In this episode, we meet David Whitesock, who shares his story of addiction and recovery, and how his journey led him to develop the Recovery Capital Index, a useful tool for measuring recovery capital.
In my struggle to find sobriety in AA, I unexpectedly became Buddhist by doing the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The pandemic has taught us some things -- one being that the thirst for secular AA exceeds our most optimistic imaginings. A very short time after face-to-face meetings began to be shut down, there was a notable spike in requests to join the various secular recovery groups on Facebook. An old-school Google group called "Atheists and Agnostics in AA" saw new member applications leap from 10-15 per week to 10-15 per day.
I take the title of this essay from the 1722 English work of Daniel Defoe which is a fictionalized account of the last great Bubonic Plague outbreak in London of 1665. I am writing this piece in September of 2020 when the entire world is in the midst of its own “Great Plague” caused by the COVID 19 pandemic and many of us older people, as well as some younger folks, find ourselves under dire threat.
Writing, including gratitude lists, parts of my personal stories, essays about principles, and steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, and for me most importantly, poetry, has been an essential part of my recovery.