he was interested in.
professionals in the Soviet Union now know about and trust the process of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we've seen indications that they're willing to give it a try. We've also found that there are some necessities that the General Service Office can provide to these people, the greatest of which would be to provide portions of the pamphlet "The AA Group" in Russian so that some of the how-to questions might begin to be resolved. They also need the pamphlet on sponsorship, and of course the Big Book. Like the businessman from the Moscow Beginners Group, I am a fellow who had no history of God in his life. I am a common, garden-variety drunk with all kinds of other problems, whose very best thinking got him into a penitentiary; a man completely without moral standards, a man you could not trust, a man for whom the ends always justified the means, a self centered and domineering man. And yet, because of Alcoholics Anonymous and the grace of God I was able to participate in this trip because I was sober. It could happen to anybody reading this. There are no Russian alcoholics, no Estonian or Siberian or American alcoholics. There are only alcoholics. Of this I am now certain. Don P., Aurora, Colorado IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1670. . . . . . . . . . . . AA History FYI From: Rob White . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/20/2004 10:29:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Dear Friend, You are getting this email because you have an interest in Recovery Issues.
history) will be speaking at a conference on 4/15/04 in Baltimore.
(Book Signing to Follow) Afternoon Workshop : Authors of the AA Big Book: Who were they and what do we know about them The conference information is below. Hope to see you there! Please pass it on. Rob White ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----\ ----
"Double Jeopardy: Addiction and Depression" Baltimore Convention Center Baltimore, Maryland Thursday, April 15, 2004 Keynote Speaker: Claudia Black, PhD Cost: $80.00 (includes 6 CEus/CMEs & Lunch) Average Attendance: 1,000 This year's conference, sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence - Maryland Chapter, (Co-sponsored by UMMS and Med Chi) will feature Claudia Black, PhD as the Keynote Speaker. Dr. Black is a renowned lecturer, author and trainer internationally recognized for her work with family systems and addictive disorders. Since the mid 1970's, Dr. Black's work has encompassed the impact of addiction on young and adult children. She has offered models of intervention and treatment related to family violence, multi-addictions, relapse, anger, depression and women's issues. She authors books, interactive journals, and creates and produces educational videos for use with both the addicted client and families affected by addiction. Since 1998, she has been the primary Clinical Consultant of Addictive Disorders for the Meadows Institute and Treatment Center in Wickenburg, Arizona. Workshop Titles Include: Depression and Addiction; History of Alcoholism; Relapse Issues; Adult Children of Alcoholics; Psychotropic Medications; Advocacy; Women, Work and Recovery; Substance Abuse Management; Gay and Lesbian Addiction Treatment; Anxiety and Addiction; Treating Borderline Patients; and Chronic Mental Illness and Addiction. Full-Day Cost Early Registration: Postmarked by March 5, 2004 $80.00 General Registration: Postmarked March 6 - April 2, 2004 $90.00 Early Student Registration: Postmarked by March 5, 2004 $40.00 General Student Registration: Postmarked March 6 - April 2, 2004 $50.00
registration.)
cost of $120.00. Please note that lunch cannot be guaranteed for these registrations. The registration fee includes the NCADD-MD Awards Luncheon, handouts, and continuing education credits. Please note that parking is not included.
our website www.NCADDMaryland.org IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1671. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: 12 step prayers--a prayer for each step From: jsrmeat@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/21/2004 4:44:00 AM
save me from being angry, thy will be done.-Page 68:3 We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be.-Page 69:2 Weasked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them.-Page 69:3 We ask God what we should do about each specific matter.Page 70:2 We earnestly pray for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity,and for the strength to do the right thing.
and have been directed to do so by our book. Also in the fifth step-page 75:3 We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better.also the ninth step-page79:1 we askthat we be given strength and direction to do the the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be. THere probably are more but I have to sign out for now.
sick.
++++Message 1672. . . . . . . . . . . . Rollie Hemsley From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/22/2004 2:52:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII A question was asked: In the late fifties I signed a Professional Baseball contract with the Washington Senators. Was assigned to Ferndina Beach with the Charlotte Hornets. The club manager was Rollie Hemsley. His career as a player was with the Cleveland Indians as a catcher. He caught three of Bob Fellers no hitters. Could this be the same player mentioned in "AA COMES OF AGE," bottom paragraph P-24?
autobiography. Before the anonymity tradition, sports pages gave much attention to AA's role in sobering up Rolllie.
history lover/buff, I felt I should correct the facts here. Rollie caught only the first of Feller's 3 no-hitters. It was the most
Phillie in '46, and was not an active major leaguer in '51. His complete MLB Stats http://www.baseball-reference.com/h/hemslro01.shtml A brief AA related bio http://silkworth.net/aahistory_names/namesr.html IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1673. . . . . . . . . . . . The Little Big Book From: Chrisjon10@earthlink.net . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/22/2004 9:41:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII What is the history surrounding publication of the pocket-size version of the Big Book? Thanks. John P. Richmond, VA IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1674. . . . . . . . . . . . History & Archives Gathering 2004 From: jlobdell54 . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/22/2004 6:10:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Those HistoryLovers who are AA members (and other AAs also) may be interested in the 2004 Multi-District Central Pennsylvania History & Archives Gathering, now scheduled for June 5, 2004, near Harrisburg PA. We are awaiting word from several of last year's speakers/ participants, and a couple of those who couldn't come last year, when it was held April 5th (2003) at Central Pennsylvania College. It will have a different venue this year, but it will still be focussed on the Mid-Atlantic region, especially Eastern (and Central) PA, with archives exhibits -- we hope -- at least from PA, MD, and NJ. The feature old-timer last year, Trainor H. (sober 56 years), died three months after the Gathering, but we hope other old- timers will be back, for our mixture of historians of AA, archivists, history lovers, AAs in service, and oldtimers. My email address is jaredlobdell@comcast.net, or jlobdell54@hotmail.com, or jaredlobdell@aol.com. Will let you know more details as soon as I have them. -- Jared Lobdell IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1675. . . . . . . . . . . . Humphry Osmond Passing From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/23/2004 10:37:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII The Toledo Blade recently carried a notice of the Febr. 6th passing of Dr. Humphry Osmond, 86, the British-born psychiatrist who introduced the word "psychedelic" to describe the effects of hallucinatory drugs. You can read about Dr. Osmond and his colleague, Dr. Abram Hoffer, in Chapter 23 of "Pass It On." Bill Wilson met them through Aldous Huxley, the celebrated author of "Brave New World" and one of the pioneers of the New Age movement. In the 1950s, Osmond and Hoffer experimented with LSD as a possible treatment for schizophrenia. Bill saw this as a chemical means of achieving what he had found in his 1934 spiritual experience and became their advocate and ally in the experiments. He later withdrew from the LSD experiments but continued to proclaim the benefits of massive doses of Vitamin B-3. I first learned about Bill's LSD involvement from Ernie Kurtz's "Not God." I feel that any use of LSD by a recovering person is a dangerous flirtation with disaster, but Bill apparently surivived without any trouble and continued to say that LSD was not addictive. I was skeptical about the supposed benefits of LSD, although I did read that it helped actor Cary Grant recover his potency! Mel Barger
Mel Barger melb@accesstoledo.com
From: Mark Stephen Kornbluth . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/23/2004 2:45:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII February 22, 2004 Humphry Osmond, 86, Who Sought Medicinal Value in Psychedelic Drugs, Dies By DOUGLAS MARTIN Humphry Osmond, the psychiatrist who coined the word "psychedelic" for the drugs to which he introduced the writer and essayist Aldous Huxley, died on Feb. 6 at his home in Appleton, Wis. He was 86. The cause was cardiac arrhythmia, said his daughter Euphemia Blackburn of Appleton, where Dr. Osmond moved to four years ago. Dr. Osmond entered the history of the counterculture by supplying hallucinogenic drugs to Huxley, who ascribed mystical significance to them in his playfully thoughtful, widely read book "The Doors of Perception," from which the rock group the Doors took its name. But in his own view and in that of some other scientists, Dr. Osmond was most important for inspiring researchers who saw drugs like L.S.D. and mescaline as potential treatments for psychological ailments. By the mid-1960's, medical journals had published more than 1,000 papers on the subject, and Dr. Osmond's work using L.S.D. to treat alcoholics drew particular interest. "Osmond was a pioneer," Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine, said in an interview. "He published some fascinating data." In one study, in the late 1950's, when Dr. Osmond gave L.S.D. to alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous who had failed to quit drinking, about half had not had a drink after a year. "No one has ever duplicated the success rate of that study," said Dr. John H. Halpern, associate director of substance abuse research at the McLean Hospital Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center in Belmont, Mass., and an instructor at Harvard. Dr. Halpern added that no one really tried. Other studies used different methodology, and the combination of flagrant youthful abuse of hallucinogens; the propagation of a flashy, otherworldly drug culture by Timothy Leary; and reports of health dangers from hallucinogens (some of which Dr. Halpern said were wrong or overstated) eventually doomed almost all research into psychedelic drugs. Research on hallucinogens as a treatment for mental ills has re-emerged in recent years, in small projects at places like the University of Arizona, the University of South Carolina, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard. Though such research was always legal, regulatory, financial and other obstacles had largely ended it. Huxley's reading about Dr. Osmond's research into similarities between schizophrenia and mescaline intoxication led him to volunteer to try the drug. Dr. Osmond agreed, but later wrote that he "did not relish the possibility, however remote, of being the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad." So in 1953, a day Dr. Osmond described 12 years later as "delicious May morning," he dropped a pinch of silvery white mescaline crystals in a glass of water and handed it to Huxley, the author of "Brave New World," which described a totalitarian society in which people are controlled by drugs.
"Within two and a half hours I could see that it was acting, and after three I could see that all would go well," Dr. Osmond wrote. He said he felt "much relieved." Dr. Osmond first offered his new term, psychedelic, at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1957. He said the word meant "mind manifesting" and called it "clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by other associations." Huxley had sent Dr. Osmond a rhyme with his own word choice: "To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme." (Thymos means soul in Greek.) Rejecting that, Dr. Osmond replied: "To fathom Hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic." Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar in their 1979 book "Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered" pointed out that by the rules for combining Greek roots, the word should have been psychodelic. They also said that even in the late 70's, psychedelic had mostly been replaced by hallucinogenic, a vocabulary shift they said Dr. Osmond himself made. In addition to his daughter Euphemia, Dr. Osmond is survived by his wife, Jane; a second daughter, Helen Swanson of Surrey, England; a son, Julian, of New Orleans; a sister, Dorothy Gale of Devon, England; and five grandchildren. Humphry Fortescue Osmond was born on July 1, 1917, in Surrey. He intended to be a banker, but attended Guy's Hospital Medical School of the University of London. In World War II, he was a surgeon-lieutenant in the Navy, where he trained to become a ship's psychiatrist. At St. George's Hospital in London, he and a colleague, John R. Smythies, developed the hypothesis that schizophrenia was a form of self-intoxication caused by the body's mistakenly producing its own L.S.D.-like compounds. When their theory was not embraced by the British mental health establishment, the two doctors moved to Canada to continue their research at Saskatchewan Hospital in Weyburn. There, they developed the idea, not widely accepted, that no one should treat schizophrenics who had not personally experienced schizophrenia. "This it is possible to do quite easily by taking mescaline," they wrote.
Huxley read about this work and volunteered to be studied. The research also directly inspired other scientists, Dr. Halpern said. "There was a certain point where almost every major psychiatrist wanted to do hallucinogen research," Dr. Halpern said, adding that in the early 1960's, it was recommended that psychiatric residents take a dose to understand psychosis better. Perhaps the most famous psychedelic researcher was Dr. Oscar Janiger, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, who gave L.S.D. to Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and, again, Huxley. Dr. Halpern said that today's understanding of serotonin, a neurotransmitter important in causing and alleviating depression, grew out of research into the effect of L.S.D. on the brain. L.S.D. and serotonin are chemically similar. Dr. Osmond's most important work involved alcoholism research, done with Abram Hoffer, a colleague at Weyburn. Originally, they thought L.S.D. would terrify alcoholics by causing symptoms akin to delirium tremens. Instead, they found it opened them to radical personal transformation. "One conception of psychedelic theory for alcoholics is that L.S.D. can truly accomplish the transcendence that is repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought in drunkenness," "Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered" suggested in 1979. Bill Wilson, a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, met Dr. Osmond and took L.S.D. himself, strongly agreeing that it could help many alcoholics. As psychedelic research became increasingly difficult, Dr. Osmond left Canada to become director of the Bureau of Research in Neurology and Psychiatry at the New Jersey Psychiatric Institute in Princeton, and then a professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He mainly studied schizophrenia but was disappointed he could not pursue his research into hallucinogens, Mrs. Blackburn, his daughter, said. "I'm sure he was very saddened by it," she said. "It could have helped millions of people."
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