Welcome to Digital Recovery!
Dedicated to helping online alcoholics/addicts work successful programs and sober lives.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom not to screw things up (again).
(keep coming back!)
The AA preamble: Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
    The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.


        Hi, my name is David, and I am an alcoholic.  Digital Recovery is my project to make more AA resources available online.  This site is (as yet) my personal site: it is not in any way associated with any intergroup or the AA General Services Organization.  As with any fellowship of AA, I do my best to stick to the 12 Traditions, but there are many different ways to do this.  This site is run entirely of my own expense; the only contributions accepted are time and content.  Should anyone wish to help out with this site (please?!? anyone?), it will stop being my own personal site and become a shared community site.  Ideally, site content and services will stop being my own inspired opinion and become the product of an online group conscience. I got the idea for this project when I was unable to find any AA material on P2P file sharing networks, and when it took me half an hour of Googling to find AA media on the Web.  This website is the central location of Digital Recovery (i.e. it contains links to all of the other non-Web Digital Recovery resources, such as streaming audio/Internet radio, bitTorrent P2P, audio chatrooms (online meetings), and more.
    Digital Recovery is still very much a work in progress, and this page will get lots of updates in the near future.  Making AA resources more available online is important because there are many AA's who are very limited in their ability to get to meetings due to time constraints, geographic isolation (e.g. my father living overseas), possible repercussions if they get "outed" by attending a meeting (e.g. uniformed services, clergy, healthcare professionals), illness/disability that impairs mobility, or just being too damn lazy to get their butts to a meeting (no, no... I absolutely do not fall into this category...). Also, the Internet is more anonymous than just about any form of communication.  It also helps prospective AA's (who may be too ashamed to go to their first meeting) learn more about the program.  Finally, when people need to gather info about something, the first place almost anyone looks these days is the Web.  This is true both for potential AA's, newcomers, and oldtimer's.  One thing this, or any site, cannot do is adequately substitute for real, live, face to face homegroup (my home group frequently hunts down and 12th steps regulars who relapse or go missing).  

First things first: the promises, which are the bedrock of my program.  
Without the promises, being clean (which is NOT the same as being sober) would genuinely suck, because the pain and underlying problems would still torment you, but you wouldn't have chemicals to numb the pain and provide oblivion.  Working a good program and staying clean will absolutely lead to the promises coming true for any AA. I first heard the promises when I had been in the program for three miserable weeks (see above for the reason why...).  My first thought was: BULLSHIT!!! these promises are just false promises to sucker people in to AA.  My second thought was: what are these freaks smoking! At that point I just couldn't comprehend how life without chemical modification could be happy, joyous, free, and fun.  My third thought was: I'm in this meeting because this is the final stop in my quest to stop destroying my own life with drugs and drinking: if I can't get this to work for me, I'm going to die a miserable death within a few months.  I was just desperate enough that I was able to do things other than what I wanted to do.... and less than a year later I realized that every single one of the promises had come true for me, in some degree or another.  So here they are:

1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development [steps 8 and 9], we will be amazed before we are half way through.
2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Be sure to check out my free online "radio station" via ShoutCast on: Digital Recovery: Streaming Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
Shoutcast streams are compatible with WinAmp, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Quicktime, VLC, iTunes, Mplayer, iPhone, Palm WebOS, Android, and every other one I've ever heard of.

Live audio/video online meetings: NOT "virtual!" The chat room is up and running! Meeting schedule TBD (mostly after I get input from my homegroup), and then publicized at DC area clubs and meetings (which will hopefully lead traveling AA's to spread the word to everyone else).  If you don't have access to a computer with a webcam or microphone (e.g. you're out and about with your smartphone), take a look at the brand-new Digital Recovery fellowship forum (BBS).

Pre-Live Room

Click here for the Digital Recovery Audio Library

Click here for the Digital Recovery Literature Library (ebooks)


LINKS:
WAIA online meeting search tool: the Where & When, searchable, constantly updated, and accessible from any device with an Internet connection and a web browser (including smartphones).

WAIA Quarterly Where & When (the directory of all AA meetings in the DC metro area that have existed for at least six months.  For more assistance in finding meetings, call the Washington Area Intergroup Association and get a real, live human being who is staying sober through 12th stepping on the WAIA hotline (202-966-9115).  For example: "Just how the hell do I find that club whose address isn't on the building?" / "Are there any meetings at all in PG county?" / "What is the difference between closed and open meetings?" / "Are there any meetings left that allow smoking?" / "My life has gone to shit and I'm scared I'm going to die soon from addiction and I still can't stop using and I'm a 52 year-old priest who can't go to meetings in churches because my parishioners might see me.  How do I get help?" / "Are there any meetings that mesh AA and Al-Anon?" (for that exceedingly rare recovering alcoholic who also struggles with codependence and other alcoholics in the family).

Click here to visit the AA General Service Office's website.

Washington, DC Area Intergroup Association (WAIA)

(More links are coming)

Plans for Digital Recovery:

  1. a web form visitors can fill out to let me know about other resources I don't know about, as well as to provide me with suggestions on how I can improve Digital Recovery.
  2. a meeting schedule for the online meeting.
  3. a version of the fellowship forum BBS that is optimized for display on smartphones/PDA's (the default formatting is still pretty good, tho...)
  4. possibly some social networking stuff? It seems that since Facebook took over the world and everyone's lives, its been used for some purpose by every person and organization; I don't really have any ideas on how Digital Recovery could use it, however.
  5. digitizing more literature for distribution as ebooks: A.A. Comes of Age, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, and the Big Book

Finally: please, please, please let more people know about Digital Recovery... if no one visits this site, I will have wasted a lot of time and effort. Hope this has helped.  Take it easy. -david

(shit, I still haven't called my sponsor...)